How to Make Israel’s Improving Relations with the Arab World Last

In brokering the Abraham Accords—which were joined by Sudan on Wednesday—as well as the normalization agreement between Israel and Morocco, the U.S. offered various rewards to the Arab parties. The presence of such inducements does not make these dramatic diplomatic breakthroughs less cause for celebration. But it does make them inherently brittle, writes Michael Koplow, and it is thus important for both Jerusalem and Washington to seek ways to strengthen them:

Agreements to recognize Israel that are contingent upon unrelated policy moves from a third actor are inherently fleeting and subject to being rolled back. . . . Given the whiplash in foreign policy that took place when Donald Trump replaced President Barack Obama and that is now expected to happen again with the shift to President Biden, American commitments in particular are in doubt in ways that were previously unthinkable. Any normalization agreements that depend on continuity in U.S. foreign policy in order to guarantee them may be fleeting.

Open questions remain about how normalization with the UAE might be impacted if the arms package gets delayed or altered in the future, or how normalization with Morocco will proceed if a future administration withdraws recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. Relations that are built on self-interest can be lasting, but only if that interest is squarely in the relationship itself rather than on tangential issues.

The Biden administration should pursue the continuation of this process. Normalization between Israel and its former foes not only benefits Israel but benefits American interests and regional stability as well, and puts to rest an ugly boycott that delegitimizes Israel’s fundamental right to self-determined sovereignty. The challenge for Joe Biden and his team will be to help broker agreements between Israel and its regional neighbors that rest on their own strength.

Read more at Israel Policy Forum

More about: Abraham Accords, Israel diplomacy, Morocco, U.S. Foreign policy

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society