«Netanyahu feels that he has the Republicans on his side and that there is a good chance that Trump will be reelected. He doesn’t really have to listen to Biden»

NEW YORK Edward Abington was the US Consul General in Jerusalem from 1993 to 1997. He was the Americans’ key contact with Yassar Arafat, and the man who mediated with the Palestinians during negotiations for the implementation of the Oslo Accords. His 30-year career at the State Department began at the Jordan Desk a month before the Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s air hijackings, with the consequent tensions that brought the expulsion of the PLO from Jordan to Syria and Lebanon. Abington was in Israel during the 1973 war and was involved in Kissinger’s Middle East negotiations. His work at the Israel desk meant that he met every Israeli prime minister from Golda Meir onward, as well as every Palestinian leader, but never with the leaders of Hamas, as American diplomats were not authorized to do so. He is currently retired and living in The Hague after working for six years as a consultant in Washington with the Palestinian Authority, especially with former prime minister Salam Fayyad. He has a deep knowledge of the region, and is very pessimistic about the future of Gaza.

Blinken is on his foruth visit to the region, but behind the scenes at the State Department they admit that the two-state solution will be difficult, not only because of Netanyahu, but for Israelis in general after the trauma of October 7th.
�I think that a lot of people don’t really understand how traumatic this has been to Israelis. In 1973. I was there, throughout the war. We had to put blackout curtains on our windows at home. We had to drive almost with the lights out at night. But, you know, (the fighting) was down at the Suez Canal and up on the Golan Heights. It never actually came inside Israel. And then October 7 happened horrendous as it was, but it totally surprised the Israelis. And it was the first time since 1948 that Israel itself -within the pre ’67 borders- has been attacked. Hamas totally humiliated the IDF, and I think that part of the ferocity of the Israeli attacks against Hamas is related to that humiliation and it’s also this idea that is central to the IDF: which is deterrence. They did that in Dahiya, on the outskirts of Beirut in 2006. The idea is that you batter your supposed enemies hard enough that they will think twice about attacking you again. This Dahiya doctrine is what they have been implementing in Gaza. On the other aspect, you’ve got Netanyahu who is desperate to stay in, and Israelis blame him -rightly so- for not anticipating this and allowing it to happen. Plus, he has the most right-wing government in Israel’s history with these ministers both in his party and in these very extreme parties in his coalition that are calling for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. So Netanyahu is pushing the idea of total victory over Hamas. Netanyahu is a clever man, he’s not showing his hand in terms of what his ultimate objectives are, but I think that he would like to see the expulsion of as many Palestinians from Gaza as possible. I think Netanyahu has made the calculation that even though the Egyptians are adamantly opposed to accepting large numbers of Palestinians because they know that Israel would never allow them to return to Gaza, he reckons that Egypt has enough interest in keeping the peace treaty that they won’t break. Ultimately, the Biden Administration is looking at the elections next November, so they would acquiesce even if they would be unhappy�.

Do you think that Blinken’s shuttle diplomacy is working? The Biden administration says that embracing Israel and supporting their right to defend themselves against Hamas allows them to push for assurances in protecting Palestinian civilians.
�You know the Arabic expression kalam fadi? Empty words. The worry is that what Biden is telling Netanyahu in his phone calls, and what Blinken is saying in his visits, if you don’t put it out in public, he is going to ignore you. Netanyahu feels that he has the Republicans on his side. He has probably calculated that there is a good chance that Trump will be reelected in November. And he doesn’t really have to listen to Biden. The Americans say that they have pushed to allow more food and so forth, and the Israelis have agreed to take some of the pressure off but it is nowhere near what is needed. Netanyahu, if he stays in power, there’s no way he’s going to engage in serious negotiations. And on the Palestinian side: Mahmoud Abbas, whom I’ve known since 1993, is old. His health is not good. Many of the Palestinian leaders are the same since 1994, and they have failed to build a popular case among Palestinians in the West Bank, much less Gaza. I don’t think they’re capable of negotiating. So when I hear the administration, and for that matter, Europeans, talk about a two-state solution, for the life of me, I don’t see how you can get there. I think the Israeli public in general has been so traumatized, that they’re not going to support negotiation that has as its objective the creation of a viable Palestinian state. I don’t take seriously what the Biden Administration is saying about this. I’ve heard there’s a lot of planning and stuff like that going on. But everyone I talked to - my former colleagues in the State Department, the National Security Council - they just kind of threw up their hands. They don’t think they know where they’re going�.

Is there a risk of escalation in the region?
�It is still a very dangerous situation. Particularly if you look at the ongoing exchange of fire between Hezbollah and the Israelis. But there’s a certain threshold that they will be careful not to go above. And I don’t think — despite the assassination of this Hamas official Arouri — I don’t think that Hezbollah is really going to retaliate in a serious way against that. But it’s dangerous, because as we’ve seen in the past, in this region, there can be miscalculation which can certainly be very dangerous. The last thing I think Biden wants at this point is hostilities between the United States and Iran. For that matter, if the situation with Hezbollah deteriorates a lot, the last thing he wants is to get sucked into fighting in Lebanon through airstrikes or whatever. That would be a disaster from Biden’s viewpoint�.

What is the plan for after the war?
�I don’t think Israel has a real day-after plan. The Minister of Defence Gallant has expressed ideas that are different from what Netanyahu has been saying, which is basically that there will be no Palestinian Authority role in Gaza anymore. I don’t know which version will emerge, but I think that both have said that Israel will continue to conduct military raids in Gaza as they see fit, without any limitations from anyone outside like the United States. Gallant has said there should be a multinational force in Gaza, which would include the United States, some Arab countries, and perhaps Europeans. I don’t see how you can put a multinational force in Gaza, knowing that Israel reserves the right to go in and strike wherever and whenever it wants to. I don’t see how you get Europeans, Saudis, the Emirates, and others willing to put up a lot of money and maybe even put troops on the ground unless they have some assurance, a lot of assurance, that Israel is not going to go in and destroy it all again. Then there’s the question of the Palestinians. Even if they don’t go into Sinai, what do you do with them after hostilities, or after a reduction in hostilities? Who’s going to rebuild housing? Maybe 60% of the housing has been destroyed. I’ve been to Gaza maybe 400 times. I’ve never seen total destruction like this, with no sewage and the infrastructure destroyed. Will Israel let concrete and other materials go in, or will they say it will be diverted to build more tunnels? The Palestinians have nowhere to go, they have nowhere to live�.

How long will the war go on?
�I think that the intense bombing will start to wind down in a couple of months. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Israel carried out almost daily airstrikes for the rest of the year. Not massive bombings, but selected targets with bombs and missiles, and occasionally send in armour and infantry, if they see a big enough target. I can see that, quite frankly, going on indefinitely�.

The United States has talked about revitalizing the Palestinian Authority, which is not even popular in the West Bank. Who can be a leader for the Palestinians?
�I don’t know, the Palestinian political scene is broken. I don’ know that it’s something the United States can do. It has to come from the Palestinians. Sure, there are people at the State Department or the National Security Council trying to figure out how you reinvigorate the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. And what I’ve said about Gaza is also true of the West Bank: The Area A should be under the authority of the Palestinian Security Services, but the Israelis go in and out, arresting and shooting people at will. The Palestinian security services stand back and don’t get in the way, because they know if they do the Israelis are going to open fire on them and wound or kill them. Israel has to be willing to loosen its grip on the West Bank, and that will require a major US-Israeli confrontation. Remember the Madrid Conference. Yitzhak Shamir was the prime minister at the time, George HW Bush was president and James Baker was Secretary of State. Baker went to Congress and said, “When the Israelis are interested in talking about peace with their neighbors, here’s my number, call me at this number.” He was tough. He knew exactly what he was doing. And Shamir eventually kind of caved in on a lot of things, and he came to the Madrid peace conference. But he ended up losing the elections and Yitzhak Rabin became the Prime Minister… You need to have that kind of a confrontation with the Israelis if you want to revitalize the Palestinian Authority�.

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