Wednesday Edition | Opinion | In Jerusalem, Biden Signs the Palestinians’ Death Certificate

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2022-07-16/ty-article-opinion/.highlight/biden-signs-the-palestinians-death-certificate/00000182-07db-d7d0-a3ae-cfdbafd00000?

By Gideon Levy
Published July 16, 2022

At Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem, of all places, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a death certificate. The two-state solution died a long time ago, and now so has the Palestinians’ strategic choice of relying on the West in their struggle for their national rights.

This hope drew its last breath at Augusta Victoria. In his speech Biden mused at great length about his and his family’s time in the hospital; he remembered the intensive care ward. A flat line on the monitor meant death, he learned there. About an hour later, in Bethlehem, the monitor flatlined. The path the Palestinians embarked on 50 years ago has come to an end. They have reached a dead end.

At the beginning of the ‘70s, a new star appeared in the political skies: the cardiologist Issam Sartawi, a refugee from Acre, a student in Iraq, an exile in Paris and an architect of the plane hijackings. He underwent a complete change. He became the Palestinians’ trailblazer to the West’s heart; until then they had relied on nonaligned countries. Sartawi led the Palestinians to Bonn, Vienna, Paris and Stockholm instead of Moscow, Jakarta, Delhi and Kuala Lumpur.

This was depicted as an excellent choice. The protégé and even the darling of Western Europe’s social democratic stars of those days – Willy Brandt, Bruno Kreisky, Olof Palme and François Mitterrand – continued on to the Israelis’ hearts. Sartawi began with meetings with representatives of the Israeli left. Yasser Arafat enthusiastically joined the path his adviser had blazed. It seemed much more promising than winning support from Karachi...

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Only Saudi Arabia and Israeli Arabs Can Save Israel as a Jewish Democracy

Source: The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/opinion/israel-saudi-arabia-biden-trip.html

By Thomas L. Friedman
Published July 15, 2022

t is great to see President Biden visiting the Middle East. America has long played a vital role in advancing the peace process there. But as someone who has followed this region for decades, I can tell you that I’m seeing something new, something that is as ironic as it is surprising: Only Saudi Arabia and the Israeli Arabs can save Israel as a Jewish democracy today — not America.

That’s because, for different reasons, Israeli Arab voters and Saudi Arabia have more power than ever before to force Israelis to choose: They can have a democratic state in Israel and the West Bank, but over time, with high Arab birthrates, it may not be Jewish. They can have a state that is Jewish in Israel and the West Bank, but it won’t be democratic. Or they can have a state that is Jewish and democratic, but it cannot permanently occupy the West Bank.

Those existential choices have been with Israel since 1967, when it captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem in war. But Israel has increasingly refused to choose, so much so that in Israel’s recent four elections in two years, its political parties — from both the right and the left — largely ignored the whole “Palestinian question.” That was alarming.

That doesn’t have to be true when Israel goes to the polls for the fifth time in less than four years, on Nov. 1. While America has grown weary of the rancorous, frustrating process of cajoling Israelis and Palestinians into a two-state solution, Saudi Arabia and Israeli Arabs can now spearhead that role — and I hope they will. Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state may depend on it...

Read more: Only Saudi Arabia and Israeli Arabs Can Save Israel as a Jewish Democracy

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Biden and the History of Zionism in the United States

Source: Egyptian Streets
https://egyptianstreets.com/2022/07/18/biden-and-the-history-of-zionism-in-the-united-states/

By AMINA ZAINELDINE
Published July 18, 2022

“I did say and I say again, you need not be a Jew to be a Zionist.” Those were the words of US President Joe Biden, a devout Catholic, to a group of Israeli officials upon arriving in Tel Aviv on 13 July 2022.

This statement, made proudly in reference to himself, is not one Biden was making for the first time. In fact, he made it twice before: At the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in 2014, and even earlier in 2007 in an interview on American-Jewish cable network Shalom TV.

Biden is no stranger to repeating striking statements in support of Israel. As early as 1986, he stood on the Senate floor representing the state of Delaware and declared that “were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region” – a statement he repeated nearly verbatim in 2014 as Vice President.

Among the members of the United States’ political establishment, particularly those less connected to the gradually changing international rhetoric around Israel, vocal and unconditional support for the state of Israel is not only not considered a morally questionable political standpoint, but referred to as no less than a moral obligation.

Decades prior even to the establishment of the state of Israel on Palestinian land in 1948, American presidents have been expressing support for the Zionist movement...

Read more: Biden and the History of Zionism in the United States