Will Bibi Make a Deal?
The current conventional wisdom on Netanyahu has led to some very public giddiness among people that should know better that, with Bibi weak, some sort of Middle East Grand Bargain is in the works.
This is probably not the end of Bibi Netanyahu. It never is. Netanyahu-watchers have been predicting such an event for years, often as wish-fulfilment, to no avail. The current conventional wisdom on Netanyahu has led to some very public giddiness among people who should know better that, with Bibi weak, some sort of Middle East Grand Bargain is in the works. But how weak is Bibi, really? Can he maneuver his way out of this latest and, admittedly, most grave political crisis? And where — most importantly — does this leave the Palestinian people?
Let’s go back a decade and a half, to another time Netanyahu was declared all but dead by the international chattering classes. As I wrote, in February 2007 (!): “Americans thought the Reversal of Fortune of George Bush 41, from 90-plus percent approval rating post First Persian Gulf War to electoral defeat in a 3-way dance was astonishing; that's nothing in Israeli politics. And a politician all but dead can be resurrected. Such, we believe, is the case with the impossibly ambitious Thumoeideutically charged Benjamin Netanyahu ..” But by August of that year, Netanyahu had reclaimed leadership of Likud and leadership of Israel. A decade and a half ago, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. I rest my case.
And in all this “Grand Bargain” talk, Palestinian demands have been shuttered off to the side. It should be noted, however, that Al Jazeera is doing a great job covering their concerns. The details that have emerged of this possible-alleged-ongoing international agreement normalizing relations between the two countries includes: designating Saudi Arabia a Major Non-NATO Ally (which Israel already is) and binding assurances of U.S. protection of Saudi Arabia if attacked by Iran. Israel would, of course, get “the Holy Grail” of normalized relations and greater regional security, always a major political concern in that region. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS) and even Joe Biden — for re-election purposes, to be sure — would all make out like bandits in such a scenario, if all the moving parts fall into place. “There are many complications that could derail the negotiations,” Fareed Zakaria explains in the WashPo. “But if a deal comes together, the Middle East’s strongest military and most technologically advanced power (Israel) will be allied to the region’s strongest economic power (Saudi Arabia) — which is still the swing supplier of the world’s oil — under a U.S. security architecture.”
Strong. Advanced. Powerful. These are all, it must be said, Fareed Zakaria-Washington overachiever adjectives. But what — human rights enthusiasts want to know — would the Palestinians get? The presumption here is that MBS will be looking out for the Palestinian people (possible; but good luck with that). Some Israeli restrictions removed, will be the likely result, but no two-state solution, which is the Palestinian “Holy Grail” in these negotiations. In other words — the bitter taste of ash is what the Palestinian people will get, as in the case of the Abraham Accords, but with a Democratic President as co-signer.
Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor, however, advises caution. The administration is underplaying the end product in the lead-up. We hear talk of a “step-by-step” process — particularly with regards to Palestinian rights, considering the whack jobs in Netanyahu’s governing coalition and how they will respond. Peter Beinart disagrees with the premise of negotiating such a big thing with MBS and Bibi. Whatever happened to democracies versus the growing global authoritarian wave? he asks. From The Beinart Notebook:
I think that the much greater threat to stability comes from within both countries because both countries are deeply repressive, and both countries also undermine the stability of other countries. And so, what I think Sullivan’s argument misses completely is the way in which helping Israel and Saudi Arabia entrench both of their repressive political systems doesn’t actually create stability, but actually is likely a recipe for long-term instability. The irony is that there was a time when an American president made exactly these kinds of arguments. This was George W. Bush. One of the things that George W. Bush said after 9/11 was that a deep American support for highly repressive governments was in fact the source of the instability that we saw expressed on September 11th because people hated the United States for subsidizing and bankrolling their deeply oppressive governments. Now, that argument that Bush made got wrapped up with his disastrous American military interventions and policies of torture and all these other things. But that basic idea, which was that when America supported highly repressive governments, it wasn’t producing stability, but it was actually producing instability, because these governments were basically sitting on a powder keg of their own discontented citizens who then took their discontent out in part on the United States.
I think there was something to that insight.
Beinart, of course, has a point. The narrative that Jake Sullivan is pursuing here definitely places Saudi Arabia and Israel — neither of which have behaved like paragons of the rules-based international order, of late — firmly outside of the China-Russia paradigm that the administration has been pushing. But, the argument goes, this is the Middle East. The Middle East is like the negative zone in the MCU, it is not governed by the normal standards of nation-states. All the matter there is negatively charged! Then comes the conversation of slow-burn diplomacy and a “step-by-step” process of securing Saudi Arabian normalization and Israeli security before — eventual — talks of a Two-State solution.
But can the Biden administration make hard steps to open up an eventual path to a two-state solution? The problem is that Netanyahu has gone, over the years, farther and farther to the right to cobble together his ragtag coalition of freakazoidals. The ultra-right is Bibi’s querencia, his “safe space.” Bibi, like Trump and all authoritarians-manqué, are happiest when the political real estate to their right is devoid of political opposition. But now Netanyahu has to make a choice — a real choice — as to whether or not to continue to occupy the margins of propriety or re-join the real world with a legacy accomplishment for future generations of Israeli leaders to build upon. Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, told Zakaria: “Biden should present Bibi with a strategic grand bargain that includes significant action on the Palestinian issue. Let Bibi figure out how to manage his coalition or how to break it and form a new one. What Biden is proposing is good for the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Extremists in Netanyahu’s government should not be allowed to veto it.” Netanyahu’s coalition — which probably anyway wasn’t even built to last — is a major factor against any deal’s passage.
Finally, it is somewhat difficult to imagine Netanyahu making such a deal under a Democrat President. Could all this posturing on his part be more maneuvering y a master maneuverer meant for the consumption of his domestic audience? The contempt he shows for the Democrat Party is often naught else but sulfurous. Aaron David Miller wrote for Foreign Policy in 2012:
James Baker temporarily banned him from the State Department. Madeleine Albright described him as an Israeli Newt Gingrich (and it wasn’t a compliment). Bill Clinton emerged from his first meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 (then serving his first term as prime minister) more than a little annoyed by his brash self-confidence. "Who’s the fucking superpower here?" Clinton exclaimed to aides.
Netanyahu is the first Israeli premier to trigger truly bipartisan recoil.
But that was in 2012 and James Baker’s limousine is, presumably, now yellow (Or, Uber?). Since then, Netanyahu has lectured Obama, campaigned for Mitt Romney as well as Joe Biden’s opponent in 2020. If, in 2012, Netanyahu triggered bipartisan recoil, he has long since reconciled himself with the Republican side of the aisle. “With Trump, in general, ‘Netanyahu got everything he wanted,’ Amit Segal, a political reporter for Channel 12, told me in 2021,” wrote the same Aaron David Miller for the New York Times magazine just this past weekend.
So, don’t get your hopes up about a Grand Bargain in Biden’s first term in office. Still, it could happen, of course, particularly if Netanyahu agrees to a plea deal. Bibi’s legal troubles are coming to a denouement. And the timing is everything. Then and only then will Bibi truly feel pressure to look to his legacy, to offset the horrible overreach of his Judicial reforms and a possible admission of guilt as well as the humiliation of stepping down from public office. In that instance, the President would have the upper hand. Absent that, however, Netanyahu has but to wait — like Putin, vis-a-vis the Ukraine — for the outcome of the 2024 elections to determine his fate.
Because if Trump wins, Bibi can just make a better deal with his administration. This, by the way, would be pretty much the same administration that ushered in the Abraham Accords by fiat. The terms of any such agreement with Trump will be infinitely more amenable to Bibi and infinitely less favorable to the Palestinian people, who appear all but cast aside from this grand geopolitical conversation that will determine their destiny.
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