Saudi Arabia and Israel's Growing Alliance, a
Match Made in Hell
The Iran nuclear deal is redrawing political lines
in the Middle East.
By Alli McCracken, Raed Jarrar
May 05, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Alternet"
-For
decades, Saudi Arabia has been a stalwart advocate
of Palestinian statehood rights and a voracious
critic of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank
and Gaza. Saudi Arabia’s commitment to Palestine has
defined the geopolitical contours of the Middle East
for decades. But now that the Iran nuclear deal has
been struck and as the war in Syria ravages on,
those political lines are being redrawn, bringing
together unexpected bedfellows: Saudi Arabia and
Israel.
Marketed as
a “pathbreaking public dialogue between senior
national security leaders from two old
adversaries,” May 5, 2016 will feature a high-profile
meeting in Washington DC between officials from
Saudi Arabia and Israel. Prince Turki bin Faisal,
Saudi Arabia's former intelligence chief and
one-time ambassador to Washington, and retired
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Major General Yaakov
Amidror, former national security advisor to Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will be speaking
together at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, a pro-Israel organization funded by AIPAC
donors, staffed by AIPAC employees, and located down
the hall from AIPAC Headquarters.
Saudi
Arabia has never engaged in diplomatic relations
with Israel since the Nakba in 1948, and at one
point even led efforts to boycott of the state of
Israel. And although this is not the first meeting
of its kind (Saudi Arabia and Israel had a former
official speak at a Council on Foreign Relations
panel last
year), it is definitely the highest profile
meeting and it is taking place.
While
having like-minded human rights abusers such as
Saudi Arabia and Israel mingle and meet publicly
might come as no surprise to most of us, this event
is still bad news: it signals a new era of
normalization by the official sponsor of the Arab
Peace Initiative.
The Arab
Peace initiative, also known as the "Saudi
Initiative", is a 10-sentence proposal for an end to
the Arab–Israeli conflict. It was endorsed by the
Arab League in 2002 and re-endorsed at the 2007, and
it is supported by all Palestinian factions,
including Hamas. The initiative calls for
normalizing relations between the Arab world and
Israel in exchange for a complete withdrawal by
Israel from the occupied territories (including East
Jerusalem). Until now, it has been the most viable
blueprint for a two-state solution. The deal also
addressed the issue of Palestinian refugees and
called for a "just settlement" based on UN
Resolution 194.
So, at this
political moment when Netanyahu is not showing any
willingness to withdraw from the Occupied
Palestinian Territory and some of his ministers are
calling for the official annexation of the West
Bank, Saudi Arabia seems to be giving up on its
historic commitments. By normalizing relations with
Israel without demanding a just solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Saudi Arabia is
diminishing its leverage in negotiating a two-state
solution.
In a way,
this meeting marks the official demise of the Arab
Peace Initiative, but more importantly, as the last
standing mechanism for a regionally negotiated
resolution, it is yet another indicator that a
two-state solution is officially dead.
Alli
McCracken is co-director of the peace group CODEPINK based
in Washington DC.
Raed Jarrar is an Arab-American political
advocate based in Washington DC.
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