Caroline Glick: New Government, New Threats

New Government, New Threats

Caroline Glick

The day after Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett formed their government, Biden administration officials threw a diplomatic hand grenade at them. Monday administration officials told reporters “unofficially” that President Joe Biden intends to appoint Hady Amr, his Assistant Secretary of State for Israel and the Palestinians to serve as U.S. Consul General to the Palestinians — in Jerusalem.

To deploy Amr to Israel’s capital as consul, the administration will first need to open a consulate in Jerusalem. In accordance with the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1996, the Trump administration closed the consulate and turned the building into the Ambassador’s Residence following the transfer of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem in 2019. And under the Vienna Convention, the U.S. must ask Israel to permit the opening of the consulate and accredit the head of mission.

The administration’s decision to deploy Amr to Jerusalem as ambassador-in-everything-but-name to a hostile, non-Israeli entity is a double assault on Israel. First, the sends the clear message that the Biden administration supports the division of Israel’s capital. Second, by sending Amr specifically to Jerusalem, the administration is making clear that it intends to legitimize and work with Hamas.

Before joining the administration, Amr was a fellow at the Qatar-funded Brookings Institution. He was the founding director of the Brookings Institution in Doha. And from Brookings, Amr wrote and spoke in favor of legitimizing the Iranian-sponsored Muslim Brotherhood terror group. Amr advocated that the U.S. work to integrate Hamas into the PLO.

The administration’s now all but declared positions on Jerusalem and Hamas in turn strengthen Iran’s position inside Palestinian society. They also legitimize the until now unthinkable scenario in which the U.S. supports a Hamas takeover of Judea and Samaria. The administration’s deep-seated animosity towards Israeli sovereignty over unified Jerusalem, makes clear as well just how hostile its positions are in relation to Israel’s strategic requirements and national rights to Judea and Samaria.

All of this brings us to the new government. Although Naftali Bennett is Prime Minister, the real power in the government is Foreign Minister and Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid. Lapid controls 75 percent of the coalition to Bennett’s 20 percent. The last five percent of the 61-seat coalition is controlled by Mansour Abbas, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Islamist Ra’am Party.

In the ceremony at the Foreign Ministry marking Lapid’s entry into office, Israel’s effective leader laid out his priorities. His top three goals are to rebuild Israel’s ties with the Democrat Party; with the progressive U.S. Jewish establishment; and with the European Union.

In regards to Iran, ignoring Republican opposition, Lapid said the U.S. return to the 2015 nuclear agreement as a done deal. Lapid said that Israel’s job is to prepare for the inevitable. The 2015 agreement provides Iran with an open path to a nuclear arsenal and enriches it through sanctions relief while placing certain restrictions on its nuclear activities for a limited period of time.

Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu needs and his colleagues must base their platform for bringing down the Lapid government on a recognition of reality. Hamas’s clear influence over Israeli Arabs brings home the fact that a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem would foment Israel’s destruction. If the Hamas-state in Gaza can foment anti-Semitic pogroms throughout Israel, a Hamas state in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem along with Gaza will represent a threat to the country that no government will be able to successfully mount.

Netanyahu’s meeting this week with former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and Christians United with Israel leader Pastor John Hagee was widely attacked by the anti-Netanyahu media. But it was a critical move. In his speech, Lapid effectively threw both Republicans and Evangelicals under the bus. It is the duty of the opposition to maintain and strengthen Israel’s ties to both group through frequent meetings and exchanges.

Lapid’s idea of linking U.S. policy towards Iran with the Palestinians flies in the face of a generation of strenuous efforts by successive Israeli governments to avoid linkage at all costs. Israel opposed linkage historically because it makes no sense. As the Abraham Accords and the Arab Spring before them made clear, regional affairs have nothing to do with the Palestinians and pretending they are linked is a recipe for strategic failure on all levels.

Today, given the Biden administration’s single-minded focus on realigning U.S. policy towards Iran and away from Israel and the Sunni Arab states, Lapid’s position is indefensible. There is no nuclear deal the administration will offer Iran that will protect Israel’s strategic interests even partially.

The new government both faces and invites new challenges and threats from Hamas, from Iran and from Washington. If he follows through on them, Lapid’s diplomatic policies will gurantee that his government will fail to meet them. Under the circumstances, the duty of the political opposition is to present a clear alternative approach and use the tools at its disposal to advance it.