Many observers believe that the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s new far-right Cabinet will provoke waves of escalation in the West
Bank, and the make up of this government leaves indeed very little opportunity
to argue against this.
اضافة اعلان
The approach to regional politics, I suggest, might
be a bit different, as Netanyahu will be interested in resuming his move to
attain peace with the Arabs and promoting the Abraham Accords, which provide
him useful political cover.
The previous Netanyahu government reached some sort
of peace with Arab, mainly Gulf, countries. It was a peace of choice that
purports to promote understanding between countries, and bring together the
peoples of the region. But this was never an easy objective, and the
anticipated escalation in the West Bank is bound to generate anger amongst the
Arab populations, which will make it more difficult to engage positively
politically.
The return of Netanyahu will clearly bring the Abraham Accords back to the fore, especially since it is a good foreign policy tool.
At this stage, Netanyahu’s focus at regional level will
include promotion of the Abraham Accords as the only path toward regional
peace, and the pillar of Arab-Israeli peace. But questions remain whether this
strategy can shift attention from the internal situation in the West Bank and
the expected moves towards annexing territories currently controlled by the
Palestinian Authority or even attempts to change the status of historic
situations such as Jerusalem itself. Moreover, it is hard to see any real
opposition from the Arab countries that have signed a peace treaty with Israel,
as they are not really affected by domestic Israeli policies, and more focused
on regional, economic, security and political issues.
The return of Netanyahu will clearly bring the
Abraham Accords back to the fore, especially since it is a good foreign policy
tool. It can be leveraged to re-engage with new Arab countries, and even to
improve relations between Netanyahu and the Biden administration in the US. As
such, this diplomatic approach, aside from the anti-Iranian rhetoric, appears
to be the only way to silence critics and contain the consequences of the
inevitable far-right policies. Promoting a wider regional peace seems to be
Netanyahu’s only way to balance his new mandate.
Amer Al-Sabaileh is a Jordanian university professor and
geopolitical expert. He is a leading columnist in national, regional, and
international media, offers consultancies to think tanks and speaks at
international conferences on Middle East politics and developments.
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