Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Trump administration always made it fairly clear that it was far less interested in a two-state solution than in facilitating ties between Israel and the Arab states—a veritable 22-state solution.
Even by Middle Eastern standards the past month in the region has been head-spinning and volatile. Conflict between Israelis and Palestinian along three fronts — Jerusalem; Gaza and within Israel proper fractured an already tenuous status quo.
There is this cycle that we keep seeing over and over again. But really we also saw some developments inside of Israel with Palestinian citizens of Israel and mob attacks against by Israeli Jewish citizens and of course in the occupied territories
If the new Israeli government endures, it could make managing the U.S.-Israeli relationship a good deal easier for a U.S. president who has a lot on his plate at home and doesn’t need a major Middle East distraction.
The new and oft-repeated formulation of “equal measures of security, freedom, opportunity, and dignity” for Israelis and Palestinians is meant to signal some change in policy, but not a great deal of change.
While there is a pressing need for immediate humanitarian relief and reconstruction support in Gaza following last month’s intense violence between Israel and Hamas, Palestinians in the Strip will need far more than that to achieve real long-term stability.
The most important word is “equal,” which is meant to signal to progressives within Democratic Party circles — and to Israel — that the administration is aware of and concerned about the glaring inequality that Palestinians experience under occupation.
World attention has focused on the prospects of the United States and Iran finding terms that enable them to return to their 2015 nuclear deal. But there are still a lot of questions that need answering.
The Israeli government has accomplished a great deal which is to dethrone Benjamin Netanyahu after a dozen years.
If bookies in Las Vegas were laying bets on a long duration for the newly formed Israeli coalition government, the odds would probably be longer than the prospect of the Baltimore Orioles and the Washington Nationals meeting anytime soon in a Washington World Series.
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