The Biden Administration is belatedly trying to revive the progress of the Abraham Accords by negotiating a peace and normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Such a deal would almost certainly have happened had Donald Trump won the 2020 election. There has been no progress since Biden took office, and he has made things worse by isolating the Saudis, in deference to Democrats' resentment against the Saudi monarchy for daring to work closely with Trump.
Now, with an election looming, Biden is trying to make the Saudi deal happen. He has another motive: if he can get Israel to go along with his effort, he might have leverage to stop an Israeli strike on Iran, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said is an option despite Biden's effort to revive the doomed Iran nuclear deal.
I have been skeptical of this effort from the start, mostly because of how loudly Biden was advertising it. That's not how one does a deal in the Middle East: you don't proclaim your final goals at the outset, because you're going to get pushed away from them in negotiations. To me, this was mostly about domestic politics. Likewise with the positive response from Netanyahu, who is in a tight position at home -- though he also wants to appear open to any Arab peace deal for strategic reasons, and wants to use any opportunity to flatter Biden, who is otherwise inclined to be hostile to Netanyahu's government.
The Saudis are playing this perfectly. They don't need a deal. But they are raising the price for a deal, because Biden is desperate to reach one. So a top Saudi diplomat has announced this week that the only way peace is happening is if there is a Palestinian state. That is a price Israel can't (and shouldn't) pay at the moment, and it is also a higher price than Israel paid for any of the other Abraham Accords agreements, which largely ignored Palestinians' hard-line demands.
A deal remains in everyone's interests. But Israel is not going to be tied down to a process that prevents it from striking Iran, and it is not going to agree to a Palestinian state while Mahmoud Abbas is still subsidizing terrorists, or while Hamas is working with Iran. The Saudis don't need a deal and are happy to work quietly with Israel on geopolitical and economic issues, while raising the price of peace and normalization, which a future U.S. administration might deliver.
One hopes for the best. But I feel confirmed in my skepticism.
The story of Noah is familiar; the details, less so.
Noah is often seen as an ambivalent figure. He was righteous -- but only for his generation. What was his deficiency?
One answer suggests itself: knowing that the world was about to be flooded, he built an Ark for the animals and for his own family -- but did not try to save anyone else or to convince them to repent and change their ways (the prophet Jonah, later, would share that reluctance).
Abraham, later, would set himself apart by arguing with God -- with the Lord Himself! -- against the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, saying that they should be saved if there were enough righteous people to be found (there were not).
Still, Noah was good enough -- and sometimes, that really is sufficient to save the world. We don't need heroes every time -- just ordinary decency.
Hi all -- as I noted last month, I'm going to be closing down my Locals page, at least for tips and subscriptions -- I may keep the page up and the posts as well, but I'm no longer going to be accepting any kind of payment.
Look for cancelation in the very near future. Thank you for your support!
An interesting weekend -- one of the last of Daylight Savings Time -- in which there is much to celebrate, much to contemplate, and a bit to worry about.
The Gaza peace deal is shaky, but holding, after the living hostages returned; the shutdown is still going on, with no end in sight; the China trade war is heating up; and the confrontation with Venezuela continues to escalate.
The "No Kings" protest was a dud, despite the media's attempt to inflate it. What I find fascinating is that the Democrats have basically stolen the rhetoric and the imagery of the Tea Party protests, circa 2009. They claim they are defending the Constitution -- just like the Tea Party did.
On the one hand, this is good. How wonderful to have a political system in which both sides, bitterly opposed though they are, articulate differences through the Constitution -- and not, as in so many other countries, outside it.
On the other, this is sheer hypocrisy for the Democrats. Not only did they malign the Tea Party as ...
