Short thread:
Interesting. Netanyahu's confidence and bluster in stiff-arming any two-state solution to the Palestinian question was predicated on Israel's emergence as the first "Jewish-Sunni" state -- a backchannel alliance with the Saudis and Egypt against Iran...
Interesting. Netanyahu's confidence and bluster in stiff-arming any two-state solution to the Palestinian question was predicated on Israel's emergence as the first "Jewish-Sunni" state -- a backchannel alliance with the Saudis and Egypt against Iran...
https://twitter.com/Slate/status/1390350415234052096
...in which SA, Egypt and the Gulf States were willing to de-emphasize the Palestinian cause while Israel delivered for them as a bulwark against Iran. With the Sunni flank secured, Netanyahu could bluster and middle-finger and settlement-build as if he was playing...
...the long game. But that requires a few things to continue: 1) The Shia-Sunni divide isn't ever pacfied or bridged. 2) The U.S. continues to go all-in on combatively engaging Iran and giving the Saudis no reason to stand down or compromise with Iran. And 3)...
a U.S. administration has to be wholly and permanently committed to maintaining and even exacerbating the Israel/Sunni-Shia divide. The last administration was quite committed and Netanyahu rolled the dice with Trump and right-wing extremism. He shit on the Democrats...
...and more importantly, on fundamental democratic principles and the very premise that the Israeli-American alliance -- and even ties to many center or left-leaning American Jews -- has to exist as a bedrock of Israeli foreign policy...
...And now, perhaps, with America less willing to play this forever-cold-war between Iran and its Sunni rivals, a window is opening up that has nothing to do with Israel or the United States. And the additional cost, of course, will come in the damage to Israel's...
...relations not only with any administration to the left of a Donald Trump, but in the distancing of many younger American Jews who held the Trump misrule and those who supported it -- for whatever reason -- in utter disdain.
The bottom line is the underlying premise for Netanyahu's arrogance and low regard for any peace process may be eroding, and, perhaps, Israel's longest serving prime minister might, in the end, have been playing a short, foolish and destructive game all along.
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