In Israel, Blinken is Betting on the Wrong Peace Process

Four Israeli prime ministers from different political parties offered compromises in the name of peace over the years, but Palestinian leaders rejected them all. Rather than laying the groundwork for peace, the PA’s education system is rife with incitement to violence: Palestinian schoolbooks have erased Israel from the map, and the PA continues rewarding terrorists and their families with handsome salaries for killing and maiming Jews.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas—who is now entering the eighteenth year of his four-year term—is eighty-seven years old and deeply unpopular. More than three-quarters of West Bank Palestinians want him to resign. But the PA’s troubles don’t end there. The West Bank is facing the deadliest increase in violence since the Second Intifada (2000–2005), with more Israelis killed in the West Bank in almost a decade and more Palestinian fatalities since 2007.

Against this backdrop, it makes no sense for Blinken to create a linkage between advancing regional normalization and the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Instead, the United States should be working furiously to decouple the two.

The normalization track has particular value for Washington because it is building a robust regional alliance to serve as a bulwark against Iran.

President Joe Biden has reiterated time and again that he will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. However, a recent analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security estimates that Iran is dangerously close to breakout capacity. A nuclear Iran threatens not only threatens Israel but also U.S. allies and assets in the Gulf and beyond. If Iran becomes a nuclear power, it will set off a nuclear arms race in the region and super-charge the many proxy militias that Iran has funded around the Middle East.

As Iran barrels towards nuclear capabilities, and with America’s attention and resources drawn to pressing global threats like the war in Ukraine and the threat from China, Blinken should focus on rallying a coalition to share the work of deterring and containing Iran. In that coalition, Israel is the only country that has credible options for the use of force to prevent a nuclear Iran.

By placing an unnecessary emphasis on Israel’s domestic issues and the elusive dream of Palestinian statehood, Blinken underscored an apparent fissure between the U.S. and its strongest and most capable Middle Eastern ally. But there is still time for the Biden administration to reevaluate its strategy and set its priorities straight: national security and regional stability before the national cause of a hapless Palestinian Authority.

Enia Krivine is the senior director of the Israel Program and the FDD National Security Network at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow Enia on Twitter at @EKrivine. Jonathan Conricus is an advisor to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing on the Middle East, terrorism, media, and information warfare. Follow Jonathan on Twitter at @jconricus. FDD is a nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.