Israeli Foreign Minister Cohen Thinks A Saudi-Israeli-American Deal Would Be Swell

I beg to differ.

If we are to believe the reports of Saudi demands made of both the United States and Israel, the Jewish state would be giving up a great deal, indeed may well be putting itself in mortal danger, if it meets Saudi demands related to the Palestinians. Yet Foreign Minister Eli Cohen has no qualms about the deal; he’s all in. More on his enthusiasm, and why it should be curbed, can be found here: “Israeli FM: Normalization With Saudi Arabia Could Lead to ‘True Regional Harmony,’” i24 News, August 9, 2023:

Israel’s potential normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia could be the key to “true regional harmony,” Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen wrote in an op-ed published on Tuesday evening in the Wall Street Journal.

What kind of “regional harmony” would result from such a deal? Iran itself would remain a formidable foe of both Israel and Saudi Arabia. Having briefly tried rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, Tehran would be enraged by any Saudi-Israel deal and would renew its hostility toward Riyadh, and increase its support for the Shia Houthis in Yemen. Syria, stung by a Saudi deal with the hated Jewish state, would remain in Iran’s camp, retreating from its recent diplomatic overtures to Riyadh and the other Gulf states, which had led to it being readmitted to the Arab League. There would be a formal peace, with intelligence sharing, between Israel and Saudi Arabia, but there is, of course, already an informal peace and intelligence sharing between the two countries.

In an opinion piece for the American outlet, Israel’s top diplomat argued that, “a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia will be a diplomatic achievement that may shape the basis for true regional harmony, which will lead other countries to strive for peace.”

The “achievement” will belong entirely to Saudi Arabia. It stands to gain a great deal. The Americans will presumably agree to all three of the Saudi demands made of Washington. First, the Bidenites will agree to providing the Saudis with access to the most advanced American weapons, that until now have been denied to the Kingdom. Second, the Saudis will be promised American help in building a civilian nuclear program — a program for which there is no guarantee that it will never be transformed by the Saudis into a nuclear weapons program, perhaps with the help of China, which would love to have closer ties, at American expense, to one of its chief oil suppliers. Third, the Saudis will have won a security pact with the U.S., with Washington committing itself to coming to Riyadh’s defense if the Kingdom is ever attacked.

But that’s not all. Israel is also being asked to make concessions to Saudi Arabia — about the Palestinians. And these concessions could threaten the very existence of Israel. Jerusalem is being asked, it has been reported, to halt all settlement building, and even to promise to give up all the territory it currently controls in Judea and Samaria (a/k/a the West Bank), which would force Israel to be squeezed back within the 1949 armistice lines, once described by Abba Eban as “the lines of Auschwitz,” which would give Israel a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea. And presumably the half-million Israelis now living in the West Bank would either have to agree to be ruled by Palestinians, in their new state, or — given that the Palestinians have repeatedly mentioned their intention to make their own state Judenrein (“free of Jews”) — to be uprooted and moved back to Israel within the 1949 lines.

Instead of agreeing to these dangerous demands that would mean giving up the Jewish claim to Judea and Samaria, Israel can offer other concessions to improve the lives of Palestinians. The Israelis could, for example, greatly increase the number of work permits — there are now a total of 120,000 — allowing more Palestinians both in Gaza and the West Bank to work in Israel and the settlements, at wages from three to ten times higher than what they can earn from Palestinian employers. The Israelis can also supply more electricity to the Palestinians in Gaza — currently they only have it for four hours a day — and assist in improving agricultural methods for Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank. Waste water management, drip irrigation, water recycling, and water production from the ambient air are all areas where Israeli know-how can contribute to the most efficient use of the Palestinian water supply. Israel is not only a world leader in water husbandry, but also in solar energy, and could help the Palestinians create arrays of solar collectors on rooftops and in desert areas. Finally, Israel could help the Palestinians to develop the natural gas reserves recently found in their territorial waters.

Cohen added that an agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia, which would be a key component of any normalization agreement between Riyadh and Jerusalem, would include an American guarantee to help maintain the security of Gulf countries from Iran, similar to an agreement Washington has with South Korea, who faces threats from Pyongyang.

“Saudi Arabia presented to the United States, which mediates between the parties, several demands, among them maintaining its security in the face of Iranian aggression.”

The foreign minister’s comments in the Wall Street Journal came just two days after he said Prime Minister Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed Bin Salman “will make history,” during a rare interview with the Elaph newspaper from Saudi Arabia.

In his interview with the Saudi outlet, Cohen told Elaph that “the Palestinian issue will not be an obstacle to peace with Saudi Arabia, and the current government will take practical steps to improve the Palestinian economy.”…

Why is Cohen so confident? Does he have reason to believe that the Saudis have dropped the demand that Israel give up building new settlements, and agreed as well to drop their insistence that Israel withdraw from the West Bank altogether? Or is he merely whistling in the dark, hoping that the Saudis will be satisfied if Israel agrees only “to take practical steps to improve the Palestinian economy”?

Cohen’s comments in both Saudi and American media came amid a push by U.S. President Joe Biden to broker a historic normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and the Jewish state.

American political commentators speculate that the Biden Administration would like to announce an agreement before the 2024 Presidential campaign consumes Biden’s schedule in the coming months.

Biden, having failed at so much, is eager for some splashy foreign policy achievement — or at least something that can be presented as such an achievement, in time for the upcoming presidential campaign. And he is perfectly willing to pressure Israel to make dangerous territorial concessions if that’s what it takes to win Saudi approval for a deal.

Let us hope that Israeli officials, like the Minister of Foreign Affairs, learn to curb their enthusiasm, and refuse to make any territorial concessions to the Palestinians. What the Americans will offer the Saudis ought to be quite enough. However, if Israel wants to sweeten the pot, so that the Saudis can claim that they did obtain something for the Palestinians, there are obvious measures it could take. Assistance with employment, improved supplies of electricity, help with water management, solar energy, and development of the Mediterranean gas fields, are what Israel could reasonably be expected to offer the Palestinians. But only these, and nothing more.