What Does Washington Offer that Netanyahu Refuses?

Israeli PM Netanyahu is stuck in the mud of Gaza, he set very high goals he will never achieve and is committing horrific war crimes leading to the isolating of the Zionist entity and its US sponsor all over the world. Leading political analyst and former Lebanese MP Nasser Qandil, editor in chief of the SSNP Al Binaa newspaper spans the options for Netanyahu in light of an offer that Biden can use to help his frenemy Netanyahu and save the US ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ dubbed Israel:

It seems surreal when we say that US President Joe Biden is not at all serious about seeking the two-state solution that he declares day and night, and at the same time, he is at the highest level of seriousness in making the two-state solution project a backbone for the American project to end the war in Gaza, and that at a time when Biden does not differ from Benjamin Netanyahu or with him in terms of his commitment to preserving Al Quds (Jerusalem) as a unified capital of the occupying entity (Israel) and protecting the settlements in the West Bank under the control of the occupation, as well as the Jordan Valley.

But Biden greatly differs with Netanyahu in believing that it has become impossible to win a military war and that a major political maneuver must be undertaken that reshuffles the cards and transfers the impasse that hangs over the heads of America and “Israel” to the opposite side, which includes the Palestinians with all their political components, especially the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, then between them and the Washington friendly Arab environment, especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

From the American point of view, military defeat occurred, and international isolation also occurred, but it believes that regaining the political and military initiative, compensating for losses, and containing the impasse is possible. The essence of what Washington is adopting is based on seeking to offer normalization with Saudi Arabia as a price worthy of accepting the principle of a two-state solution and seeking to strengthen the Palestinian Authority in the face of Hamas and the resistance forces.

Washington believes that instead of the formula of the Arab Peace Initiative, in which normalization was an Arab prize being offered to the occupying entity in exchange for a basket that included the establishment of a Palestinian state on the territories occupied in 1967 with Al Quds (Jerusalem) as its capital, there is an opportunity to present an Israeli prize to the Arabs in exchange for Saudi normalization in particular, and the prize is stopping the war on Gaza and the principle of a Palestinian state without commitment to its borders and a commitment to the fate of Al Quds (Jerusalem) therein, and being satisfied with it being demilitarized, and that “Israel” is ready to hand over Gaza to the Palestinian Authority under Egyptian-Saudi Arab guardianship, will guarantee a new path that will transfer the impasse to the other side.

The Americans are looking forward to an Israeli leadership that will join them in this project to launch a dynamic in which they believe that stopping a failed war which requires searching for a way out to stop it, will be sold. This means offering nothing, but rather buying a way out in exchange for nothing, and that through this project, what has been lost in international relations and Western Street will be recovered.

Opening the door wide to public Saudi-Israeli negotiations under the title of normalization will represent a temptation that will give the Israeli leadership that achieves it a sufficient price to offer to the settlers in the ‘entity’ as an alternative to the promised victory in the war.

Saudi Arabia can present its process of normalization as a price for recovering what others have failed to achieve in terms of rights for the Palestinians, during which it accuses Hamas and the resistance forces of absurdity and adventurism.

Saudi Arabia and Egypt participate with America and Europe in sponsoring Israeli negotiations with the Palestinian Authority under the title of the two-state solution, during which the discussion of Al Quds (Jerusalem) and the right of return is being postponed, considering the beginning of a unified government and unified security services that take over Gaza and the areas under the Authority’s control in the West Bank as a necessary starting point, the stabilization of the security situation for years will be followed with the search to expand the geography of the Authority’s control to new areas, during which the exchange of lands between the West Bank and the Negev is proposed, and if negotiations to implement the Oslo Accords were consumed for thirty years, so why not consume the same again?

Netanyahu, along with a significant percentage of the entity’s politicians and military leaders, doubt the rosy nature represented by the American narrative, and believe that there are many complications to achieving it, the most important of which is that Hamas and the resistance forces have the ability to reject and disrupt, and in their hands are two important cards; The first is the ability to attack the occupation forces in the areas where they are deployed in Gaza in a way that makes their survival impossible, and their subsequent handover to the Palestinian Authority impossible. The second is the prisoners’ card, which Hamas and the resistance forces will not abandon if they sense the existence of a conspiracy targeting them from any political framework within which the prisoners are supposed to be released.

According to the vision of Netanyahu and those who support him, what will happen is that “Israel” will have conceded its refusal of the two-state solution without getting anything. Security will remain in the hands of Hamas and the resistance forces, as well as the prisoners, and normalization will not move forward unless practical steps are taken on the path to the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the Al Quds (Jerusalem) issue is a sufficient obstacle to embarrass Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority and push them to retreat. Talking about a demilitarized Palestinian state is based on nothing, because after leaving Gaza in 2005, it was practically demilitarized, except for what would be permitted for the Palestinian state under the title of maintaining security, and today it is an arsenal of qualitative weapons, despite the siege, and the experience of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank says that it would decay before anyone who calls for resistance, because the Palestinian popular and youth mood, in particular, is not a mood that can be bribed with talks of peace.

Netanyahu does not mind agreeing to manage the war instead of escalating it and linking it to more than one truce during which prisoners are exchanged, but the alternative is an ongoing war for years, in Gaza and on the Lebanon front, that does not reach a comprehensive war except with an American-Israeli agreement.

Between these two projects, divisions take place within the ‘entity’, and settlements are also formulated in return, and the war and challenges on the Gaza front and the support fronts in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and the Red Sea continue, in a way that the occupation army suffers more serious losses along with the loss of the image of military superiority, and America loses every day the image of deterrence that it strives to ensure, especially in waterways, the most important of which is the Red Sea.