Netanyahu, Saudi Arabia, 7 October (12/23) נתניהו, ערב הסעודית, 7 באוקטובר
- Ariel Avidar
- Apr 14
- 6 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
So again, we'll go back to to Bibi. He has been around a long time. He's now he's over 70 years old. And at this point, he is thinking, as he should, as we would understand, about his legacy. What will his legacy be? Will he be the prime minister who shepherded Israel through decades, gave us a strong economy and kept relative peace, which would be wonderful. It's a very seems like a very nice addition to his resume.
But even more so, will his legacy be as the prime minister who ended the Middle East war? And in essence, normalization with Saudi Arabia, everyone has said, is ending the Middle East war. And I think that is very, very high on Bibi's list on to do list. And probably I would say maybe his top priority. And I would say that why Bibi has been begging Biden for a meeting, as we've all seen in the press, publicly begging him to come, to invite him to have even a phone call.
What do we need all this for? Right, Bibi, as we said earlier, understands the US threat. And I put that in quotes, as he mentioned to Bennett. So Bibi is, again, rushing to Biden, because Biden is going to be the key for normalization with Saudi Arabia. And that is what is going to give Bibi his legacy.
And because Saudi Arabia really doesn't care, to say frankly, I don't think on their top priority list is the Palestinians. I don't think it's up there. I think a lot of the Arab world thinks the Palestinians have had their chance. They lost their chance. We want them to just keep quiet already. And now with the resurgency of an Islamic extremist group doing something that so publicly tarnishes Islam in their minds, forget it. They've had enough of this. Saudi Arabia would be very happy to come to terms with Israel. And push aside the Palestinians. I think that's been in the media before the war started.
But from Bibi's perspective, this seems like it's going to happen inevitably. But it would really be, again, from Bibi's perspective, a real shame if he put 20 years into this, made all of these relations, put Israel onto the world stage. And then his successor goes ahead and is the one who signs the deal who's going to end the Middle East crisis.
Bibi's -- pretty much his MO has been, and not to say it's good or bad, but obviously we're all the beneficiaries of it, it has been to keep the country economically successful. The global success that Israel has had goes without saying. Now, what is that based upon? It's based upon Bibi's work for, I would say, over 20 years of deciding that I'm going to keep these conflicts, whether it's in the south, whether it's in the north, whether it's Yehuda and Shomron, I'm going to keep these tolerable. I understand we will continue to suffer from it to some degree, but for the sake of economic stability, for the sake of moving the country forward, and for the sake of our image.
Now, again, what we saw a few weeks ago was devastating in every regard. And it's putting Bibi in a position where he has to act a little bit more. This is what Bibi and friends face right now. They have to decide and try to weigh to what degree.
Now, it doesn't have to be completely going against U.S. interests, but we also have to look at what has the U.S. done when somebody has gone against them. So the obvious example recently is going to be Afghanistan with the Biden administration, right? What did the U.S. do there? They fled. Now, I don't want to make an analogy that we are like Afghanistan to the United States, right? That's by far not the intent. But the point being is that the United States has a lot of fluff to its words these days, and it doesn't have the credibility, I think, in terms of acting as it used to.
So I don't think we would have to worry about something so dramatic from the United States. But nonetheless, we would have to tread carefully. We don't know, like we said earlier, we don't know exactly. I'm not privy to, I doubt Yonatan is also, but to exactly what widgets we need for our military.
So if I give -- Yonatan, here's your fancy Lexus car, or for your days, your fancy Cadillac (laughter) -- so I give you your fancy car. You have a fancy car, and then I say to you, but I'm not going to give you any tires. So how far are you going to get, right? A car without tires. So if that is, and we're not privy to this. BB is, and the leadership, they are privy to this.
And if it is the case that we have a bunch of cars that have no tires, then that completely will determine how we can really act. And since we're not aware of that, it's very easy for us to sit on the Zoom and say, I would do this and I would do that. But really, if I found out that all my cars have no tires, then good luck, good luck operating.
What can happen is as time goes by, two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, people get tired. The press move on to something else. The mobilized soldiers get tired. And the consumers in the United States, in Israel, those who are seeing the news nonstop, we get tired. So I could see a situation where using hostages, unfortunately, we're using, because you said, we have to go in and finish with Hamas. Everybody's saying that now, but when we get six months in and they start to trickle hostages out, will we start to hear a narrative of, well, maybe not destroy Hamas, but Hamas's capabilities are pretty much negated. We've defeated this whole list of leaders.
If anybody remembers from the time of the Gulf War, we had a whole list of playing cards of these leaders were taken out and those leaders were taken out. And that was our measure of success, including George Bush coming and sitting, going on the aircraft carrier, I believe it was, saying, now we declare the end of hostilities. So a lot of it depends on how things can be framed and they could be framed very, very differently from what the reality is on the ground.
In terms of what Bibi says and what Bibi will eventually do is very difficult to put those two together. That's by design and by intent. Bibi is a very savvy and has been a very savvy politician and that's why he's been around for a very long time.
And his MO often is to use plausible deniability, where he'll say, listen, Yehuda, I would love to, I promised you XYZ not too long ago, I would love to fulfill XYZ, just as I said, but now I have pressure from Lizzie to do so-and-so, so therefore I can't do it. And right, just replace the names with whether it's Gantz, whether it's the right wing, whether it's the Americans, whether it's so-and-so. So what Bibi says today, again, not to say it's anything conniving, this is how politicians operate.
So we could hear today, and this is in our case, what he's doing, I think, with the Americans. He knows that we need American military support, at least to this point, for weaponry, I would assume. I'm not privy to any additional information on that, but we do need, of course, to some degree to replenish everything that we use.
So he could say to the Americans, yes, yes, Blinken, I agree with everything you say, and then, of course, come down the road when the road is, whether it's one year, two years, five years, he'll say, look, I said it then, I believed it then, I meant it then, however, XYZ means I can't do so-and-so. And that's, again, to our benefit or to our detriment, depending on what side we're on.
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