There, the issues are sort of much deeper", Simon says. Now the chickens are coming home to roost in a fairly big way. What we’re looking at now - goes back to the 1930s, at least. The message of the book, to the extent that it’s relevant to the crisis that’s going on now back there - is simply that it’s not our problem. "Everybody’s so interested in this current crisis precisely because it seems to be like a tipping point. Why would you allocate bandwidth to this issue ? It’s simply something you don’t want out there. It’s dealing with a lot of serious issues and deep issues, in an American context, and the stakes are really high. “o you’ve got this campaign that’s really fraught. What matters in Washington is that political issues involving "Israel" ‘use a lot of air’: “So why, when there’s an American election coming up, where the stakes are truly immense, would the Biden administration walk into a minefield for this? It would appear to me to be deeply imprudent … pick a fight with the current government in Israel over something that the United States … has no control”. Simon points to the current US-Israeli environment whose roots lay in the late 1990s as one creating a structural disadvantage for Democrats, since the party as a whole is moving in a different direction to that of the Israeli government. “There isn’t a US strategic stake involved - and in the absence of the strategic stake, it’s really just all about politics.” The US has no ‘heft’ here, precisely because the rift amongst Israelis is so deep - It goes to the heart of what "Israel" is: “Why would the Administration pick a fight with the current government in Israel - on something - over which the US simply has no control”. This leads to the crux of matters: As Haaretz notes, issues relating to "Israel" now are strictly ‘political’, rather than ‘strategic’: And with the Region at a strategic inflection point, Simon asserts starkly that America just does not have 'the juice,' nor the strategic interest, to get involved with Israel’s crisis: The point “simply is that it’s not our problem.” That’s not nothing."Ī former senior White House official, Steven Simon, who served as Middle East Adviser in the Obama Administration, has written a book. "Prime Minister Netanyahu might be viewed by historians as strategically great for Israel - because he succeeded in achieving independence from the US, whilst, at the same time, manipulating American domestic politics.
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