A Chill between Israel and the U.S.?

On Monday, a photograph circulated of Naftali Bennett, Joe Biden, and Boris Johnson talking cordially at the climate-change summit in Glasgow—reportedly about their respective political situations. Bennett in fact arranged tête-à-têtes in Scotland not only with Johnson, but also with the leaders of France, Italy, India, Australia, Bahrain, and Honduras. But he had no such meeting with President Biden. While there could be any number of explanations for that, Benny Avni wonders if it reflects festering disagreements between the U.S. and Israel:

Despite Jerusalem’s praise of Mr. Biden’s friendship with the Jewish state, . . . a chill in relations with Washington is clearly in the air this fall. Secretary of State Antony Blinken . . . last week had a “tense” phone call with Israel’s defense minister, Benny Gantz, calling his approval of 2,800 new housing units inside existing Jewish settlements “unacceptable.” The content of the call was immediately leaked to Israeli and American reporters.

Washington had earlier frowned upon Mr. Gantz’s designation as terrorist six Palestinian Arab organizations affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Washington has long recognized the PFLP as a terrorist organization. Yet it insists the six groups are part of Palestinian “civil society” even as evidence of symbiotic ties between them and the terror organization is abundant.

Then there’s the push by the Biden administration to reopen an American consulate in Jerusalem to serve Palestinian Arabs. . . . Most ominously, Bidenites seem giddy for a return to the nuclear deal with Iran. Trying to smooth over disagreements, Biden and Bennett came up with a diplomatic formula most recently repeated by Blinken on the Sunday news shows. The formula reckons that everyone prefers diplomacy while vowing to prepare an unspecified “plan B” if talks collapse. Meantime, fuzzy diplomatic language rarely succeeds in hiding disagreements.

Read more at New York Sun

More about: Joseph Biden, Naftali Bennett, US-Israel relations

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy