"Between the Hammer and the Anvil"
Later this evening, President Biden will depart on Air Force One for Israel, his first official visit to the Middle East since taking the oath of office nearly 18 months ago. After talks with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid (who at the moment also serves as Israel’s Foreign Minister) and representatives of the Palestinian Authority, the President will get back on board his plane Air Force One and become the first POTUS to fly directly from Israel to Saudi Arabia. During his brief stay in Jeddah, where he will be attending the GCC+3 summit on Saturday with leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, along with Iraq, Egypt and Jordan. Biden will also hold private talks with both Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (generally referred to as “MBS”), the oil-rich kingdom’s de facto leader.
Diplomatic missions don’t simply pop up out of thin air; they require a loft of careful planning and frequently involve complex, interweaving back stories. As regards Israeli P.M. Lapid’s preparations, he has, over the past several days had personal conversations with Jordanian King Abdullah, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (the first in at least 5 years) and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; Israel has long had diplomatic relations with the first, shares common interests with the second, and wishes to become closer diplomatically with the third. In a message to the Saudis ahead of Biden’s expected direct flight from Israel to Jeddah, Prime Minister Lapid called for all countries in the region to build ties with Israel. “From Jerusalem, the [US] president’s plane will fly to Saudi Arabia, and he will carry with it a message of peace and hope from us,” Lapid said at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting.
For his part, President Biden’s preparations for attending the GCC+3 and face-to-face meeting with MBS) involve issues ranging from Saudi human rights violations to the brutal murder/dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. resident who worked for an American newspaper. In the 2020 presidential election, Biden was pointedly harsh when it came to characterizing the Saudi track record on human rights abuses as compared to Donald Trump, who frequently treated the oil-rich kingdom as America’s 51st state. During a debate in 2019, Biden said, “. . . the present government of that country [has] very little social redeeming value,” and that he would stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia and “make them, in fact, the pariah that they are.”
Now, of course, Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia has as much to do with oil and gas prices (which despite the daily dooming headlines has actually come down by nearly half dollar a gallon over the past several weeks). Considering how close we are to the midterm elections and how low the president’s ratings are - largely due to gas prices and inflation - he must be seen as doing something to help ameliorate the situation. Simply stated, that’s what politicians do.
As MSN op-ed writer Jonah Shepp noted in today’s Intelligencer column, “Whether or not one buys the justifications, global economics and politics have conspired to send Biden to meet with the Saudis whether he wants to or not. And from a moral standpoint, he probably doesn’t.” Such are the exigencies of global politics, where idealism and a nation’s historic sense what we stand for, of what is right and wrong must, from time to time, take a deeply troubling backseat to economic necessity. In going and - as some would have it - “groveling” at the feet of the Saudis, President Biden is nonetheless pretty much insulated from Trumpist and otherwise reactionary rhetorical brickbats. Those who will most likely find fault with his hat-in-hand diplomacy at the doorstep of the House of Saud are those perched to his political left; who cannot and will not abide with lending credence to a kingdom ruled by ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabists.
(For the uninitiated, Wahhabi is to Sunni Islam what Dominionism is to fundamentalist Christianity: Taliban-like theocracy for the masses, but libertine lifestyles for the leaders.) It’s the Wahhibi revivalists who keep women veiled and under the thumbs of their husbands and brothers, and issue lethal fatwas at the drop of a burqa. Likewise, it’s the Dominionists who demand that an impregnated 10-year old may not, regardless of circumstance, undergo an abortion . . . unless it’s their own daughter, sister or mistress.
The current Israeli P.M., former television host, journalist, actor and songwriter, Yair Lapid, who was until less than a decade ago widely ridiculed as a cocky and superficial political novice, is in somewhat the same position as Joe Biden, one of the most experienced and long-lived politicians of the past half century. Like Biden, Lapir is in an electoral pickle; the Israeli government has pretty much collapsed, and he is facing yet another nationwide election. His political coalition, which runs the gamut from centrists, two-state enthusiasts and Arab parties, is once again taking on Bibi Nitanyahu’s Likud block. He senses that increasing Israel’s ties to gulf-state, oil-rich Arab states and sultanates makes good political sense; hence the recent reaching out to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the U.A.E.
At the same time, this means that Lapid is all but giving his state’s imprimatur to countries and kingdoms whose record on human rights and the treatment of both women and religious minorities is the bipolar opposite of the Jewish State . . . the only democratic state in the Middle East.
Talk about being between the proverbial rock and a hard place! But then again no one ever said that hardcore politics and diplomacy were easy. Just how much civility, humanity and morality Lapid is willing to give up in order to secure greater, more powerful friendships is anyone’s guess. Selling the soul of a state to those who have spent generations promising the utter destruction of that state is a hard call. In an ideal world - whatever that is - Israel would tell Saudi Arabia and MBS to “stick it!” . . .. to begin treating women with equanimity and understanding . . . to finally abandon the 7th century and begin acting like modern men.
In Hebrew, the translation of “Between a rock and a hard place” is בין ההפשיט והסדן (bayn ha-pasheet v’ha-sah-dahn) literally meaning “between the hammer and the anvil.” While I certainly do not envy P.M. Lapid for being in this position, I do understand that in reaching out to MBS, he may well be positioned to help make Saudi Arabia - and indeed many of the oil-rich Muslim sheikdoms - better able to enter the 21st century.
Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone