Any Saudi-Israel Deal Must Include the Palestinians—For Israel's Sake | Opinion

The geopolitical rumor mill is working overtime on a possibly imminent normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel. If such a deal happens, it would probably be good for President Joe Biden, who needs a foreign policy accomplishment, and great for Saudi Arabia, which would be handsomely rewarded. But unless it moves the needle on the Palestinian issue as well, it could be pretty bad for Israel.

That's because Israel's main problem in the region right now is not the absence of formal peace with Saudi Arabia. It is not even the hostile regime in Iran with its proxies Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, though these are big problems to be sure. Israel's main problem is preserving a democratic Jewish-majority state for itself. That's something the current government is so badly undermining that one could convincingly argue that this motley crew of ultranationalists and religious fanatics, helmed by a criminal defendant, is Israel's biggest nemesis.

It is imperative for Israelis to defenestrate this cabal, but a Saudi deal not conditioned on monitored progress with the Palestinians would almost certainly strengthen it instead. It would hand a new lease on life to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a leader who at present does more than anyone on the planet not named Vladimir Putin to perfect the blueprint for turning democracy into autocracy. It's a formula the gang around former President Donald Trump will probably seek to emulate, should he return to office.

On the surface, the country is stupendously successful. With a population of 10 million people, it is one of the top tech innovation ecosystems on the planet, and its per capita GDP of $55,000 last year bested that of most European countries, including France, Germany, and Britain. But for decades it has been ignoring two enormous problems, and Netanyahu this year has created a third.

The first problem is Israel's effective rule of the West Bank.

Throughout his 16 years of premiership, Netanyahu ignored the occupation and its consequences on Israel's national security, identity, and ethics. He promoted an informal incremental annexation, which has accelerated during his current term. Instead of promoting an Israeli-Palestinian disengagement into two distinct nation-states with a border between them, Netanyahu's coalition promotes the opposite, speeding up Israeli settlement, eliminating prospects for an eventual egalitarian and peaceful future, exacerbating a daily security nightmare, and inexorably transforming Israel into a binational, non-democratic state. In effect, Israel needs divorce from the Palestinians much more urgently more than a wedding with Saudi Arabia.

The second problem is the ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority, the Haredim. The group accounts for a sixth of the population but doubles its proportion every generation with an average of seven children per family. Mostly, they insist that men devote huge chunks of their lives to religious study, refuse to allow a core curriculum into schools, evade military service, and post an employment level that is shockingly low. Via child subsidies and the enabling of this madness, Netanyahu is turning Israel into a failed state when they become the majority.

To understand the depth of cynicism Israel is dealing with, consider the following: Before the November 2022 election candidate Netanyahu scuttled a deal to get a major Haredi subsect to adopt a core curriculum enabling its youngsters to be employable. He promised reckless rabbis eager to keep their flock dependent that if victorious he would demand no such thing, and for a change it is a promise he has kept.

Now comes strike three: Netanyahu is endeavoring to turn Israel into an authoritarian state, so that the first two follies can continue unimpeded by judicial review. The "reforms" he bamboozles the U.S. media about—for he dares not subject himself to knowledgeable interviewers in Israel—would both let the government appoint the judges and allow it to easily overrule them. Even Russia's President Putin would admire such an airtight scam.

The result has been an explosion of civil society outrage. Hundreds of thousands protest each week in the streets, pilots are refusing to train, money is moving out of the country, investments have almost disappeared, most new startups are now registered in the United States and not locally, the currency is being battered and Israel's credit rating has been put on notice.

Polls in Israel are fairly accurate, and all of them show that Netanyahu would be crushed in an election today (the 2022 election, in terms of the popular vote, was basically a tie, despite Netanyahu's lies about a popular "mandate"). The authoritarian project, with its attendant economic and societal damage, are proving a bridge too far for the electorate. At least a fifth of the right-wing vote has migrated to centrist parties eager to remove the prime minister.

Israel desperately needs this course correction. And that's why, with all due respect to the importance of peace between Jerusalem and Riyadh, it should not be allowed to morph into a free ride for the Netanyahu system overhaul.

If Netanyahu were to use the deal to entrench his rule, and to fast-track his effort to turn Israel from a liberal democracy into an elected autocracy, the result would be despair for millions of Israelis—the ones who carry the nation's economy and defense on their backs and who are the engine of its tech innovation.

Israel's face to the world would become that of the current finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a "minister in the defense ministry"; he is a zealot who yearns for Jewish-Arab segregation in maternity wards, wants religious law to reign supreme, recently called for a Palestinian village to be "erased," and in recent days cancelled significant funding to Israeli Arab towns claiming that was his "ideology." It would also be Itamar Ben-Gvir, the "national security minister" who boasts terrorism convictions and was an open supporter of the Jewish terrorist who massacred dozens of Palestinians in Hebron in 1994.

The likes of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir talk a mean racist game, but most of them evaded the army or did token service. They are a pitiful cohort who cannot defend the country, certainly not in the complicated multi-front reality confronting Israel.

Moreover, to have such people hold key security positions in a country of Israel's strategic importance is a national security problem for other countries as well, including the United States.

So, sure: Israel could benefit from having an additional friend in the Arab world. Saudi Arabia is an important and oil-rich country, and if it joined the Abraham Accords this would go a long way towards making acceptance of the Jewish state the norm in the Middle East, achieving a key goal of Zionism.

But if that deal also enables Netanyahu to proceed with the ruination of the nation, then it nets negative for Israel.

There is a more positive scenario: that the peace deal Biden presumably pursues includes a Palestinian track and a genuine embarking on a path toward a binding, continuous and benchmarked process of disengagement from the Palestinians. If Netanyahu went along, something of his legacy might be salvaged, and all parties might benefit from a more stable Middle East.

Of course, it is hard to imagine the current government agreeing to such a scenario. The coalition would likely come unglued, taking with it its massive push for unlimited government power. The election that would trigger would be a referendum on a grander deal than a mere bilateral "normalization": a future of hope and prosperity for the region, versus a wallowing in backwardness and conflict. The Israeli government likely to result from that election would be, at last, a government that works to secure liberty, justice, and peace for all Israelis.

That's a Biden legacy worth savoring, and that's what a true friend of Israel would pursue.

The existential threat to Israel posed by its own government is one of the most fascinating stories in the world today. It is a cautionary tale for the rest of the world, beginning with the United States, where Trump lies in wait. We are living through a riveting chapter in what Honore de Balzac called the human comedy.

Dan Perry is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press. He also served as the chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem. Follow him at danperry.substack.com and twitter.com/perry_dan

Gilead Sher is the former senior peace negotiator and chief of staff of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. A fellow in Middle East Peace and Security at Rice University's Baker Institute, he co-founded the 2023 pro-democracy resistance headquarters.

The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.