The U.S. Administration is facing a tough sell as it leads the Bahrain Workshop in just under two weeks time, in what is widely seen as the first phase of the administration’s Middle East peace plan. The plan looks to large-scale investment in infrastructure improvement in the Palestinian territories, largely funded by wealthy Arab neighbors.
The U.S. says that the meeting will not address core political issues that include designating borders for a Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem or Israeli security demands.
Egypt, Morocco and Jordan have said that they will attend the talks, but Palestinian leaders are boycotting the gathering with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas saying that the political issues should be dealt with first.
In this Cipher Brief OpEd, expert Emile Nakhleh breaks down the broader strategic issues and why the Palestinians are boycotting the meeting.
OPINION — The confluence of the Israeli snap elections, the Arab, Muslim, recent Gulf Cooperation Council summits in Mecca, and the upcoming ‘Bahrain Workshop’ underscores the amateur nature of current U.S. Middle East policy. The conundrum in which Washington finds itself illustrates the absence of any comprehensive thinking toward Iran, the Arab world, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
In light of the recent Arab, Muslim, and GCC statements on the future of Palestinian-Israeli rapprochement and the need to have such a settlement grounded in the “two-state” and “land for peace” paradigm, whatever “Deal of the Century,” or parts of it, that Jared Kushner plans to reveal at the Bahrain Workshop at the end of June will likely be dead on arrival. That’s because Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian leaders have already signaled their disapproval of the American approach, stating that economic support is welcomed but statehood rights cannot be overlooked.
On Iran, although the Saudis were able to engineer a strong Arab, Gulf, and Muslim statement at the three summits against Iran, regional leaders are no longer sure on where the U.S. stands. The Saudi and Emirati leaders, together with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have been clamoring for a war, presumably led by the Americans. According to recent statements, however, the administration is backtracking on the rush to war. “Regime change,” according to President Donald Trump, is off the table, and the conditions that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had established as a requirement for talks with Iran have been jettisoned. “We are prepared to engage in a conversation with no pre-conditions,” Pompeo said in a recent press interview. “We are ready to sit down.”
Netanyahu’s political future is the other wobbly pillar in the current Middle East political edifice. Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, the president’s special envoys dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, were betting on the Israeli prime minister’s solid standing in Israel and the Gulf region to help sell their plan through economic largesse. But Netanyahu’s failure to form a government, resulting in snap elections to be held in the fall, and his legal troubles, with a looming indictment on corruption, have weakened his position, throwing the process in doubt.
Miscalculating on Iran
Recent U.S. strategy on Iran appeared based on three main pillars: pulling out of the nuclear deal; imposing severe economic sanctions on Iran, especially the oil sector; and forming an Arab-Islamic-Israeli alliance with an eye toward containing Iran’s regional posture and activities.
But the Iranian regime has not caved in. Other signatories of the deal—the four UN Security Council permanent members plus Germany—have opposed undermining the nuclear agreement and urged the Trump administration to settle America’s differences with Iran peacefully. Iran for the most part continues to abide by the key requirements of the nuclear deal.
Although the harsh economic sanctions have dealt a blow to Iran’s economy, other nations have continued to trade with Iran, including buying its oil. The Iranian people’s perceived threat of regime change by the United States, the two Gulf Sunni Arab autocracies of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the right-wing Israeli government appears to have unified the Iranian people in defense of their national, sovereign Persian state.
Iranians who abhor the clerical regime are never sanguine about a foreign power declaring war on their country in order to remove their regime by force. Iran and the region still retain a vivid memory of the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. As the Bush administration discovered then, Iraqis dislike for their brutal regime did not translate into their approval of a foreign invader. We shouldn’t expect Iran to be any different.
The current administration has sold unprecedented amounts of sophisticated arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE despite some congressional opposition, apparently hoping that these heavily-armed regimes would force Iran to end its support for the Houthis in Yemen and capitulate. But the war continues unabated. Without admitting failure for its initial approach with Iran, the Trump administration seems to be searching for another course of action that does not threaten regime change but involves negotiations without preconditions.
Miscalculating on Israel-Palestine
The administration’s support for ultraconservative measures in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict hasn’t yielded progress. Despite the opposition of most regional experts and former diplomats—including two former U.S. ambassadors to Israel Daniel Kurtzer and Martin Indyk—and contrary to UN Security Council resolutions, the administration declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and accepted the “legality” of Israel’s control of the Golan Heights. The Trump-Pompeo State Department no longer uses the term “Occupied Territories” to describe the Israeli-occupied Palestinian lands in the West Bank.
Furthermore, the Trump administration has closed the Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington and has severely reduced its contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides for Palestinian refugees’ relief and human development. Israel has maintained its economic grip on Gaza and has continued the withholding of most taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.
The administration’s envisioned plan—the so-called ‘Deal of the Century’—is reportedly grounded in economic aid to the Palestinians while dismissing their right to self-determination as a political community. Unfortunately, the administration envisions the road to peace with the Palestinians as going through Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) of Saudi Arabia and Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ) of Abu Dhabi. The expectation seems to be that billions of dollars from the Gulf states could buy off the Palestinians’ aspirations for statehood through some sort of a quisling leadership that would remain subservient to Israel for decades to come.
But at the recent Arab-Muslim summits in Mecca, most participants reiterated their support for a two-state solution based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which were adopted following the 1967 and 1973 wars. Participants, including Gulf leaders, also support East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
In fairness, this is not to say that the two-state paradigm is at all achievable. In fact, more and more experts believe that this paradigm has faded and is being replaced by one area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea comprising two peoples—Israelis and Palestinians roughly six million of each.
I anticipate that the administration will soon find out, whether at the Bahrain Workshop or in other forums, that unless it recognizes the political rights of the Palestinians, no deal will succeed. Perhaps a Palestinian state is unachievable, but unless the Palestinians are involved in charting their future together with other “honest brokers,” the U.S. deal will almost certainly fail. No plan for Israel and the Palestinians cooked up in Washington, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi under the guise of fighting Iran, will work.
Recapturing America’s indispensable role in the Middle East must include the conceptualization of groundbreaking negotiations with Iran and a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the right of both peoples to live together in peace, with dignity, and security. This effort can best be accomplished through international and regional collaboration. Its military and economic might notwithstanding, America cannot accomplish such a monumental task alone. Will Washington rise to the challenge or leave the region to others to fill the ensuing vacuum?
Read more from Emile Nakhleh in The Cipher Brief
