President Biden continues to run away from his one-time conviction that there was “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia,” and that the regime that ordered the vicious murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi should be made a “pariah.” Instead, last week Biden floated a plan for an impossible peace deal among Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and Israel. The New York Times uncritically promoted the plan, in the process nearly erasing the criminal record of the Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Nearly forgotten in the Times’s excitement is one central fact: bin Salman did order the murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018, and his rule continues to be repressive, even as Western political leaders and businessmen (and some journalists) continue to try to rehabilitate his image.
Biden’s proposed comprehensive peace agreement was truly a jaw dropper. He, for some reason, released it in an interview with Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who — no doubt as Biden intended — started cheerleading for it immediately. Next, the Times assigned its top political reporter to do a news analysis about the plan, which took it seriously (but buried the Crown Prince’s guilt in the Khashoggi killing in the next to last paragraph). That was better than Friedman, who didn’t mention the murder at all, even though Khashoggi was, after all, his colleague as an American newspaper columnist.
What’s interesting is that the rest of the U.S. mainstream ignored the Biden/Friedman trial balloon. So far, not a word in the Washington Post, or on NPR, or CNN or MSNBC. (The Times must be embarrassed that no one else is taking their breathless scoop seriously.) The Israeli press was understandably more interested, but Haaretz got straight to the point in its first sentence: “. . . political realities make [such an agreement] impossible and unattainable under current conditions.”
Here, briefly, is the Biden/Friedman proposed deal. (This site’s excellent Mitchell Plitnick has just posted a longer dissection of the tentative proposal.) The Saudis would get a strong security alliance with the United States, more sophisticated American weapons, and a U.S.-monitored civilian nuclear program. Left unsaid in the Times accounts is that the whitewashing of bin Salman would continue. Israel would get mutual diplomatic recognition with Saudi Arabia, and — also left unsaid — Benjamin Netanyahu could dramatically distract attention from his usurpation of Israeli democracy. But in return, Israel would have to promise to stop additional “settlements” in the occupied West Bank and also end its threats to annex the territory.
By now, veteran Mideast observers are laughing out loud. Amir Tibon, in Haaretz, pointed out that “back in the realm of reality” the “far-right wing of the Netanyahu coalition” would sabotage any such agreement.
What’s even more surprising and amusing in this proposed peace plan is that 20 years ago, Thomas Friedman actually had direct involvement in its more plausible predecessor, the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. The then-Saudi Crown Prince (later King) Abdullah revealed the plan’s outline to Friedman during a dinner meeting in Riyadh. That plan “called for normalization of relations in return for a full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territory (including the Golan Heights) and the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
Israeli intransigence prevented King Abdullah’s plan from going anywhere, and Friedman inexplicably didn’t mention it in his latest column. Why Biden floated a proposal that he and his advisers must realize is almost certainly hopeless is a mystery that may await the memoirs and the diplomatic historians. For now, though, for the New York Times to pretend that a comprehensive peace could break out any time soon in Israel/Palestine is journalistic malpractice.
The word “ Yemen” is not mentioned in this piece. This is unfortunately very common with Westerners who write about the Saudis— the murder of a man who was friends with Western reporters, including Friedman , is seen as vastly more significant than a genocidal war (roughly 400,000 have died, the majority because of the Saudi blockade that was supported by the U.S.).
Friedman explicitly said once ( link below) that the murder of Khashoggi was worse than the war. Perhaps he doesn’t mention Khashoggi in this recent piece precisely because he knows that Westerners see that murder as the worst thing MBS has done. When you are trying to sell a product you might mention the war because to Westerners that is merely an unfortunate policy that didn’t work out, but a murder of someone Western reporters knew— that is personal.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/opinion/jamal-khashoggi-missing-saudi-journalist.html
US support for the Saudi war is one the worst things we have done in the past ten years
and it barely even registers.
More whitewashing by President Biden in order to “accomplish” something small and meaningless. Biden must think that the pro-Israel US money interests are all that matters when it comes to US Middle East policy.
Surely the chronic instability of Israeli governments also weighs heavily against anything resulting from this cockamamie plan.
Yemen aside, the other U.S. news organizations should be covering this Biden proposal no matter how stupid it is because it is important news. It is important even if the significance of the story is how bizarre it is. Then they could try to find out what the motivation is.
They might be covering for Biden in an election season where the choices are even more depressing than usual. The NYT tries to make the proposal seem serious. The other organizations look away in embarrassment.
Though if the Biden people keep pushing this the other news groups will cover it.
Does Biden seriously expect American soldiers to go to war, to kill and die, for MBS? ’cause that’s what a military guarantee promises.