We’ll Prove All Those Israeli-Arab Peace Agreements Worthless By Making Sure They Fail

by John Kerry, former US Secretary of State

Boston, December 15 – Almost to a man, we officials of Barack Obama’s presidential administration have dismissed the recent spate of normalized ties between Israel and various Muslim countries, having contended for years that no separate peace between Israel and the wider Arab or Muslim world could occur while the conflict with the Palestinians remains unresolved. The only option that remains, if we are to defend and maintain our longtime assumptions, is to short-circuit or hamstring any of those agreements that the parties reached over the last several months.

The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan have all inked agreements with Israel since October, with diplomatic whispers indicating several other such states waiting in the wings. The Trump administration, through Jared Kushner in particular, attempted to undermine the guiding assumptions of the foreign policy elite through several decades, specifically that the road to Israeli-Arab rapprochement runs through Ramallah, or Gaza. The recent string of their apparent successes, brokering treaty after treaty where the rest of us failed for so long, can mean only one thing: we must make every effort to show they are wrong and that no one must dare defy the conventional wisdom that had prevailed since the early 1990’s. By sabotaging those recent agreements, if necessary.

It therefore pleases me to no end that it appears the incoming Biden administration will do everything in its power to undo, roll back, mitigate, or otherwise negate this intolerable spate of normalization between Israel and the Arab world. The very future lies in the balance! By which I mean the future careers of all the think-tank personalities, diplomats, mediators, and others who have spent the better part of the last fifty years arguing that pressure on Israel to compromise on its core interests represents the only viable path to peace with the Arab world.

If my like-minded colleagues and I move swiftly enough, we can prevent this damage to our career, but swift – oh, how I have mixed feelings about that word – it must be, lest this new situation become cemented in reality and our lifelong pronouncements rendered less and less credible. And then we end up with fewer speaking engagements, our books fail to sell, and, worst of all, we no longer enjoy a legitimate outlet for the elite, casual antisemitism that animates so many of us!

We need no further proof that all this peace is horrible for the future of the region and the world.

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