https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2023/10/08/has-hamas-ended-bidens-bid-for-a-saudi-israel-deal/

The short answer is no, but many stars will need to align before negotiations can resume.

On Friday morning, the Biden administration awoke to the fact that a massive attack on southern Israel by Hamas had probably demolished its ambitious efforts to reshape the Middle Eastern strategic landscape. US officials were amazed that Israel was caught by surprise, despite the intense surveillance and human and signals intelligence that tracks activity in the Gaza Strip.

For now, the game-changing and increasingly plausible effort to redraw the Middle Eastern strategic landscape by brokering Saudi-Israeli normalisation, and strengthen the US hand against Iran in the immediate term and China in the long term is, at the very least, on hold. It could be the case that Tehran even strongly encouraged Hamas to launch the offensive precisely to sabotage a Saudi-Israeli rapprochement.

Israel has vowed to respond with crushing blows against Hamas, which has apparently seized dozens of Israeli hostages. So the likelihood is a prolonged military campaign with little restraint by Israel’s powerful military to kill as many Hamas leaders, militants and supporters, and destroy as much of its infrastructure and equipment, as possible.

The track record of powerful militaries taking on much weaker guerrilla forces in smaller territories is replete with a chronic inability to prevent huge civilian casualties and, typically, massacres, whether intended or accidental. The Israeli military has undertaken numerous operations of this kind, mainly in Lebanon and Gaza. Israelis will probably feel less compunction than ever about Palestinian civilian casualties, given the scale and intensity of the Hamas attack. But others, especially the Arab world, will be enraged and appalled, potentially inhibiting Saudi normalization with Israel.

The Saudi government’s initial statement called on all sides to show restraint but also cited Riyadh’s “repeated warnings of the dangers of the explosion of the situation as a result of the continuation of the occupation, the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights and the repetition of systematic provocations”. That language, in particular, caused considerable consternation among several key Biden administration officials.

One of the goals of the attack, already at least partially successful, is surely to drive a wedge between Riyadh and Washington, because there remains a fundamental difference between them regarding the occupation and the Palestinians, in policy but even more in attitude.

The instinct of Saudi leaders, cognisant of not only their pro-Palestinian domestic audience, but also their country’s role as a regional Arab and global Muslim leader, is to never lose sight of Palestinian rights and grievances. US politicians, on the other hand, tend to compete over who can be more pro-Israel, especially when Israelis are being killed.

Indeed, former president Donald Trump and several other Republican presidential candidates sought to directly blame the Biden administration for the Hamas attack by pointing to Mr Biden’s recent decision to unfreeze $6 billion in South Korean payments for Iranian oil in order to secure the release of Americans being held hostage by Iran. Mr Trump falsely described this money as “American taxpayer dollars” that “helped fund the attacks”.

In reality, the South Korean money was transferred to a third-party account in Qatar and can only be used for humanitarian purposes. Moreover, none of it has yet been spent. Nonetheless, his Republican opponents will seek to pummel Mr Biden for somehow being responsible for the Hamas attack on Israel, if nothing else because they allege he has created an atmosphere of American “weakness”.

The future of Mr Biden’s triangular normalisation initiative depends on Israel’s response to the attack. Given the scale of the assault and the radical failure of Israeli security measures regarding Gaza, a return to the prevailing status quo in Gaza may not be acceptable to most Israelis. But the alternative may mean the direct reoccupation of all or much of Gaza.

Hamas and its Iranian backers are undoubtedly hoping the violence spreads to the West Bank and, especially, occupied East Jerusalem. And Iran may press Hezbollah in Lebanon to enter the fray, plunging Israel into a protracted, multi-front campaign that would tempt Israeli hardliners to create a new security structure by, among other things, annexing large chunks of the occupied Palestinian territories and possibly expelling Palestinians. Hezbollah has already obliged by firing some missiles in the Shebaa farms.

But it’s also conceivable that Israel will have the wisdom to recognise that this attack is an effort to goad them into an overreaction and will, instead, limit their military response in Gaza and do their utmost to prevent violence spreading to the West Bank, Jerusalem or Lebanon. Saudi leaders, too, may recognise that this is an all-out effort to sabotage their own diplomatic overtures towards Israel and thereby obtain a much-coveted formal security guarantee from Washington.

There are many local and domestic reasons for Hamas’s attack but it’s also certainly an effort to scupper a US triangular agreement with Israel and Saudi Arabia. It may well succeed. But the three parties might recognise the attack for what it is, and move as quickly as possible to resume talks and redouble efforts to bridge remaining differences. If it’s this threatening to their mutual enemies, what more evidence is required of the potential benefits of such a deal?

The Biden administration is certainly going to try to make that point, both at home and abroad. Whether they can convince Israel to show restraint and Saudi Arabia to remain open to normalisation despite the coming violence remains to be seen.

The final question for Mr Biden is that, assuming the current conflict makes his grand bargain impossible before the next presidential election, if he gets a second term can the parties pick up more or less where they were a few days ago?

That doesn’t only depend on him winning re-election. It also hinges on what new “security arrangements” Israel decides to impose on Gaza, and possibly the West Bank. It’s almost impossible that the context for a “Significant Palestinian Component” of such a deal won’t be significantly altered at the end of the current fighting. So, all parties, especially Riyadh, are going to have to recalculate when the dust settles.

For Mr Biden, the best-case scenario may be making the triangular deal with Israel and Saudi Arabia a second term agenda item. If Hamas and Iran wanted to upend, and at least postpone, Mr Biden’s proposed US-Saudi-Israeli agreement, they’ve probably already succeeded

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/2023/10/02/republicans-seeking-a-government-shutdown-were-playing-a-self-defeating-game/

Were the House extremists deliberately trying to sabotage the US economy?

“There has to be an adult in the room,” declared House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, explaining why he finally decided to ignore the handful of extremists within his Republican House of Representatives caucus and partner with Democrats to continue to fund the US government for another 45 days.

Republicans were going to face a huge blowback for an unnecessary shutdown because a small group of them simply would not agree with anyone, or even each other, about what they wanted. Their endless grievances changed daily. It was, as I noted in these pages last week, a government shutdown over nothing.

Such a total meltdown within Republican ranks, would undermine claims that the House should remain in Republican hands, let alone the Senate or the White House.

Mr McCarthy, and almost all Republicans, are aware that historically the party forcing the shutdown has paid the political price. As Representative Patrick T McHenry of North Carolina, a staunch ally of the Speaker, explained with evident exasperation: “It’s been tried before.”

The extremists, however, were utterly unmoved. While Democrats naturally spun the 45-day funding extension as a victory, Republican extremists painted it as a pathetic cave-in by Mr McCarthy and most other Republicans, and a victory for the “uni-party”, which they claim unites other Republicans and all Democrats in a de facto coalition representing the wealthy and elites.

The Republican extremist fringe was so outraged that they’ve decided the Speaker has to go. It’s a confrontation they’ve been longing for.

Mr McCarthy agreed that any individual House member could bring a “motion to vacate”, which could remove him from the Speaker’s chair. One of his most voluble detractors, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, has vowed to do just that. Yet party establishment figures and their media allies are now asking if Mr Gaetz is secretly working for the Democratic Party.

The most substantive issue in this sorry spectacle is increased aid to Ukraine, which is anathema to pro-Moscow Republicans. Mr Gaetz accused Mr McCarthy of making a secret deal with Democrats for additional aid for Ukraine in the near future, which the Speaker flatly denies. But this strongly pro-Russia sentiment among Maga Republicans is why Mr McCarthy inexcusably barred Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy from addressing the House last month. Yet most Republicans, even in the House, and certainly in the Senate, and the overwhelming majority of Democrats favour the funding that the Biden administration has prepared to provide to Ukraine.

The 45-day stopgap spending bill is an obvious victory for US President Joe Biden and the Democrats and seems to usher Mr McCarthy into the realm of governance-minded American leaders, aka “the adults”. The conclusion is unmistakable: not only did he find it impossible to work with the radical fringe of the Republicans, but he also ultimately preferred to partner with Democrats to keep the government funded and prevent the Republican Party from incurring yet another brutal self-inflicted wound.

The outcome raises two important questions. Can Mr McCarthy remain in power? And what will happen in 45 days when the stopgap spending measure expires?

If Mr McCarthy remains Speaker, he has a solid coalition of Democrats and Republicans that do not wish to see a shutdown in 45 days or at any other time. But preventing a replay of the bizarre near-miss last week depends on a Republican Speaker being willing to partner with Democrats in passing rational spending bills acceptable to the Senate and the White House.

Mr McCarthy will effectively be at the mercy of Democrats if the extremists present a motion to vacate. Democrats might vote to keep him in place in order to avoid repeating a shutdown when the next deadline approaches. However, Mr McCarthy has caved to the extreme right at every stage, including recently launching a baseless impeachment inquiry into Mr Biden. So, there are ample reasons for Democrats to relish watching him suffer the disaster he allowed to be baked into his, from their perspective, corrupted at birth, speakership.

But the national interest, and the agenda of the administration, militates towards keeping Mr McCarthy in place, rather than allowing the extremists to oust him and sending the House into even greater chaos. Nonetheless, Mr McCarthy may be even more disliked by most Democrats than his internal Republican opposition. So, even if Mr Biden pushes for it, as he likely will, it might be difficult for House minority leader Hakeem Jefferies to get Democrats to support Mr McCarthy even if that’s what the party hierarchy decides it wants.

But even if Mr McCarthy remains in place, with an overwhelming majority of Republicans and Democrats who wish to see the US government continue to function without a shutdown, nonetheless the biggest bone of contention remains aid to Ukraine. That’s categorically opposed by the proto-fascist Maga Republicans, plus a handful of neo-isolationist leftist Democrats and Republican libertarians who oppose almost all US international engagement.

Both parties, particularly Republicans, walked right to the edge of a shutdown last week but ultimately concluded they wanted no part of it because of the political consequences, not to mention the national interest involved. The US economy has recovered to an amazing extent, but most credible economists agree that the recovery is fragile. The country simply cannot afford a shutdown at this crucial stage, which could, especially if it were protracted, send the whole economy into a tailspin and ruin a remarkable comeback.

Do the Republican extremists really deliberately intend to sabotage the national economy for political purposes, either to attack their own party leadership and/or try to bring down Mr Biden and help their hero, Donald Trump? Alas, even such cynical machinations may be beyond the infantile calculations of these nihilistic radicals, who simply seem bent on pointlessly defying everyone else and demagoguing in their own personal interests as much as possible.

Thus, the most likely scenario going forward is that Mr McCarthy will remain Speaker with some Democratic support to defend the coalition that prevented the absurd Seinfeld-like “shut down over nothing” and keep the status quo alive in the interest of both the Republican Party establishment, and Mr McCarthy, as well as Mr Biden, the White House, and, ironically, the President’s re-election bid. The old adage holds that “politics makes strange bedfellows”. But it becomes even stranger when the lunatics make a plausible, narrowly averted bid to take over America’s political asylum.