
Thomas Friedman reports in the New York Times: “the Biden team has worked out virtually all the details for a U.S.-Saudi defense alliance that would also include normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia — provided that Netanyahu would agree to embark on negotiations for a two-state solution.”
What’s the hurry? And what’s the downside?
The “Biden team” has an urgent deadline—they want a deal they can announce before Election Day, a concrete diplomatic achievement to show to voters. And they want Saudi help keeping gas prices low, and headline inflation numbers declining, between now and the election. That might help Vice President Harris’s chances of prevailing over President Trump in the election.
Netanyahu could also benefit politically from a Saudi-Israel peace deal, but he also knows that after October 7, 2023, the “two-state solution”—a Palestinian Arab state alongside Israel—is more remote of a possibility than it had been before, because Israelis see a Palestinian state as a security threat. And Netanyahu is sophisticated enough about American politics to realize the risk of alienating Republicans by doing anything that looks like a last-minute favor to the Biden-Harris administration.
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