By Patricia Lee Sharpe
The winner of the just-created Ostrich Award goes to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That’s the prize for sticking your head in the sand while your neighbors transform the neighborhood. Netanyahu and colleagues also get the prize for truly brazen hostage-taking. Hostages—isn’t that what the government-subsidized settlers on the occupied West Bank are, ever-proliferating pawns moved forward to create sympathy-arousing “facts on the ground” so that Israel can prevent the formation of a viable sovereign Palestinian state? Every negotiating delay buys time to plant more hostages, i.e., more bodies to "protect" should Palestinians get impatient about the continued theft of their land.
Patience Isn't Its Own Reward
Now the PLA’s Mahmoud Abbas is calling Netantanyu’s bluff. He’s going to present an explicit statehood bid to the U.N. Security Council, and Israel is crying foul. Ditto the U.S., which plans to veto any such effort on the grounds that statehood would mean nothing because the details will still have to be hammered out through direct negotiations. This, of course, is an absurd response, which has already received a trumping reply. Negotiations make more sense if the partners are equal in terms of sovereignty. What’s amazing to me is that the Palestinians have waited so long to demand the sort of U.N. imprimatur that Israel enjoyed at its foundation. What’s sauce for the Israeli goose is sauce for the Palestinian gander.
But the U.S. seems to have forgotten that it was supposed to be an honest broker—or at least pose as one, which would explain the tiresome dissonance between U.S. words and deeds in re Palestine. For a long time, the game worked, sort of. But that was when the U.S. kept its financial house in order and still had a certain moral authority or soft power. Even so, as my colleague has recently written, the U.S. still manages to pull Israel’s chestnuts out of the fire with some regularity. This continues to give Israel a delusive sense of invulnerability to the laws of cause and effect. But the game can’t go on. The Arab spring was real. And, as America once again bows to do Israel’s bidding at great cost to its own interests in the Middle East and the Muslim world in general, it would seem that the U.S. also merits an Ostrich award.
The Rush to Fill the Vacuum
The world has indeed changed. Not only is Turkey reclaiming (or trying to reclaim) its proud Ottoman heritage as world power and seat of the Califate, by which I mean its own version of how Islam can work in the modern world, it has a rival for predominance in theology and to fill the power vacuum that exists so long as Egypt’s political transition remains in limbo—and the U.S. is crippled by its domestic problems. That undeclared rival is Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, like Turkey, is easing out of the U.S. sphere of influence. Once upon a time the Saudis were willing to accomplish various forms of influence-buying that the U.S. dared not accomplish openly. Saudis played a role in the infamous Iran-Contra affair and have also served to launder (or even kick in) monies that had to be delivered equally circuitously elsewhere. But that was when the U.S. was the colossus that bestrode the world and when the U.S. was the primary Saudi oil customer.
By now, China probably buys more oil from Saudi Arabia than the U.S. does, so the Saudis feel free to defy the U.S. openly. The first move concerned Bahrain. The Saudi army made it possible to put down the Shi’ite rebellion against the Sunni ruling family. The U.S. didn’t want this to happen. Not so brutally, anyway. On the other hand, the U.S. Navy depends on port facilities in Bahrain, so it’s hard to believe that the Obama administration came down too heavily on the regime for its harsh treatment of non-violent protestors. Who else would host the Navy if it were thrown out of Bahrain?
Reality-Speak from Prince Turki
The next blow arrived in the form of an op-ed piece in the New York Times on September 12. It was written by the very high ranking Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal and its title couldn’t have been more to the point: “Veto a State, Lose an Ally.” The first three paragraphs laid out the stakes for the U.S. very clearly:
The United States must support the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations this month or risk losing the little credibility it has in the Arab world. If it does not, American influence will decline further, Israeli security will be undermined and Iran will be empowered, increasing the chances of another war in the region.
Moreover, Saudi Arabia would no longer be able to cooperate with America in the same way it historically has. With most of the Arab world in upheaval, the “special relationship” between Saudi Arabia and the United States would increasingly be seen as toxic by the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims, who demand justice for the Palestinian people.
Saudi leaders would be forced by domestic and regional pressures to adopt a far more independent and assertive foreign policy. Like our recent military support for Bahrain’s monarchy, which America opposed, Saudi Arabia would pursue other policies at odds with those of the United States, including opposing the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Iraq and refusing to open an embassy there despite American pressure to do so. The Saudi government might part ways with Washington in Afghanistan and Yemen as well.
To these far from veiled threats, which were surely intended as a message from the Saudi government itself, one must add a corollary. What’s bad for the U.S. will not benefit Israel. U.S. politicians who support Jerusalem whether or not it’s good for America should ponder this. The Israelis and their Israel-uber-alles American backers have mounted a massive public diplomacy campaign to recapture the high ground on Palestinian sovereignty, but even the most extravagantly funded Chicken Little appeals (The sky is falling! The sky is falling!) can't make atrocious policy look defensible forever.
Deliver or Step Down
Prince Turki goes on to say that the U.S. has forfeited its right to lead negotiations toward a rational two state solution based on the 1967 borders because she has been too preoccupied with her own troubles, to wit, economic meltdown and political paralysis, to come up with useful new ideas. Therefore, the U.S. should refrain from a foolish veto in the Security Council and step aside so that a just and peaceful resolution of the long festering statehood issue can be achieved by those who want one.
When a Saudi publishes statements like these in America’s most important newspaper, the power equation has changed drastically. Yet the U.S. and Israel seem to think they can behave policy-wise as if there had been no Arab spring and no resurgence of China, not to mention economic disarray in Europe. Maybe some of those in power in Israel have a masada complex. They, like certain Islamists, want to be martyrs. Or else they still imagine they can nuke the rest of the world into submission. But there’s no reason why the U.S. should support the self-defeating, status quo policies of the current Israeli government. Imagine an ostrich rather than an eagle on American coinage. On the other hand, the bird does lay very big eggs.