Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prides himself on his diplomatic acumen. One of the most experienced leaders on the world stage, he has weathered challenging Democratic administrations and managed to return to US President Donald Trump’s good graces after a crisis in ties, signed normalization deals with Arab states and found new allies across the globe.
Yet he was outmaneuvered diplomatically in recent months by a generally weak and ineffective leader, the sclerotic Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the effects of which we are now witnessing. In April, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that he might recognize a Palestinian state “in the coming months,” in the lead-up to a United Nations conference in June co-hosted with Saudi Arabia on the issue.
Ahead of the conference — which was eventually postponed to this week because of Israel’s aerial campaign against Iran — Abbas penned a letter to Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman outlining the main steps he thinks must be taken to end the war in the Gaza Strip and achieve peace in the Middle East “Hamas will no longer rule Gaza and must hand over its weapons and military capabilities to the Palestinian Security Forces,” wrote Abbas.
He said he was “ready to invite Arab and international forces to be deployed as part of a stabilization/protection mission with a (UN) Security Council mandate. “We are ready to conclude within a clear and binding timeline, and with international support, supervision and guarantees, a peace agreement that ends the Israeli occupation and resolves all outstanding and final status issues,” Abbas wrote. “Hamas has to immediately release all hostages and captives,” he added. (Read More)