Hamas is playing Biden
DON’T FORGET about the Palestinians. This is the diplomatic message behind this week’s undiplomatic displays of rioting in Jerusalem and rockets in Gaza. The intended recipients of the stones and rockets are close at hand but the recipients of the message are far away, in Washington DC and Vienna.
The Israelis cannot forget about the Palestinians, however much they try with talk of two states and “separation”. But the Americans can forget about them, when they want to. The Trump administration wanted to, and it achieved a regional breakthrough when it downgraded the Palestinians.
The Biden administration, however, wants to restore the Palestinians to their now-traditional spot in the Democratic cosmos as a shining star of victimhood. Of course, if you shine a light on Ramallah, you’ll find a corrupt dictatorship whose president is now into the 16th year of a four-year term. Shine a light on Gaza, and you’ll see a shambolic Islamist caliphate, so no elections there either.
These realities are far away from Washington DC, even though Washington DC is a little kingdom of unreality on the Potomac. That’s why the Palestinian
factions don’t need to remind the Biden administration that they haven’t gone away.
When Hamas sends rockets, it’s for domestic consumption and to add a little leverage through the foreign media. If it’s statehood they’re after, they could just pick up the phone and ask for Anthony Blinken. The new Secretary of State would love to give them everything they want, just as soon as he and his negotiator Robert Malley have given the Iranians everything they want in Paris.
Biden’s team came in talking about reviving negotiations for a Palestinian state: they, the EU and a few academics are the last true believers. The first thing they did was to connive a way around Congressional legislation that prevents the funding of terrorism, and send cash to Ramallah in the guise of Covid aid.
The violence has worked. No one is talking about Palestinian elections now. Instead, the Biden administration is working up the steps of diplomatic outrage, from “concern” to “appeals for calm”. By the time you read this, they may have started talking
The violence has worked. No one is now talking about Palestinian elections’
about “proportionality” . Next stop after that is the Security Council.
Meanwhile, most American Jews either don’t care or don’t pay attention. They too pursue dreams over reality. The most pressing issue in America this week is whether the vaccinated should wear facemasks in the street and whether the teachers’ union, which happens to be the Democratic Party’s biggest fundraiser, will consent to reopen the schools in September.
Binyamin Netanyahu may have exacerbated the partisan divide over Israel but he didn’t create it. He merely spotted the slow splitting of America into the red team and the blue team before anyone else did. He realised that American Jews were drifting from Israel and he saw that Israel’s Christian supporters in the Republican Party were more numerous and enthusiastic about Israel than most American Jews.
“People have to understand that the backbone of support for Israel in the United States is the Evangelical Christians,” Ron Dermer said this week. He was Netanyahu’s ambassador to DC, so he should know. “It’s true because of numbers, and also because of their passionate and unequivocal support for Israel.”
Dermer’s message will not get through to most American Jews. That’s probably for the best. If upwardlymobile, blue-state Jews paid more attention to Israel, they’d be even more alienated from it. Not so much because of the Occupation or the violence, but because the optics are embarrassing. The sleepers do not wish to be awoken in their land of dreams.