T. Belman. And we are supposed to welcome US sponsored normalization talks. No thanks, Israel is better off without the US involvement.
by Tony Badran, TABLET, Sept 6, 2023
Upon returning to power, the Biden administration underscored its plan to reopen the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem. It also quickly tipped its hand on its intention to reaffirm Obama’s position on the Golan. In February 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken telegraphed the administration’s rejection of Trump’s decision, as well as their plan to rescind it during their tenure. The administration continued to speak of Israel’s “control” (as opposed to “sovereignty”) over the Golan as a “practical” matter. The issue of “legality,” however, was “something else” that the administration was “still working on,” as U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield put it in June 2021.And work on it they did. This past June, the administration took measures to reaffirm Obama’s UNSCR 2334 legacy, issuing new guidance to government agencies ending scientific and technological cooperation with Israel “in geographic areas which came under the administration of Israel after 1967.”
Then Team Obama-Biden received an assist from a party that shared the same objective: Hezbollah. A few months ago, Hezbollah set up an outpost in the Mount Dov region of Israel, in the area of the Golan that the Lebanese refer to as the Shebaa Farms. Hezbollah orchestrated a full-blown campaign around this calculated move, which pro-Hezbollah media framed as a response to Israel capitalizing on Trump’s recognition of its sovereignty over the Golan. The purpose of the campaign, Hezbollah’s leader made clear, was to force the reopening of the border file, from the coast to the Shebaa Farms.
The Biden administration had teamed up with Hezbollah in 2022, when it forced Israel to concede to the terror group’s demands and seal a maritime-border delineation agreement with Lebanon. It now saw another opportunity to push an intersecting agenda using the Lebanese backdoor.
The vehicle, once again at the Security Council, was UNSC Resolution 2695, renewing the mandate of the U.N. interim force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). First, the administration camouflaged its play by sanctioning a Hezbollah environmental front group, Green Without Borders, which has set up observation positions along the Blue Line and has used its activities to obstruct Israeli cameras and visibility along the border fence.
The administration also put on a big show about upholding a provision in the resolution allowing UNIFIL to conduct patrols independently, without coordination with or prior authorization from the Lebanese authorities—practically meaningless language, evidenced, if nothing else, from UNIFIL’s typically terrible record over the past year, even though the previous resolution renewing its mandate explicitly authorized it to conduct unannounced patrols independently.
The fuss over UNIFIL’s independence of movement was a successful feint. While the Israeli press hailed it as a victory for Israeli diplomacy, no one—not even Israel’s befuddled Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who came to New York and demanded that the resolution retain UNIFIL’s freedom of movement—noticed the language in the resolution pertaining to the Golan Heights, which the Biden administration had signed off on.
In that resolution, the U.S. government agreed for the first time to the introduction of language in the UNSCR referring to “the occupied Shab’a Farms.” Since the U.S. does not consider the farms to be Lebanese, but rather a part of the Golan Heights, the Biden administration had effectively reversed the official American position recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, without having to make an official policy announcement—just like Obama did with UNSCR 2334.
In tandem with the Golan move, the Biden team is pressing ahead with its play in Jerusalem. As noted earlier, the administration has been working to reopen the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, which Trump shut down, and has specifically expressed its desire to have it in East Jerusalem. The day before the UNIFIL resolution passed, anonymous U.S. officials told Team Obama-Biden’s preferred Israeli stenographer, Barak Ravid, that reopening the U.S. Consulate was a Palestinian request that had been passed on to the Saudis as part of a purported “mega-deal” between the kingdom and the U.S., which would involve Saudi “normalization” with Israel.
A week before that, U.S. officials had put out through their Israeli mouthpiece that if the Netanyahu government wants an agreement with Saudi Arabia, it will have to make concessions to the Palestinians. That is, the Biden administration had inserted its agenda on the 1967 lines and Jerusalem into the Saudi-Israeli process, and presented it as a Saudi ask that was necessary to provide “legitimacy”—through Palestinian buy-in—to any prospective agreement with Israel. You want your “historic” deal, Bibi? Sign here.
Only, an Israeli-Saudi peace agreement does not appear to be on the horizon—or at least not on terms that any Israeli government has ever been likely to agree to. Even if it were to miraculously materialize, the purported Saudi “normalization agreement” appears to be a political device not only to put the screws on the Israelis, but also to undo and invert the Trump framework, which explicitly eschewed the 1967 lines and removed the Palestinians from the heart of the equation. In its place, the administration is reaffirming the Obama framework of UNSCR 2334, and putting the Palestinians back at the center of U.S. regional policy.
That this reaffirmation is happening alongside the administration’s secret “understandings” with Iran—which appear to have substituted for the pretense of a formal agreement—is likewise only natural, in the context of the new bifurcation of U.S. Mideast policy between historical commitments to allies and our actual policies, which seek to replace those allies with Iran and its allies in the rejectionist front, like Hezbollah and the Palestinians. After all, UNSCR 2231 (locking in the Iran deal) and UNSCR 2334 (endorsing the rejectionist Arab position) were twin initiatives. Using the Palestinians as an instrument to sabotage any movement toward peace with Israel is a historically established practice of radical regimes in the region. Now, Team Obama-Biden has claimed the mantle of rejectionist leadership by delegitimizing Israel’s borders and submarining the country’s attempts to draw closer to the Gulf.
Tony Badran is Tablet magazine’s Levant analyst and a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He tweets @AcrossTheBay.
Liberal Jews in Chicago pushed Obama into the political world. In Particular, the Pritzker family, apparently funded the initial campaign of “the son of a “B” BHO”!
What a disaster!
Anything to the right of the Left is considered EXTREME!
Israel must take a brief time-out and reconsider all its options. It is currently holding the weak position of dependence on an unwilling US regime which is doing its utmost to sabotage its declared only ally in the region. In order to continue in this subservient relationship, Israel has already given up some of its resources to its enemy, Hezballah. That was a very stupid mistake and Israel will be called a sore loser if it were to retaliate to any Hezballah action by attacking any kind of attempt to make good on the non-green resources under the Mediterranean.
While Hezballah is not considered a very potent enemy, more along the lines of a wasp in your car, Iran is a very different proposal. With their striving to build their own nuclear arsenal and their declared intention to destroy the big and the small satans, they must be taken seriously. The current US administration is doing all it can to appease the crocodile (Iran) in the hopes the it will be devoured last. Not only is this unbecoming of the USA, it reinforces Israel’s urgent need to take stock of the situation. The USA will willingly disown Israel to further support the Obama policies of encouraging the Arabs, Iranians and Turks to do the same, namely, play Israel for the fools they showed themselves to be in the previous government. Think of the Oslo Accords.
Since there is no other friend in the world, Russia and China cannot be taken seriously in this regard and the EU sabotage Israel at every opportunity, the only path left is to trust the Eternal. The ongoing protests against the judicial reform show this quite well. They are financed by the same people who want to see the demise of Israel by any and all means. The religious leaning character of the current center right government only pours oil on the fire (Isn’t it cute that they are classified as extreme right where the previous government was described as balanced while they were extreme left?).