David Wurmser
JNS, Mar. 29, 2022
“Bringing in the United States changed the summit’s dynamics and transformed part of it into a catastrophe.”
The just-concluded Sde Boker summit was at once a tremendous and moving success and an unmitigated disaster. It was in fact two summits happening at the same time.
The first was an Arab-Israeli summit and revolved around Arab-Israeli dynamics unimaginable only a few years ago, not only in their warmth but also in the seriousness of common strategic purpose. That aspect proceeded almost in complete obliviousness to the American elephant in the room. It was symbolized by the astonishing and heart-capturing speech by the United Arab Emirate’s foreign minister, His Excellency Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, in which he expressed his regret for knowing so little about Israel and his determination to remedy that.
The second summit was the U.S.-Israeli-Arab regional meeting, where America attempted to redefine the agenda and interject itself between Israelis and Arabs. In the process, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reflected not only his irrelevance but the harm of U.S. involvement at this point, based on its Middle East team’s haughty and increasingly hostile policy toward the states attending.
Dr. David Wurmser is director of the Center for Security Policy’s Project on Global Anti-Semitism and the U.S.-Israel Relationship. A former U.S. Navy Reserve intelligence officer, he has extensive national security experience working for the State Department, the Pentagon, Vice President Dick Cheney and the National Security Council.
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