via Moon of Alabama
Just ten weeks ago I was in awe. “This is huge!” I wrote about the surprising news of the restoration of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran after mediation by China (and Russia).
With that it was obvious that the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen between Iran friendly and Saudi sponsored forces would be coming to an end. But no one predicted the speed with which that is now happening.
Today President Assad of Syria was welcomed back in Saudi Arabia to a summit of the Arab League.
Syria’s Assad shakes hands, kisses cheeks with onetime foes at Arab League summit
Every handshake would count, and Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad had plenty of them at Friday’s Arab League Summit – along with hugs and kisses – from his onetime foes in the region.As he strolled into the summit venue in the Saudi city of Jeddah on Friday afternoon, a beaming Assad extended his arms to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who grabbed them both and kissed Assad once on each cheek.
It was a symbolic moment, sealing Assad’s reintegration into the Arab fold after being suspended from the League and isolated by most of the region for over a decade over his crackdown on protests against him.
Attempts by the U.S. and the neoconned foreign minister of Germany Annalena Baerbock to prevent this have failed. Even countries still somewhat hostile to Syria – Qatar, the United Emirates and Marocco – refrained fromvetoing the step. Arab unity is more important to them than some out-of-area interests.
As Juan Cole summarizes:
Washington is now the skunk at the diplomats’ party. The Iranians were never likely to trust the Americans as mediators. The Saudis must have feared telling them about their negotiations lest the equivalent of another Hellfire missile be unleashed.
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Where two sides are tired of conflict, as was true with Saudi Arabia and Iran, Beijing is clearly now ready to play the role of the honest broker. Its remarkable diplomatic feat of restoring relations between those countries, however, reflects less its position as a rising Middle Eastern power than the startling decline of American regional credibility after three decades of false promises (Oslo), debacles (Iraq) and capricious policy-making that, in retrospect, appears to have relied on nothing more substantial than a set of cynical imperial divide-and-rule ploys that are now so been-there, done-that.
Withe Arabs united Israel is now an isolated outlier. Salman Rafi Sheikh analyses the new situation it finds itself in:
While the US and Israeli officials have stated that the Iran-Saudia deal doesn’t impact the politics and the possibility of the possible extension of the Abraham Accords, it remains that the deal has not materialised despite various rounds of talks. While one of the key reasons is the change of government in the US, with the Biden administration not sharing the Trump administration’s enthusiasm for both peace in the Middle East and deep ties with Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, too, is not keen to make this deal. In other words, the China-led ‘new’ peace process in the Middle East is nothing short of a setback for Israel.
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As irony would have it – and as it may further complicate the US position – China recently offered its services to mediate between Israel and Palestine to develop a realistic peace plan. If the US fails to convince Saudia, Israel, fearing increasing isolation, may ultimately move towards China for a new peace process.
The Saudis are even rebuilding their relations with Hamas, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood entity which the U.S. has declared to be a ‘terrorist group’:
For Israel, this move is a major setback for two basic reasons. First, it shows that the Saudi state is not mindlessly pursuing talks with Israel. In fact, Saudi moves are aimed at squeezing regional space for Israel in order to force it to make difficult choices. Secondly, the report shows that Saudi Arabia is actively countering the US in the Middle East. Establishing ties with Hamas directly confronts the US insofar as the Saudis do not consider Hamas as a terror group, at least in the same sense as Washington and Jerusalem evidently do.
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For Israel, this is a challenging situation. It can either stick to its traditional way of geopolitics and pursue its interests aggressively and risk wider confrontation, or it can turn to China for the ‘new’ peace process. The latter option will, however, further undermine the US position in the Middle East.
I do not see much hope for any talks with Israel as it can not commit to any reasonable solution. Jonathan Cook provides that it is falling apart:
The surprise is that Israel’s woes spring not, as generations of its leaders feared, from outside forces – a combined attack from Arab states or pressure from the international community – but from Israel’s own internal contradictions.
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Israel’s long-term problem is underscored by the current, bitter standoff over Netanyahu’s plan for a so-called judicial overhaul. The Israeli Jewish population is split down the middle, with neither side willing to back down. Rightly, each sees the confrontation in terms of a zero-sum battle.And behind this stands a political system in near-constant paralysis, with neither side of the divide able to gain a stable majority in the parliament. Israel is now mired in a permanent, low-level civil war.
Israel’s problem, since its founding, are the two distinct groups that it attempted to unite under the roof of Zionism. The more secular and liberal European Ashkenazi have mostly led the country while the Middle Eastern Mizrahim and Ultra orthodox Haredim played a side role. But they have the higher birthrate and are on their way to become the majority. The aims these different groups have are incompatible and feed a permanent conflict:
For decades, the Ashkenazi leadership assumed the religious right, especially the Mizrahim and Haredim, would accept their inferior status in Israel’s Jewish hierarchy so long as they were bought off with privileges over the Palestinians.But the religious right is now greedy for more than the right to oppress Palestinians. They want the right to shape Israel’s Jewish character too.
The religious fervor the Ashkenazi establishment hoped to weaponize against the Palestinians, especially through the settlement enterprise, has come back to bite it. A monster has been created that increasingly cannot be tamed – even by Netanyahu.
The new Middle East has now only one entity that is swimming against new the Zeitgeist current. That entity is disunited and unable to decide on anything. There is no one on the Israeli side with whom China, or anyone else, could make a deal over Palestine that would stick.
Should the Mizrahim and Haredim win, which they likely eventual will, the more secular Ashkenazi may even start to leave. Israel’s capabilities would leave with them. A reabsorption of a less capable and rich Israel into a wider Middle East might then become possible.
It would an astonishing development.
But so is the current one.