This is not the first time a US secretary of state visits
Jordan or the region, and
Antony Blinken, who will be in
Amman on Wednesday, is
here with a new old agenda.
اضافة اعلان
After what we witnessed during the reign of the former US
administration and blind actions against the Palestinian people and
unprecedented bias in favor of Israel, the new US administration comes in
preoccupied with dozens of other issues. The Middle East is not the only matter
on the table in Washington, in fact, the region’s issues are customarily
delayed for months following the new president taking office, particularly
since domestic matters take precedence.
The US secretary of state, accompanied by the head of the US
intelligence service, is not bringing anything new today, rather he will
express Washington’s known position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,
including Washington’s will for relaunching negotiations, establishing a
Palestinian state, stimulating the economy in
Gaza and the reconstruction of
the blockaded strip, and the importance of shunning violence and protecting
civilians. These are statements we’ve heard from all US presidents and
secretaries of state.
For the tour, which includes Israel and Egypt, not to be a
mere attempt to improve the US administration’s reputation in the region or a
public relations visit, the secretary of state must understand beforehand the
red lines crossed by Israel. These include its rejection of the establishment
of a complete Palestinian state, its assaults in Jerusalem and on the Al-Aqsa
Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif in a manner that harms Palestinians and Jordanian
custodianship, its refusal to concede occupied East Jerusalem, the
impossibility of launching peace negotiations in light of insistence of the
Israeli project in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley, and insistence on
maintaining settlements, among others.
Why would the secretary of state be here if he had no
specific perception on the Palestinian issue, when everyone in the region is
aware that all US administrations, be it Democratic or Republican, have
maintained bias in favor of Israel. These administrations even bought valuable
time for Israel to continue its project in Palestine without having to worry
about Washington. If the current administration had any will to change the
course of events it would have reversed the former president’s recognition of
Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which is the bare minimum show of good
intentions for the region.
This is Blinken’s first tour of the region, and all that is
on the US administration’s mind at the moment is mitigating the Iranian threat
under American standards that might not be acceptable to even Israel. As for
the Palestinian cause, there might be a rearrangement of priorities in the
region, where the Iranian issue would take the lead, followed by the
Palestinian issue. This is particularly so since the occupation would attempt
to prove to Washington that Iran has its people in Gaza, which they train and
finance, and that Gaza is Tehran’s agent, which bombed Israel in an attempt to
shuffle the cards and reduce pressure on Iran during negotiations over Iranian
nuclear activity.
This means that the secretary of state’s tour will be a
failure, as he is coming in the context of PR, to prove that Washington is not
biased, and that it has a vision for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict. But, most probably, the administration, like those that came before
it, will leave office without having achieved anything on the matter, not to
mention that the current administration will make Iran the center of its focus,
and all it cares about in Palestine is to keep things generally calm in the
coming period.
The secretary of state will leave the region having heard a
lot from the occupation, Egypt, and Jordan, and will recite the same old rigid
templates of American foreign policy on the region, pledging to come back, with
a vision for relaunching peace negotiations. But in light of the Israeli crisis
in terms of forming a government and the possible fifth elections, the tour
will amount to nothing, as it was carried out solely to affirm Washington’s
interest in regional issues so long as that does not involve preventing Israeli
encroachment, and keeping all eyes solely on Iran, deeming Tehran the head of
the snake and the source of all the region’s crises, be it directly, or through
its agents across the region’s countries.
We have seen many faces in this region, and they have all
left having achieved nothing.
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