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.
This week'd portion begins the book of Numbers. Interestingly, the Hebrew name for the book is "In the Desert," not "Numbers." The portion, which happens to be my bar mitzvah portion, focuses almost as much on the names of the princes of each tribe as the number of soldiers it fielded. It also focuses on the configuration of the tribal camps around the central Tabernacle and the Levites.
So why "Numbers" instead of "Names" or "Places"? The numbers are, to be sure, a unique feature of the opening of this Biblical book -- but they are not the focus of the rest of the narrative. The Hebrew focuses on the place where the events in the book take place, because essentially this is the narrative of the Israelites' wanderings from Egypt to Israel, across 40 years. We move from the giving of the Torah and the construction of the Tabernacle in Exodus and Leviticus, to the final valediction of Moses in Deuteronomy -- Bamidbar is the story of wandering that happened in between.
The question of ...
This week's portion begins with the laws of the Sabbath and the Sabbatical year, and the Jubilee year that restores all land to its original (tribal) owners. It also explores laws of property and labor that will apply in the Land of Israel, and the laws of vows and inheritance.
The Israelites are presented -- not for the last time -- with the essential moral choice that they must face, and the rewards for choosing well, along with the consequences for choosing poorly.
We learn that doing good things will earn God's protection from enemies. That does not mean that victims of terror, God forbid, were sinful. But it does mean that we can respond to evil by committing ourselves to a higher path.
This week's portion describes the major sacrifices that are to be offered by the Jewish people, including those that are offered only by the priestly Kohen class, and physical requirements of the people (men) who serve in that role.
Inter alia, there are interesting commandments -- such as an injection to treat animals with respect and care, first, by letting a mother animal nurse her offspring for a week before being offered in any sacrifice; and second, by refraining from slaughtering an animal and its offspring on the same day.
The commandments regarding animals remind us of the purpose of those regarding human beings: to uphold a divine connection, through ritual.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/111878/jewish/Rabbi-Isaac-Luria-The-Ari-Hakodosh.htm
