Zaki Shalom

In mid-May 1967, massive Egyptian forces began entering the Sinai Peninsula, a blatant violation of the understandings reached under the auspices of the US administration after Operation Kadesh. The core of the understandings was that Sinai was to remain a demilitarized zone, in which UN forces would be stationed in order to separate between Israel and Egypt. President Gamal Abdel Nasser went even further than deploying his army in Sinai and at the same time ordered the UN forces to leave Sinai and Gaza. He claimed that Egypt was free to do as it pleased in these territories since they were under Egyptian sovereignty. UN Secretary U Thant acceded to his demand. Egypt continued to escalate the tension with Israel when it announced the blocking of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, with the clear knowledge that Israel would view this as a casus belli and with the understanding that the blocking of the straits would put Israel in an untenable economic and strategic situation, since the vast majority of its oil supply arrived from Iran by way of the Straits of Tiran.

Recent years have witnessed the gradual emergence of closer relations between the State of Israel and a number of “pragmatic” Arab Gulf states, manifested in a growing number of cautious measures of normalization. This process reached a new height with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent visit to Oman, the first public visit in 22 years of an Israeli prime minister to the sultanate. To be sure, Israel’s relations with Oman are not new, but  the publicity surrounding Netanyahu’s visit – in addition to the official presence of the Israeli judo delegation in Abu Dhabi and the extensive media coverage of Miri Regev, Minister of Culture and Sport, at the event – bespeaks an evolving willingness on the part of some Gulf states to expose more of their relations with Israel in their domestic arenas, and to signal publicly their readiness to move forward gradually in normalizing relations with Israel, albeit subject to concrete progress in the Israeli-Palestinian political process. Oman holds tools to assist in the political process, if only due to its current capacity as the only actor that enjoys some level of confidence from both Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel would be wise to take advantage of its achievements in the regional arena and leverage the significant improvement in its regional status, particularly its improved relations with Oman, in pursuit of its strategic interests.

Senior officials within the Iranian regime have long been convinced that American administrations have striven to infiltrate Iran’s internal system and topple the Islamic regime, and this impression has been bolstered of late. For its part, even if the Trump administration has not presented a defined position on regime change in Iran, it undoubtedly has a clear interest in this regard. Yet the US administration has no concrete ability to bring about regime change in Iran in the desired direction – not by supporting internal opposition forces, and certainly not through military intervention. If the Iranian regime does change in the future, it will presumably result from internal processes and not external intervention.

Israel, the United States, and the Struggle over the Settlement Construction Freeze, 2009-2010 sketches the long and winding road President Barack Obama took during his first two years in office to bring about an Israel-Palestinian agreement. Based on a wide range of sources and the testimony of senior members of the US administration and the Israeli government, the book describes how US-Israel relations deteriorated to the verge of a severe crisis. The author analyzes the reasons and constraints that kept an agreement from being advanced, contrary to the hopes of the new president.

President Trump’s statements during his recent visit to the Middle East reflect a profound commitment to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. To this end, President Trump is demonstrating his desire to avoid the mistakes of the preceding administration, which was not successful in advancing an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. Nevertheless, despite the different “spirit” that President Trump brings with him regarding the peace process, it is difficult to understand the basis of his firm belief in his ability to “close a deal” between Israel and the Palestinians. In the end, the fundamental positions of the two sides are well known, and for the foreseeable future the gaps defy bridging. As President Trump presumably understands this, his main goal therefore seems to be to jumpstart a political process in a regional context, in order to create an infrastructure for a regional coalition in the struggle against jihad terrorism and against Iranian subversion.