Secretary of State Antony Blinken laid out in Davos on Wednesday the perennially failing solution to Middle East problems. “If you take a regional approach, and if you pursue integration with security, with a Palestinian state, all of a sudden you have a region that’s come together in ways that answer the most profound questions that Israel has tried to answer for years,” he said. “Iran is suddenly isolated,” he envisioned, “and will have to make decisions about what it wants its future to be.”
Special points for Mr. Blinken’s use of “all of a sudden.” Presto, peace.
But by pushing a Palestinian state at this unpromising juncture, at the summit of Palestinian violence and rejectionism, the Administration is handing Mr. Netanyahu a lifeline. He gets to stand up to President Biden on behalf of the overwhelming majority of Israelis.
Take it from Israeli President Isaac Herzog, a Netanyahu opponent and former Labor Party leader. “If you ask an average Israeli now,” he said Thursday, “nobody in his right mind is willing now to think about what will be the solution of the peace agreements.”
Israelis are focused on winning a war the Palestinians started, and the extent of Israel’s recent advance in southern and central Gaza is underappreciated. In the Biden Administration’s eagerness for a foreign-policy success, it shouldn’t forget that the more thorough the Hamas defeat, the more room Israel will have to compromise. Victory would do the most to pave the way to peace.
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