================================https://www.chonday.com/24711/ gorencda5/
You cannot top this interaction.
And:
Hillary, I have never told my two white wives how to vote.
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I wrote this as I leave and before any potential remaining changes that Trump is likely to make and announce while I am gone.
The mass media and anti-Trumpers are highlighting the fact that The White House is in disarray.
Since I like Trump's policies and am prone to give him more leeway, I would remind readers of these memos, in that it takes time to put together a team that is reliable, understands what you want and capable of executing your policies. Trump did not know many of his appointees and relied upon recommendations of those he did know. Furthermore, Trump was making appointments of people who did not know him for a job that was totally new for him and which involved politics in a town full of power seeking backbiters and those loyal to their own aspirations.
Yes, Trump's staff turnovers have been high but he inherited a mess and the risks are even greater so my hope is he will get the right combination he feels comfortable with, who understand his goals and are loyal both to him and our nation.
Tillerson obviously did not fit, his Sec. of The V.A was unsuited by virtue of his own actions and some appointees had issues regarding reliable answers during their vetting.
I am glad Trump has the guts to fire those he is not comfortable with but sometimes his methods are unbecoming and unnecessary. They speak to his own insecurities and temperament and that could make qualified people unwilling to serve.
I am delighted John Bolton became part of Trump's advisors while I was away because he is clear eyed, tough and a straight talker . Whether there is a position for Elliott Abrams that may be a tougher fit since he was vocal and critical during the campaign about Trump who is too thin skinned. Elliott would be the perfect fit for the number two man at State. (See 1 below.)
Yes, if Israel would only make more concessions there would be peace. More nonsense?
And if the U.S stopped mistreating Muslim there would also be peace. More nonsense?
Yes, there is no peace in this world because Israel and America seek territory, enslavement of others and covet everyone's possessions. (See 1a below.)
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Democrats finally have a brilliant solution to gun violence. (See 2 below.)
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There is a growing connection and it is becoming more open. (See 3 below.)
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Is This Any Way To Drive An Omnibus? 10 Questions About What Just Happened https://n.pr/2GaMweO
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I am leaving again Tuesday a week so I have a great deal to catch up on and any memos will be sporadic from this point.
Hope you had a pleasant Pesach and Happy Easter.
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Dick
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1)
Firing Tillerson removed an obstacle to peace
By Caroline Glick
As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was being fired on Tuesday, his central assumptions about the Palestinian conflict with Israel, which are shared by the entire Washington foreign policy establishment, literally blew up in Gaza.
On Tuesday morning, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah’s convoy was attacked by a roadside bomb during an official visit in Hamas-controlled Gaza.
Hamdallah was in Gaza to inaugurate a wastewater treatment facility sponsored by the World Bank. The facility was approved 14 years ago, but infighting between Hamas, which runs Gaza, and Fatah, the PLO ruling faction which controls the Palestinian Authority (PA), blocked its operation time after time.
The shuttered water treatment facility in northern Gaza has long been a monument to the Palestinian leadership’s incompetence and indifference to the plight of the people it is supposed to be serving. As the plant gathered dust, Gaza plunged deeper and deeper into a water crisis.
As the Times of Israel reported, Gaza has two water problems: insufficient ground water, and massive pollution of the existing supply due to the absence of sufficient sewage treatment facilities.
Untreated sewage is dumped directly into the Mediterranean Sea, and then seeps back into Gaza’s groundwater.
Gaza’s polluted acquifiers only produce a quarter of its water needs, and due to insufficient water treatment facilities, 97 percent of Gaza’s natural water sources are unsafe for human consumption.
Hamdallah’s visit to Hamas-controlled Gaza was supposed to show that the Fatah-Hamas unity deal Egypt brokered between the two terror groups last year was finally enabling them to solve Gaza’s humanitarian needs.
And then Hamdallah’s convoy was bombed, and the whole charade of Palestinian governing competence and responsibility was put to rest.
Later in the day, the White House held a Middle East summit that demonstrated Tillerson’s basic assumptions have the problems of the Middle East precisely backwards.
Under the leadership of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, along with Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s senior negotiator, Israeli officials sat in the White House for the first time with Arab officials from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar. Representatives from Egypt and Jordan, with which Israel enjoys open diplomatic relations, were also in attendance. Canadian and European officials participated as well.
Although they were invited, the Palestinians chose to boycott the conference. Their boycott was telling. The PA claimed it was boycotting the conference in retaliation for America’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and President Trump’s plan to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Israel’s 70th Independence Day in May.
But anger over Jerusalem doesn’t justify the snub. The purpose of the summit wasn’t to reach “the ultimate deal.” The summit was called to to formulate the means to contend with the humanitarian crises emanating from Hamas-controlled Gaza. The Palestinians boycotted a summit whose sole purpose was to help them.
As Palestinian commentator Bassam Tawil noted, the PA’s boycott while appalling, was unsurprising.
The White House summit was a threat to both rival Palestinian factions. It showed that the Trump administration, which both Fatah and Hamas hate passionately, cares more about the Palestinians than they do.
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is entirely the product of Hamas and Fatah actions. In an op-ed in the Washington Post last week, Greenblatt laid the blame on Hamas. “Hamas’s utter failure to fulfill any of the most basic functions of governance has brought Gaza to the brink of collapse, which has necessitated the response of the international community.”
Fatah, Tawil noted, is just as responsible. The Fatah-controlled PA has used the Palestinians of Gaza as a pawn in its power struggle against Hamas. Rather than work to decontaminate Gaza’s water supply and provide for the basic needs of the population, for the past year the PA has imposed economic sanctions on the Gaza Strip.
Ostensibly imposed to induce the population of Gaza to rise up against Hamas, they have simply served to increase the misery of the residents of Gaza. Hamas’s power remains unchallenged as Qatar, Turkey, and Iran shower the terror group with cash and arms.
As Tawil noted, Hamas and Fatah are willing to fight one another until the last Palestinian in Gaza.
The conference showed that the attack on Hamdallah’s convoy was not a freak episode. The bombing was emblematic of the Fatah-Hamas leadership’s obsession with their own power, to the detriment of the people they claim to represent.
The events in Gaza and the White House on Tuesday tell us two important things.
First, they reveal that the primary obstacle to both peace and regional stability in the Middle East is the Palestinian leadership – both from Fatah and Hamas.
Not only did the PA refuse to participate in a summit dedicated solely to helping the Palestinians, but also the very day the summit took place, PA-controlled Voice of Palestine Radio reported that the PA intends to file a complaint against President Trump at the International Criminal Court. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem, the PA insists, “violated all international laws and resolutions.”
The report also said the PA intends to sue Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman for “crimes against the Palestinian people.”
Tuesday’s second lesson is that while the PA is the primary obstacle to peace and regional stability, it is easily surmountable.
Tuesday’s conference was a diplomatic triumph for the Trump administration. For the first time, official representatives of five Arab states that have no diplomatic relations with Israel sat publically in the White House with Israeli officials. They were brought together due to their common concern for the Palestinians in Gaza, and for the instability that the plight of the Palestinians in Hamas-controlled Gaza might encourage.
Although it is still unknown whether anything discussed at the conference will turn into concrete improvements on the ground, the summit itself was a concrete achievement. It showed that the Arabs are willing publicly to bypass the Palestinians to work with Israel. The fact that the conference was devoted to helping the Palestinians served to transform the PA from the critical partner in any peace deal to an irritating irrelevance.
And that brings us to Tillerson, and the foreign policy establishment whose positions he channeled.
During his 14 months in office, Tillerson insisted on maintaining the establishment’s view that the Fatah-controlled PA is the be-all-and-end-all of Middle East peace efforts. The view that there can be no Arab-Israeli peace without the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) compelled successive U.S. administrations to continue to embrace it despite its support for terrorism, and despite its refusal to accept or even respond to any offer of peace by either Israel or the U.S.
The belief that there can be no peace without Fatah convinced successive American administrations to pour billions of dollars in aid money down the black hole of PA treasury accounts. Since the Israeli-PLO peace process began in 1993, the Palestinians have received more international aid per capita than any nation on earth has received in world history. And all they produced are an impoverished, sewage-filled terror state in Gaza, and a jihadist hub in Judea and Samaria that would explode in violence if Israel did not control security.
The view that the U.S. needs the PLO and its PA to achieve peace gave the Palestinian leadership an effective veto over every U.S. policy towards Israel and towards the peace process.
Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the embassy to Jerusalem was the first time any American leader since Bill Clinton had dared to reject the Palestinian veto on US Middle East policy.
Tillerson supported maintaining the PA’s veto. As a result, he all but openly opposed Trump’s decision.
So too, last June, in a bid to protect U.S. funding to the PA — despite the fact that fully 7 percent of its donor-funded budget is used to pay salaries to terrorists in Israeli prisons and their families — Tillerson falsely told the Senate Foreign Relations committee that the PA had agreed to end the payments. After the Palestinians themselves denied his statement, he only partially walked it back. The next day, he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the U.S. was in “active discussions” with the Palestinians regarding halting the payments.
In the event, the PA raised its payments to terrorists in 2017 to $403 million. In 2016, the PA spent $347 million to pay salaries to terrorist murderers and their families.
In other words, Tillerson is so committed to the view that there can be no peace without the PA, that he willingly misled U.S. lawmakers.
Trump administration officials keep insisting that they are almost ready to present their peace plan for the Palestinians and Israel. But whatever the plan may entail, the steps the White House has already taken – Tuesday’s summit, Trump’s move on Jerusalem, and his determination to sign the Taylor Force Act to end U.S. support for the PA if it maintains its payments to terrorists – have already advanced the cause of peace more than any American peace proposal ever has and likely ever will.
Those moves removed the principle blockage to all peace deals – namely, the Palestinian leadership from Fatah and Hamas alike. By bypassing the PA, the White House has focused its efforts on expanding the already burgeoning bilateral ties between Israel and the Arab states. It has encouraged the expansion of cooperation between these regional actors. That cooperation is the key to diminishing Iranian power in the region; defeating Sunni jihadists from the Muslim Brotherhood and its spinoffs; and to improving the lives and prospects for peace of Palestinians, Israelis and all the nations of the region.
Tillerson opposed all of these actions. Like the foreign policy establishment he represented, Tillerson refused to abandon the false belief that nothing can be done without PLO approval. By removing him from office, President Trump took yet another step towards advancing prospects for peace in the Middle East.
1a)RUTHFULLY YOURS
1a)RUTHFULLY YOURS
THE RIGHT NEWS, FRONT AND CENTER
· If and when Hamas is ever removed from power in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) will most likely seize control of the coastal enclave, where nearly two million Palestinians live.
· PIJ’s new “political document” exposes the Palestinian terror group’s plan for “real peace” in the Middle East. This “real peace,” according to the jihadi group, can be achieved by eliminating Israel after “liberating Palestine, from the river to the sea, and after the original owners of the land return to their homes.”
· This genocidal “peace” plan appears to be shared by other Palestinian terror groups, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and even certain parts of Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) group is the second-largest terror group in the Gaza Strip after Hamas. Like Hamas, PIJ does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and believes that violence and terrorism are the only way to “liberate all Palestine, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.”
Like Hamas, in the past three decades PIJ has carried out thousands of terror attacks against Israel, including suicide bombings.
Recently, the PIJ wished to remind us again of its dangerous and poisonous ideology. This reminder came in the form of a new “political document” published by the Iranian-backed terror group in the Gaza Strip.
The document contains important information about the group’s strategy to destroy Israel and provides insight into the role Islam plays in the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Some may argue that there is nothing new in the PIJ document. However, PIJ is not just another Palestinian “resistance” faction, as some Middle East experts tend to describe it. Rather, it is one of the most dangerous Palestinian terror groups. It aspires to eliminate Israel and kill as many Jews as possible.
If and when Hamas is ever removed from power in the Gaza Strip, PIJ will most likely seize control of the coastal enclave, where nearly two million Palestinians live.
Western journalists often ignore the power and threat of PIJ, mainly because the representatives of the terror group rarely give interviews to the foreign media.
Besides, it is easier for Western journalists to take the short trip from Jerusalem to Ramallah to interview a Palestinian Authority official, who uses his or her fluent English to lie about the Palestinians’ desire for peace and coexistence with Israel.
Western journalists rarely, if ever, present to their readers and viewers what the terrorists preach to their own people.
That is precisely why there is a need to bring the main points of the PIJ document to the attention of the international media and decision-makers around the world. The PIJ is a major player in the Palestinian arena, and its political and military power can be ignored only at great peril.
Here is what the preface to the terror group’s document states:
“Palestine is the homeland of the Palestinian people, from the early days of history. Palestine is an integral part of the Arab and Islamic homeland, and it was usurped by the Zionist Jews with the support and encouragement of Western colonialist powers.”
Explaining the timing of the publication of its document, PIJ said:
“To maintain a clear vision and the unity of our goals, away from intellectual chaos dominating the Palestinian landscape, Palestinian Islamic Jihad saw the need to formulate this document to explain and affirm the intellectual basis and features governing its jihad and policies.”
Translation: the PIJ fears that it has fallen off the world’s radar. It worries that its ideology and plans to destroy Israel may be lost amid the “intellectual chaos” plaguing the Palestinian arena.
Defining its ultimate mission, PIJ says in its new document:
“Our number-one priority and main task is to carry out the duty of jihad and resistance to liberate Palestine. We are an Islamic national liberation movement and part of the Palestinian people’s and Muslim’s jihad against invaders and colonialists. We see ourselves as being part of the general Islamic trend in the world, which regards Islam as the source of our power and pride.”
Which “Islamic trend” the Palestinian terror group is talking about is not clear. Does it referring to the Islamic State terror group, ISIS, which has slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent civilians, mostly Muslims, in the past few years? Or perhaps the PIJ is referring to Al Qaeda, the murderous terror group founded by Osama bin Laden?
What is certain, however, is that PIJ is not referring to the Muslim Brotherhood organization. Why? Because PIJ believes that Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology and policies are too “moderate” compared with its genocidal agenda. Ironically, the PIJ views the Muslim Brotherhood as being too “pragmatic,” largely because of the latter’s failure to engage in a worldwide jihad against Jews and all infidels.
The PIJ document, which the Western media is doing a fine job ignoring, states:
“Palestine is an Arab, Islamic land, where the Arabs and Muslims possess natural religious and historic rights. It is forbidden to give it up or compromise it under any pretext.”
The Jews, the document emphasizes, “have no right in the land of Palestine.” It says that the fact that some Arabs and Muslims have recognized Israel does not give the Jews any right to the land.
“The Palestinian people’s right to all their lands and homeland, Palestine, is a comprehensive right that can’t be fragmented. This includes our right to own the land, our right to resist and liberate it, and our right to return to it and live in it. No one is entitled to give up the right of the Palestinians to return to their homeland. This is a non-negotiable issue.”
The PIJ document views Israel as a Zionist colonialist project imposed on Arabs and Muslims by Western powers. Revealingly, these are the same words that Israel’s secular peace partner and the darling of the West, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, recently used in a speech he delivered in Ramallah, during a conference of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Council:
“The Europeans wanted to bring the Jews here to preserve their interests in the region. They asked Holland, which has the world’s largest fleet, to move the Jews. Israel is a colonial project that has nothing to do with the Jews.”
Abbas and PIJ also share more of the same views. In its document, the Palestinian terror group states:
“The Zionist entity is a functional colonialist entity and a tool of the [Western] project to seize control and dominance over Palestine. The source of this entity’s power lies with Western parties, especially the US.”
The PIJ document defines the conflict with Israel as an “existential conflict, and not a border conflict.” The Palestinian cause, it says,
“is not about the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967, or parts of them. Rather, it is the issue of the occupation of the entire land of Palestine, from the river to the sea. It is the central cause of all Arabs and Muslims, and not the Palestinians alone.”
In its document, PIJ outlines its plan to achieve its goal through “jihad and resistance against the Zionist enemy, with all means and methods, first and foremost the armed struggle.” The armed struggle, it adds, is the “main method and strategy in our struggle.”
For those who do not know, “armed struggle” is the euphemism for all forms terrorism, including rocket attacks and suicide bombings. The “armed struggle” also means that a Palestinian terrorist can storm the home of a Jewish family and murder women and children as they prepare dinner.
The PIJ document, which has been distributed among the group’s followers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, also praises suicide bombings against Israel by describing them as the “most noble acts of self-defense.”
The document also warns Arabs and Muslims against recognizing Israel’s right to exist or establishing any ties with it. “We reject all forms of normalization with the Israeli enemy by any Arab or Muslim,” it stresses.
Finally, the document exposes the Palestinian terror group’s plan for “real peace” in the Middle East. This “real peace,” according to the jihadi group, can be achieved by eliminating Israel after “liberating Palestine, from the river to the sea, and after the original owners of the land return to their homes.”
This genocidal “peace” plan appears to be shared by other Palestinian terror groups, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and even certain parts of Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction.
The peace they seek is one that would result in the total destruction of Israel and the expulsion of all Jews from the Middle East. As the remarks of Abbas and PIJ show, Palestinians see Israel only as an alien body that was imposed upon Arabs and Muslims by imperialist Westerners, and not as people who have lived on that land for more than 3,000 years.
The PIJ document, which serves as the group’s “national charter,” is a valuable text. Every word in the document reflects the true sentiments on the Arab and Islamic street, especially with regards to recognizing Jews’ rights and history.
This is a document that is currently being taught in Islamic Jihad training bases, and schools and mosques. It is a document that will help raise another generation of Palestinians on the glorification of terrorism and anti-Semitism.
This is a document that deserves to be placed on the desks of all those Westerners who continue to tell us that peace is possible and that Israel just needs to make more concessions to achieve that goal.
Bassam Tawil is a Muslim based in the Middle East.
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2) Democrats Announce All 2020 Candidates Will Forego Armed Security To Protest
Gun Violence
2) Democrats Announce All 2020 Candidates Will Forego Armed Security To Protest
Gun Violence
U.S.-Democratic National Committee spokesperson Michael Tyler announced
Thursday that all candidates who run in the 2020 presidential election as
Democrats will completely forego armed security for the entirety of their
campaigns, in a clear and bold stance against gun violence in America.
"We've talked to all possible candidates and everyone has agreed. Gun
violence is a huge issue in our country, and guns are the problem. So
whoever runs for president as a Democrat in 2020-be it Bernie, Biden,
Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Jerry Brown, and/or whoever else throws
their hat in the ring-they will steadfastly refuse to employ security teams
who carry scary firearms."
Tyler further confirmed that if a Democrat wins the White House in 2020,
their first order of business will be to disarm the Secret Service. Asked
how the president would then be kept safe, Tyler revealed that they plan on
introducing a gun-free zone encompassing a 500-yard radius around the
president at all times.
"Problem solved," he said.
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3)
3)
The Saudi-Israeli Connection
By Soeren Kern
In
a recent interview with Army Radio, Israeli Energy Minister Yuval
Steinitz revealed Israel has been holding covert talks with Saudi Arabia
amid mutual concerns over Iran’s ascendancy in the Middle East. It was
the first time a senior official from either country admitted to the
long-rumored secret contacts.
Israel and Saudi Arabia both view Iran, which has emerged stronger than ever from the power vacuums created by the wars in Iraq and Syria, as the greatest threat to the Middle East. Tehran is now close to achieving the strategic goal of establishing a so-called Shia Crescent—an arc of Iranian influence stretching from the Persian Gulf to Lebanon—in the heartland of the Sunni Arab world. Such an arc would not only challenge Saudi Arabia’s claim to leadership of the Islamic world, but it would also allow Iran to establish a military presence on Israel’s northern border.
With Iran and Saudi Arabia battling for supremacy, tensions between Riyadh and Jerusalem have eased. Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot recently said Israel was prepared to share “intelligence information” with Saudi Arabia, saying their countries share a common interest in confronting Iran.
Israeli official Yisrael Katz has called for the creation of an Arab-Israeli economic bloc as the basis for an “anti-Iran axis.” Widely viewed as a contender to succeed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Katz said the bloc should be anchored by a rail and port network—dubbed as the “Orient Express”—that would pull the region together through trade.
“Iran is the big enemy,” he told the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail. “It’s very clear we [Israel and Saudi Arabia] are practically on the same side. All Sunni countries are against Iran. They see Israel as the only power that can stand against Iran in the region.”
Katz has invited Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Israel. He has also discussed the Saudi peace and economic development plan with Jason Greenblatt, U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s adviser on the Middle East. “I had seven meetings with Jason Greenblatt about these things in Washington about this initiative, about the railway,” Katz said.
Saudi Arabia insists that any rapprochement with Israel hinges on a peace deal with the Palestinians. However, Netanyahu’s former national security advisor, Yaacov Nagel, said Riyadh was so keen to begin open cooperation with Israel that it “doesn’t care” what kind of deal is reached with the Palestinians. According to Nagel, the current Saudi leadership is looking for any type of Israeli-Palestinian peace deal to give it political cover for normalizing relations with Israel.
Saudi Arabia and other Arab states have a shared strategic interest in improving relations with Israel, according to Kobi Michael, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. “Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf states, excluding Qatar, have two strategic threats: Iran and the Salafi or radical Islamic terrorism,” he said. “Unfortunately, the U.S. left a vacuum in the region which was filled by the Russians in Syria and by the Iranians and their proxies in other parts of the Middle East. Israel is perceived as the most reliable potential ally. Therefore, the Saudis understand pretty well that it is a good time to be good friends with Israel.”
This paradigm shift in Middle Eastern politics is reflected in the Trump administration’s new national security strategy. The document asserts, “For generations the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been understood as the prime irritant preventing peace and prosperity in the region. Today, the threats from radical jihadist terrorist organizations and the threat from Iran are creating the realization that Israel is not the cause of the region’s problems. States have increasingly found common interests with Israel in confronting common threats.”
Soeren Kern is a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a nonpartisan foreign policy think tank based in New York City.
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Israel and Saudi Arabia both view Iran, which has emerged stronger than ever from the power vacuums created by the wars in Iraq and Syria, as the greatest threat to the Middle East. Tehran is now close to achieving the strategic goal of establishing a so-called Shia Crescent—an arc of Iranian influence stretching from the Persian Gulf to Lebanon—in the heartland of the Sunni Arab world. Such an arc would not only challenge Saudi Arabia’s claim to leadership of the Islamic world, but it would also allow Iran to establish a military presence on Israel’s northern border.
With Iran and Saudi Arabia battling for supremacy, tensions between Riyadh and Jerusalem have eased. Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot recently said Israel was prepared to share “intelligence information” with Saudi Arabia, saying their countries share a common interest in confronting Iran.
Israeli official Yisrael Katz has called for the creation of an Arab-Israeli economic bloc as the basis for an “anti-Iran axis.” Widely viewed as a contender to succeed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Katz said the bloc should be anchored by a rail and port network—dubbed as the “Orient Express”—that would pull the region together through trade.
“Iran is the big enemy,” he told the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail. “It’s very clear we [Israel and Saudi Arabia] are practically on the same side. All Sunni countries are against Iran. They see Israel as the only power that can stand against Iran in the region.”
Katz has invited Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Israel. He has also discussed the Saudi peace and economic development plan with Jason Greenblatt, U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s adviser on the Middle East. “I had seven meetings with Jason Greenblatt about these things in Washington about this initiative, about the railway,” Katz said.
Saudi Arabia insists that any rapprochement with Israel hinges on a peace deal with the Palestinians. However, Netanyahu’s former national security advisor, Yaacov Nagel, said Riyadh was so keen to begin open cooperation with Israel that it “doesn’t care” what kind of deal is reached with the Palestinians. According to Nagel, the current Saudi leadership is looking for any type of Israeli-Palestinian peace deal to give it political cover for normalizing relations with Israel.
Saudi Arabia and other Arab states have a shared strategic interest in improving relations with Israel, according to Kobi Michael, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. “Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf states, excluding Qatar, have two strategic threats: Iran and the Salafi or radical Islamic terrorism,” he said. “Unfortunately, the U.S. left a vacuum in the region which was filled by the Russians in Syria and by the Iranians and their proxies in other parts of the Middle East. Israel is perceived as the most reliable potential ally. Therefore, the Saudis understand pretty well that it is a good time to be good friends with Israel.”
This paradigm shift in Middle Eastern politics is reflected in the Trump administration’s new national security strategy. The document asserts, “For generations the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been understood as the prime irritant preventing peace and prosperity in the region. Today, the threats from radical jihadist terrorist organizations and the threat from Iran are creating the realization that Israel is not the cause of the region’s problems. States have increasingly found common interests with Israel in confronting common threats.”
Soeren Kern is a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a nonpartisan foreign policy think tank based in New York City.
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