Given the disruptions on display throughout the Middle East – ISIS, Syria’s civil war, the fracturing of Iraq — is the Israeli-Palestinian (IP) conflict relevant? Indeed, has it ever been?
Gabriel Scheinmann, director of policy at the Jewish Policy Center doesn’t seem to think so. In fact, Scheinmann asserts ongoing US efforts to facilitate a peace agreement is a mistake, an exercise in diplomatic shapeshifting, and another example of America’s not so hidden “blame Israel” policy.
Scheinmann casts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the role of a contemporary Copernicus.
Like the 16th century Polish astronomer, Netanyahu is seen as a rebellious, solitary rational thinker battling backward-leaning dullards (the whole of the America’s foreign policy establishment, it seems) who insist and persist, despite obvious indications to the contrary, on the importance of IP.
Scheinmann supports Netanyahu’s inverted narrative that considers a broader Israeli-Arab rapprochement essential (no doubt at Iran’s expense) before IP can be addressed. No mention is made of the 2000’s Arab Peace Initiative that was swiftly rejected by Israel and is still on the table.
We all know Copernicus proved the Earth revolves around the Sun and not the other way around. But as observed on many an occasion, fear and implacable hostility to the Islamic Republic of Iran are at the center of Bibi’s solar system. And because peace without peace can be managed, he relegates IP to an ice encrusted outer orbit.
Read complete report here.
