While vacationing in Nantucket last week, Joe Biden was photographed walking out of a bookstore holding The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017. This book is the work of the retired academic and former PLO spokesman (a position he held long before the group made a pretense of forsaking terrorism) Rashid Khalidi, one of the deans of anti-Israel pseudo-scholarship. Jonathan Schanzer describes meeting Khalidi in February 2001, while searching for a dissertation adviser:

Khalidi asked me what I wanted to study. I told him that I wanted to conduct comparative research on the ideologies of violent Islamist movements in the Middle East. That sounds like something Zionist think tanks study, Khalidi told me.

I flinched. But I didn’t back down. I told him that al-Qaeda, Hamas, the Taliban, and other groups had been terrorizing the region in recent years. The news was filled with stories about their attacks. But few academics had taken the time, at least back then, to understand their motivations. Khalidi responded negatively. He told me that these news reports were wildly exaggerated. He said that this was the way newspapers sold advertising.

So, I asked him: What would you have me study? He looked at me for a moment. The room was eerily quiet. “Palestinian poetry,” he said.

In a momentous meeting with the Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa in Riyadh, President Trump announced that he is lifting sanctions on the beleaguered and war-torn country. On the one hand, Sharaa is an alumnus of Islamic State and al-Qaeda, who came to power as commander of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which itself began life as al-Qaeda’s Syrian offshoot; he also seems to enjoy the support of Qatar. On the other hand, he overthrew the Assad regime—a feat made possible by the battering Israel delivered to Hizballah—greatly improving Jerusalem’s strategic position, and ending one of the world’s most atrocious and brutal tyrannies. President Trump also announced that he hopes Syria will join the Abraham Accords.

This analysis by Eran Lerman was published a few days ago, and in some respects is already out of date, but more than anything else I’ve read it helps to make sense of Israel’s strategic position vis-à-vis Syria.

Israel’s primary security interest lies in defending against worst-case scenarios, particularly the potential collapse of the Syrian state or its transformation into an actively hostile force backed by a significant Turkish presence (considering that the Turkish military is the second largest in NATO) with all that this would imply. Hence the need to bolster the new buffer zone—not for territorial gain, but as a vital shield and guarantee against dangerous developments. Continued airstrikes aimed at diminishing the residual components of strategic military capabilities inherited from the Assad regime are essential.

At the same time, there is a need to create conditions that would enable those in Damascus who wish to reject the reduction of their once-proud country into a Turkish satrapy. Sharaa’s efforts to establish his legitimacy, including his visit to Paris and outreach to the U.S., other European nations, and key Gulf countries, may generate positive leverage in this regard. Israel’s role is to demonstrate through daily actions the severe costs of acceding to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions and accepting Turkish hegemony.

Israel should also assist those in Syria (and beyond: this may have an effect in Lebanon as well) who look to it as a strategic anchor in the region. The Druze in Syria—backed by their brethren in Israel—have openly expressed this expectation, breaking decades of loyalty to the central power in Damascus over their obligation to their kith and kin.