This story originally appeared on themedialine.org.
Any hopes that the Israeli election would lead to a new initiative for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have been dashed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s election for a fourth term. The disappointment is especially acute among Israel’s neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, which remain the only two countries which have a peace treaty with Israel.
“This is Mr. Netanyahu’s fourth term, and if he was serious about a peace settlement he would have done it a lot earlier than this,” Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian foreign minister and currently with the Carnegie Center for Middle East Peace told The Media Line. “I still remember when (former Israeli Prime Minister) Yitzhak Rabin came into office. It was clear from Day One that he was actively pursuing a peace settlement. Mr. Netanyahu has been dragged into negotiations every time.”
Rabin and then Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo peace accords in 1993 – which laid out a framework for a comprehensive peace agreement. Rabin was assassinated in 1994 by an extremist Jew.
More than two-thirds of Jordan’s population are Palestinians, and hardliners in Israel have said that the Palestinian state should be created in Jordan, instead of in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
“Netanyahu’s statements against a two-state solution set off alarm bells in Jordan,” Muasher said. “Jordan has long been concerned that if there are not two states, a solution could come at its expense.”
He said that despite the government’s frustration with Netanyahu, Israel and Jordan shared a fear of radical Islam growing and taking root, and would cooperate to stop that.
Palestinian experts say they were hoping that the Zionist Union, led by Yitzhak Herzog would win the election.
“Herzog and (former Justice Minister Tzippi) Livni really want to see a two-state solution and Netanyahu doesn’t,” Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian government spokesman told The Media Line. “I think that is the fundamental difference between them.”
Netanyahu caused waves throughout the Arab world when he backed away from a previous acceptance of an independent Palestinian state in the days leading up to the Israeli election. That zig-zag sparked harsh American criticism of Netanyahu and a promise to “re-evaluate” the US position. There is concern in Israel that will mean a decision not to back Israeli in international organizations like the United Nations. There has been speculation that the US will not veto a Security Council resolution that calls for a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders with land swaps.
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told the liberal lobby group J Street that Palestinians will turn to international organizations like the UN because Netanyahu has shown that he is not interested in helping create an independent state.
“Netanyahu is not a two-stater,” Erekat said. “That is why we thought to ourselves, “what do we do to save the two-state solution?” and so we went to the United Nations.”
Israel has long said that it prefers a bilateral solution through direct negotiations and not to go through the UN, which it sees as biased against Israel.
Tensions between the US and Israel deepened further over a Wall Street Journal report that Israel had spied on closed-door conversations between the US and the international community over the Iranian nuclear program, a report the Israeli Defense Minister vehemently denied.
In the Gulf, analysts said they share a concern with Israel that Iran will become a nuclear power. There had been speculation that Saudi Arabia, along with Bahrain, Kuwait, and the UAE would support an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program if Israel decided to do so. However, it seems that the opportunity for an Israeli military strike has passed, given that Iran is now in negotiations with the US on a deal to curtail its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions being lifted.
Egypt, too, does not want Iran to become a nuclear power, fearing it could spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Egyptian and Israeli ties remain close, with intense security cooperation. Yet journalist and analyst Hisham Kassem says that the continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict means that the Egyptian army must remain on high alert, and cannot refocus to fight the growing extremist Islamist terrorist threat in the Sinai Peninsula. Dozens of Egyptian soldiers and police have been killed recently.
“The army really needs to turn into a counter-terrorism force and it can’t do that as long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues,” Kassem told The Media Line. “With all of the cooperation between Israel and Egypt, a war could still break out.”
Kassem said he was surprised when President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said he frequently speaks with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. At the same time, he said, he does not believe that Sisi has called the Prime Minister since the Israeli election.
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