The Saudi fantasy of Netanyahu

PPerhaps because he was at a conference in Bulgaria, a few hundred kilometers from the coast of the Black Sea from Istanbul, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly commented last Friday on the murder of a Saudi dissident Washington Post columnist Jamil Khashoggi a month earlier in the Turkish capital.

"What happened in the Istanbul consulate was horrible and must be remedied," said Netanyahu. The first part of it sounds good. The second part seems to mean that he was talking about a person arrested for driving while intoxicated, rather than a brutal murder perpetrated by agents of the Government of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. .

Both parties were part of the formal clause, after which Netanyahu achieved his goal. "Yet … it is very important for the stability of the world, for the region and for the world, that Saudi Arabia remains stable."

Read this in the light of the previous day's report to the Washington Post that Netanyahu (with the Egyptian dictator Abdel Fatah al-Sisi) has "made contact with the Trump government to express his support for the Crown Prince", that is to say to press against any weakening of the personal alliance between the Intimate circle of President Trump and the MBS equally confident.

When Netanyahu says that Saudi Arabia should "stay stable", he means that the government of Mohammed bin Salman should remain in place and that America should not be angry for the murder of 39, a critic.

For US policy, Netanyahu's pressure was superfluous. Neither Trump nor his Middle East expert Jared Kushner, who has no expertise, show any serious signs of reducing their dependence on the MBS.

Netanyahu's comments, however, underscore his own dangerous dependence on the Saudi Crown Prince.

Netanyahu's motive is that he considers Saudi Arabia as a bulwark against Iran. But there is more to do. Netanyahu had long hoped to turn the Iranian opposition into a Sunni-Israeli alliance, a major redevelopment of the Middle East. Netanyahu sees the rise of Mohammed bin Salman and his alliance with Kushner as the fulfillment of his hopes.

If Kushner ever presents an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, Netanyahu expects it to be written very close to his demands, which means that he will create a "Palestinian state" far away from True independence. He also expects MBS to lead an Arab coalition that forces Palestinian leaders to accept US conditions.

In the most likely case where the Trump-Kushner plan remains a chimera, Netanyahu is betting that Saudi Arabia under MBS will pave the way for ever more open relations with Israel, thus rendering Palestinians orphans Arab support. And poof! The occupation can continue forever.

There are precedents for this fantasy in Israeli history, dating back to the Prime Minister of Likud's founder, Menachem Begin. The relatively successful example, from the official Israeli point of view, is the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt. As Seth Anziska shows in his new book, Prevent PalestineBegin's price for the complete withdrawal from Sinai was a peace treaty that abandoned the Palestinians. The resulting peace with Egypt is much colder than Israel hoped, though it is much better than a hot war.

But the treaty can not erase the reality of Palestinian occupation or nationalism. Contrary to what Begin imagined – and contrary to what Netanyahu can see today – the greatest long-term threat to Israel is the attempt to reign permanently over a people deprived of fundamental rights.

The much more dangerous precedent was Ariel Sharon's attempt, as Minister of Defense of Begin in 1982, to redo the region, beginning with invading Lebanon. Sharon expected that by eliminating the Palestinian national movement by chasing the Palestine Liberation Organization of Lebanon. By installing Bashir Gemayel of the Christian Phalange movement as president of Lebanon, he would turn the neighbor of northern Israel into an ally.

Indeed, Gemayal was elected president and was assassinated. The Falange perpetrated the massacre perpetrated in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla. The expected peace with Lebanon was stillborn and the years of Israeli occupation of part of the country contributed to the rise of Hezbollah. And the Palestinian national movement has not fainted properly.

Netanyahu's alliance with MBS does not involve a war, thank God. But he still ignores a key lesson from Bashir Gemayel's experience: he builds his hopes on an individual in a fragile country.

In the Saudi case, the Crown Prince is himself a key factor in the fragility. For decades, the Saudi monarchy was in fact an oligarchy – a carefully crafted coalition of many sons and grandsons of the kingdom's founder, Abdulaziz Ibn Saud. MBS and his father, King Salman, replaced the succession of successors with an inheritance from father to son. The "anti-corruption" reforms of the MBS aimed to eliminate competition from the rest of the royal family. His foreign policy also ignored the desire to foster impetuous conflict.

Who knows, he can succeed. The very clear danger, however, is that the MBS can be eliminated by one faction or another, or the entire structure of the Saudi state begins to collapse. Anyone who stands in the place of MBS will have no obligation to his policies and may very well be dressed in an ideology demanding that he put an end to his semi-secret flirtation with Israel.

And whatever happens to MBS or Trump, Palestinians will always want their rights, as individuals and as a people. Netanyahu's covenants with distant and dangerous rulers will not change reality so close to his office window. Israel will still have to make the decision to preserve itself by putting an end to the occupation. But this decision will have to be made by another leader, free from the fantasies of Netanyahu.