Hamas just torched Biden's deal to remake the Middle East
Hamas doesn’t like an American deal with the Saudis and Israelis, and decided to set it all on fire.
It turns that Hamas had a veto in the diplomacy and grand strategy of the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Those three countries have been — somewhat quietly, and at the urging of the White House — inching toward a three-way deal that could reshape geopolitics in the region and beyond. But their arrangement would have left the Palestinians in the cold. So Hamas, the most militant group representing Palestinians, decided to blow the whole thing up.
In the most literal sense. Over the past 24 hours, Hamas has been firing thousands of rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel, killing dozens of Israelis and leaving parts of Ashkelon and other cities looking like Ukraine after a Russian missile barrage. Simultaneously, Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel by land, sea and air, taking Israelis hostage in their own homes.
"We are at war," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded, as Israel's army pounds the Gaza Strip in retaliation. Neither Bibi nor his far-right coalition partners have ever needed coaxing to crack down hard and harder on Palestinians — or to build new Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank. Now, though, Netanyahu's ultra-nationalist government has the casus belli it needs to do almost anything it wants.
In the perverse logic of this region, this also advances Hamas's interests. The Palestinians weren't happy about the slow-motion rapprochement between their putative protectors in the land of Mecca and Medina, the Saudis, and the Israelis, chaperoned by the administration of US President Joe Biden.
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The Saudis have never recognized Israel as a nation and always officially sided with the Palestinians. At the same time, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader, is keen to re-position Saudi Arabia in global power politics. He espies his worst regional enemies in Iran, not Israel. And to find partners he can take bids from either China or the US as that pair duels for global preeminence.
So MBS, as the crown prince is known, has been open to a bold plan by the Biden administration. The Saudis would make official and genuine peace with Israel, in return for American security guarantees and help with civilian nuclear technology. Israel would move yet another Arab country, and the most important of them all, from the enemies' to the partners' column. In return, it would promise to treat the Palestinians better, without specifying exactly how.
The US, meanwhile, would nudge China out of the region and build the beginnings of an alliance that could also hold Iran in check. Simultaneously, Washington could use this new leverage to thaw relations with Tehran.
The weakest links in this scheme were the Israeli government and the Palestinians. Netanyahu's coalition partners don't believe in a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, and would prefer to swallow the West Bank whole, even at the expense of turning it in effect into an apartheid state. The Palestinians, meanwhile, knew that their interests ranked low even in Riyadh. Viewed from the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, things seemed about to get worse.
So Hamas lit the fuses of which the region has such an endless supply. The tenuous ceasefire between Israelis and Palestinians is now canceled, the spirals of hate and misery are churning again, and the pressure on the Saudis and others to sympathize with their fellow Arabs will pause any further warming with Israel.
Just last month, a tourism minister became the first Israeli cabinet member ever to make a public visit to Saudi Arabia, when he attended a conference in Riyadh. It was one of many baby steps meant to lead up to the bigger deal as envisioned in Washington. Now that gesture already seems to belong to another era.
The US has no choice but to urge restraint on all involved — Hamas, naturally, but also Bibi, MBS and the rest. Meanwhile, Biden's grand strategy in the Middle East has been singed, if not torched.
The White House was already struggling to keep Congress onside in supporting Ukraine, as House Republicans turn on one another and tear their own edifices down. Those same rabble-rousers will now blame Biden for going soft on Iran, wobbly on Israel and shaky in the Middle East. Hamas didn't just launch rockets into Israel; it's also sending payloads all the way to Washington and beyond.
Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist.
Disclaimer: This article first appeared on Bloomberg, and is published by special syndication arrangement.
