To be in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s shoes this week is not a position to envy.
On the one hand, he needs to assure the future security of the State of Israel. He seeks to buttress an already pro-Israel administration that, in US President Donald Trump’s previous term of office, proved itself understanding and supportive, in word and deed. He must cover multiple issues, each one with subsidiary concerns. He must also assure a mutual alignment of purpose and policy achievement.
The reports are that Trump seeks to pressure Netanyahu to continue with stage two of the Israel-Hamas deal, despite the dangers. In fact, the negotiations on the second stage of the hostage deal began Monday at the meeting in Washington between Netanyahu and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, on the 16th day of the agreement, and will resume in the context of Tuesday’s encounter between the prime minister and the president. Meanwhile, Netanyahu must also be prepared to outline what a stage three should look like and how better to get there.
As bothersome as it can be, he will be discussing a century-long conflict that has been complex and complicated, the elements of its making difficult and frustrating to grasp. In the summer of 1977, Menachem Begin and Shmuel Katz experienced presidential short temper with Jimmy Carter, if not his exasperation, and Netanyahu himself did so with Barack Obama. Will he be meeting an impatient president with little concern for details, one who presumes he has already solved all the existing problems as well as those that could develop?
One unknown factor is whether Trump is more interested in the short-term possibilities and focusing more on Saudi Arabia than on Israel, or truly recognizes the intrinsic essence of the Islamist ideology that drives the anti-Israel agenda of most of the Middle East and beyond. There could also be a commercial stake involved, if we take into consideration Qatar’s role.
Necessarily, we can only factor into the possibilities what we do know. And what we know is that the first Trump administration was considerably favorable to Israel. We also know that significant and prominent appointments to critical government positions, including some of the most senior, are close friends and admirers of Israel. Moreover, we know that Trump depends in no small measure on the camp of Christian pro-Israel friends.
On this basis, Netanyahu must seek to present to Trump a picture of what could go wrong if the policies the US president is contemplating go awry. He must outline for him that, unfortunately, more has gone wrong with American plans and initiatives than have succeeded. In the overwhelming cases, it has been the behavior of the Arabs in Gaza and in Judea and Samaria that has brought about the collapse of well-meaning American diplomacy, not to mention ill-intended diplomacy.
Reframing and restating
IT NEEDS to be made clear to the president that Israel does not oppose a resolution of the so-called Palestinian-Israel conflict. What needs to be done is a concise restatement of what that conflict is.
Multiple times the Arabs residing in historic Palestine and then under Israel’s territorial administration have been offered a path to statehood.
In 1923, it was a Legislative Council, but they boycotted the elections. The Arabs continued their policy of rejection, and the 1937 Peel Commission partition as well as the United Nations 1947 partition plan were additional opportunities lost to them. After 1967, despite UN Security Council resolution 242 not even mentioning the term “Palestinians,” they continued refusals of diplomatic arrangements. There was the Allon Plan, Moshe Dayan’s policy, Menachem Begin’s autonomy proposal, and more.
The PLO signed on to the Oslo Accords with no intention of fulfilling their terms but, rather, using it as a springboard for its continued terrorism. In 1996, prior to Netanyahu being elected, there were four massive suicide bombings in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem early in the year, which killed 65 civilians. The overall number of anti-Israeli terrorist attacks were 14 in 1996. Netanyahu was not the cause of the breakdown of Oslo; rather, it was, and always was and will be, the pattern of the “cause of Palestine.”
If Trump seeks to be the one to bring peace, he needs not only to know the history of the conflict but to realize that peace can only be achieved if Israel is finally permitted to gain a victory on the battlefield. He must hear, in David Weinberg’s formulation, the “basic restatement of the Jewish people’s profound historic and national rights in Israel and Jerusalem.”
Moreover, that battlefield victory must be followed by an admission from the Arab side. A century ago, Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote in his famous “Iron Wall” essay that “it is quite another question whether it is always possible to realize a peaceful aim by peaceful means. For the answer to this question does not depend on our attitude to the Arabs, but entirely on the attitude of the Arabs to us and to Zionism.” President Trump should be aware of that historical truth and press, finally, the other side to yield.
The admission required must be done by a leadership that openly declares that for the past 100 years the Arabs fought Israel, have not recognized Zionism, have not recognized the Jewish state, and have not sought to make peace with Israel. That was a wrong policy. They must reset their national goals to best serve their own people.
Perhaps at this time, with Trump’s initiative to relocate Gazans, even if temporarily, looming, Israel’s enemy will come to realize there is, this time, a real new Middle East.
The writer is a researcher, analyst, and commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.