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The US-Israeli Middle East Plan Is Short Sighted

As the war in Ukraine wages on, the global hegemony of the unipolar power, the United States, is being tested the world over. In the Middle East, clear shifts are occurring, yet fail to match reality and lack strategic depth in the long term.

Under the United State’s former Trump administration, a policy of normalizing ties between Arab regimes and Israel, was pursued. This process came as part of Washington’s ‘Deal of the Century’ proposal, geared towards dropping the notion of a “Two-State Solution” to the Palestine-Israel conflict. Under this new vision, not only would the Palestinians be subjects of an Israeli regime, which effectively controls semi-autonomous Palestinian Bantustan’s that would have their own capital outside the walls of East Jerusalem, but also the Arab world would submit to this idea as well.

The so-called roadmap to Donald Trump’s “peace plan” was to discard the Arab Peace Initiative and the Oslo Accords of 1993-5, which were supposed to lead to a two-State solution roughly based upon what are known as the 1967 lines. The Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, was a proposal put forth primarily by Saudi Arabia, which was adopted at the Arab Summit. It stipulated that if Israel could help to create a Palestinian State in the territories they occupied illegally in 1967, then the Arab countries would normalize ties and move to develop open diplomatic and trade relations with Tel Aviv.

Understanding the concept of the Arab Peace Initiative is very crucial to understanding why the current US plan for the Middle East is doomed to fail. Under this vision, which Washington seemed to have been on board with — to a certain extent — it would empower the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)/Palestinian Authority (PA), which was negotiating on behalf of the Palestinians for a State on roughly 20% of historic Palestine. With the Arab countries behind them, the PLO/PA had a real negotiating chip; if the Israelis were to allow for a Palestinian State to exist, they would reap the benefits of friendly relations region-wide.

Needless to say, the “peace talks” went nowhere. The replacement to this approach then came with the Trump administration, which adopted a policy of basically saying screw the Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese whose land has been illegally occupied by Israel. In 2020, after the failure of the United States to successfully pressure the Palestinians into accepting their newly assigned fate, came the “Abraham Accords“. The “Abraham Accords” saw the UAE and Bahrain open up close relations with Israel, later bringing on board Morocco and Sudan, both through pressure tactics.

The normalization deals are now progressing under the administration of US President Joe Biden, as it carries on the former administration’s policy, not pursuing its own independent strategy. This is despite the threats to its unipolar world order posed by Russia and China, which have emerged stronger from the current NATO-Moscow confrontation through the proxy of Ukraine.

The United States is currently seeking to form closer relations, not just between Israel and those Arab regimes that recently normalized, but also Jordan and Egypt, which signed peace treaties with Israel in the past. The Kingdom of Jordan appears publicly to be deviating from the current plan for the region, but still cooperates heavily with all involved when need be.

The Negev Summit in late March, which went on for two days, brought US, Egyptian, Israeli, Emirati, Moroccan, and Bahraini officials together to discuss their plans for the region. Recently, Morocco, Egypt, Bahrain, and the UAE have all signed deals with Israel to deepen cooperation economically and militarily. This current predicament robs Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinian people of their biggest negotiating card for creating a lasting peace settlement.

For the Israelis and Americans, this vision may seem to be a perfect one, but there are a few considerations that they seem not to have made. The first being that if you are a Palestinian, Syrian, or Lebanese leader, what option other than a military one do you truly have at this point? For Syria, it is a pipe dream to believe that it would simply normalize with Israel, giving up the Golan Heights that the US continues to recognize as the property of Tel Aviv. Lebanon could never normalize ties without a just solution for the Palestinians and the return of the Shebaa Farms — Hezbollah is there to ensure this. As for the Palestinians, as much as the Palestinian Authority (PA) serves as a force loyal to Israel, they could never get away with even entertaining the Trump vision.

Nowhere is the phrase “over my dead body” more applicable than to the issue of Palestine. The Palestinian people will never bow down if their rights are not recognized and will go through tremendous suffering in order to guarantee that justice is served and that freedom will come to their future generations.

The Palestinian cause is still the cause of the Arabs, although it may not be as strong as it once was and is certainly dead among the Arab Regime’s leaderships. Solving this issue is the key to the entire region. Without a just solution, chaos will inevitably bring Israel to its knees and with it the Arab regimes will scramble to rescue any of their remaining legitimacy amongst their peoples.

Additionally, the US government is trying to form a Middle East NATO-type alliance, primarily geared towards confronting Iran and all its allies in the region. This is not only leading towards further conflict but is completely missing the vital role that Tehran plays in the Persian Gulf. Iran cannot be ignored, and attempts to bring it down would only drag the entire region down with it. The Islamic Republic has already proven its worth to the UAE, which was forced, back in January, to accept that the only power to protect its security interests is Tehran.

Then we have the reactions of the Arab Regimes to the growing power of China. If the US is weak, what will this relationship with its Middle Eastern NATO truly look like? Washington’s attempts to force the Gulf nations to produce enough crude oil to lower fuel prices has not even paid off. Will the Middle Eastern regimes favor Washington or in their true Machiavellian ways play ball with the power that is the most viable? A policy of military confrontation, which the US is adopting in the Middle East, is headed for the gutter. This is especially the case if it cannot revive the Iran Nuclear Deal. It is not an intelligent plan to be angering all your enemies at once.

Robert Inlakesh
Robert Inlakesh
Robert Inlakesh is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, writer, Middle-East analyst & news correspondent for The Last American Vagabond.
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