Blinken Announces an ‘Extraordinary Opportunity’ for Arab-Israeli Peace In Our Time

Antony Blinken lived in Paris for at least nine years, where he attended elementary and high school at the very well-regarded Ecole Jeannine Manuel. He passed the bac, with a mention très bien, before attending — did you have any doubt? — Harvard College. At Harvard, he was one of the editors of The Crimson and interviewed Henry Kissinger. After college, he spent a year writing for The New Republic, no doubt trying to avoid being in the same room with Leon Wieseltier. He then attended Columbia Law School. His father Donald and uncle Alan were American ambassadors to Hungary and Belgium, respectively. His stepfather was the worldly, corridors-of-power insider, and survivor of the Holocaust, the international lawyer Samuel Pisar. Blinken briefly practiced law in both New York and Paris. He is pleasingly bilingual. But despite all these outward and visible signs of worldliness, of savoir-faire and savoir-vivre and savoir-être and savoir-sauve-qui-peut, when it comes to dealing with Muslim Arabs, Blinken is an innocent abroad.

The “extraordinary opportunity” that he has just announced in Munich is the same old “extraordinary opportunity” that Saudi Arabia has been dangling before the eyes of the Americans and Israelis for several years. To wit, if Israel agrees to the creation of a Palestinian state, that will include its giving up all of the West Bank (a/k/a Judea and Samaria), and uprooting 500,000 Israeli “settlers” from that area to make it Judenrein, then that territory together with Gaza will constitute this new “Palestinian state” with eastern Jerusalem as its capital, and then Saudi Arabia will “normalize ties” with the Jewish state. Only now, Blinken assures us, not just Saudi Arabia, but “nearly all the Arab states are on board with this.” More on his terminal naivete can be found here: “Blinken hints at ‘extraordinary’ opportunity for Israel-Saudi peace,” Reuters, February 17, 2024:

There is “an extraordinary opportunity” in the coming months for Israel to normalize ties with its Arab neighbors, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Saturday, while also emphasizing the need for the creation of a Palestinian state.

The top US diplomat said there were genuine efforts led by Arab countries to revitalize the Palestinian Authority so it can be more effective in representing the Palestinians.

There is no way to “revitalize” the Palestinian Authority until the colossally corrupt Mahmoud Abbas dies — he’s now 88 — and all of his handpicked henchman are booted out of office, to be replaced by an entirely new team of technocrats, including some who may now be residents of the Arab states that should be expected to foot the bill for the reconstruction of Gaza.

Virtually every Arab country now genuinely wants to integrate Israel into the region to normalize relations…to provide security commitments and assurances so that Israel can feel safer,” Blinken said during a panel discussion at the annual Munich Security Conference.

“Virtually every Arab country now genuinely wants to integrate Israel into the region”? Just off the top of my head, I can think of four Arab countries that have no desire to “integrate Israel” into the region. These are Yemen, Syria, Algeria, and Iraq — all of them supported in whole or in part by Israel’s mortal enemy, Iran.

“And there’s also, I think the imperative, that’s more urgent than ever, to proceed to a Palestinian state that also ensures the security of Israel,” he added.

Isn’t it bizarre that the Israelis themselves don’t realize what a splendid opportunity this is to “ensure the security of Israel”? What better way to do that than to squeeze Israel back within the 1949 armistice lines, with a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea, and stripped of the minimal strategic depth It now enjoys in the West Bank through its control of the Jordan Valley? After all, the Arabs will provide “assurances” that should make the Israelis feel safe. But strangely, it’s not Prime Minister Netanyahu alone who is opposed to this “two-state solution,” but nearly all Israelis. Even those who were peace activists before October 7 have abandoned their previous views, and are no longer prepared to see another, larger, more menacing Gaza all along Israel’s eastern border. The Israelis now know that the only way to keep the peace with the Arabs is through a strategy of deterrence. In order to ensure that no Arab state will dare attack it, the Jewish state must remain stronger militarily than its possible enemies, and obviously so. It’s the same strategy that kept the peace between the Western alliance and the Soviet Union throughout the years of the Cold War. It can work equally well for Israel today. “Normalizing ties” with its Arab neighbors would be nice, but it’s more important that the Jewish state be able to defend itself.

Last month, the Saudi ambassador to the UK Khalid bin Bandar Al Saud told the BBC Saudi Arabia is interested in normalization with Israel following the conclusion of the IDF’s war on Hamas in Gaza.

However, the envoy said, Saudi Arabia had one condition – the creation of a Palestinian State. According to the ambassador, before the October 7 massacre, both countries were close to reaching an agreement….

The Saudi ambassador does not appear to realize that after October 7, there has been a sea change in Israel. The creation of a Palestinian state, on the terms the Saudis and other Arabs are now demanding, with Israel giving up the entire West Bank and uprooting half a million Israelis, is inconceivable. This is something that, if the Saudis really want a normalization of ties with the Jewish state, they will have to understand, and cease demanding far more than Israel can possibly grant. The offer Israel can make is for the Palestinians in both Gaza and in Areas A and B in the West Bank to have full control over their domestic lives. As Netanyahu puts it in lapidary fashion, “I’m certainly willing to have them have all the powers that they need to govern themselves, but none of the powers that can threaten us.” No Israelis will. be asked to move, nor will any Palestinians. The Palestinian areas will be demilitarized. And again according to Netanyahu, “Israel must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River.” That’s doable. Asking Israel to return to the now-indefensible 1949 armistice lines is not. Let the Saudis decide whether they are willing to “normalize ties” with Israel under such conditions. If they aren’t, Israel has subsisted for 75 years without the “normalization of ties” to Saudi Arabia, and can continue to live without them. But what it can’t live with is a Palestinian state in Gaza and all of the West Bank that would threaten the existence of the Jewish state.

Antony Blinken may remember from his school days in Paris a famous line by François Premier. I’ve only changed one word to make it — though it is no longer an alexandrine — fit the bill: “Souvent arabe varie/ Bien fol est qui s’y fie.” A word to the wise, Secretary Blinken. A word to the wise.