Klíč k míru na Blízkém východě: Rabín Aryeh Lightstone o budoucnosti Abrahámových dohod

Hello, everyone, and welcome to American Thought Leaders Now, our special spinoff series of our original American Thought Leaders program. Today, our very, very special guest is Aryeh Lightstone. He is one of the architects of the Abraham Accords, which are actually coming up on their third anniversary since they were actually brokered by the US. Aryeh, tell me a little bit about the Abraham Accords, maybe remind us what they're all about. Thank you for having me. So it's important to understand a little bit about US policy in the Middle East, and a little bit how the Middle East was perceived by the Western world, to say the least. And since 1967, which was the Six Day War, where Israel was attacked by five countries, they managed to succeed in that battle, and they captured an enormous amount of land, they more than quadrupled their landmass from beforehand. So the West Bank, known as Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Desert. Now, what happened was Jordan, and Egypt, early Egypt, and then Jordan ultimately decided fighting with Israel was not worth it. And they came to cold peace treaties, and it was agreement, they're not going to shoot at each other. But the Middle East was divided in between Israel's superpower was the United States of America, which would stand by its side and support it. And the Palestinian superpower was the other over 80 Muslim Arab majority countries that would not treat you the same if you elevated Israel in your relationship. So you had these two competing battles, there was the three nose of Khartoum that was repeated by Secretary Kerry, when he was the Secretary of State in December of 2016, who said, Look, there's no chance that there will be Arab countries that will make peace with Israel until the Palestinian issue is resolved. And what happened under President Trump, Jared Kushner, and David Friedman, Mike Pence, etc. And Mike Pompeo, of course, there was going to be a new Middle East, and that new Middle East was going to involve people looking towards the next 50 years, instead of relitigating the last 50 years. So sorry for the lengthy introduction. On August 13, 2020, at 10am, President Trump in the Oval Office hosted a conference call in between the leader of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the Prime Minister of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And they announced then that they were going to fully normalize relations, the first Israeli Arab peace treaty in more than 25 years. And that set off a chain reaction of events that led to five countries forming peace with Israel in 123 days, called the Abraham Accords. Absolutely. And just briefly, the five countries involved. Yes, so it went from the United Arab Emirates, then to the Kingdom of Bahrain, then to Kosovo, which came out of nowhere, and then Sudan, and then ultimately, the Kingdom of Morocco. What has happened in the last three years since then, since these Abraham Accords were signed? I mean, there was this, of course, this historic flight, right, from UAE to Jerusalem and back, or was it Tel Aviv? I can't remember. Yeah, it was from the airport in Israel that went to Abu Dhabi. And I had the privilege of being on that plane. I'll just tell you what happened for a moment. We get on the El Al plane, which is the personification of the Israeli airline. So it's the Jewish Star of David. It is the Israeli airline. It's going to take off from Israel and land in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. And we're on the plane in the middle of COVID. 25 Americans, 25 Israelis on this sort of landmark mission. And the pilot gets on and says, I've been flying for 35 years. Never in my wildest imagination did I think that I would pilot an El Al plane over the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and land in the United Arab Emirates. And that was a historic moment. People stood up and gave a standing ovation on takeoff. I've seen people do a standing ovation on landing. I've never seen on takeoff before. And it was just an incredible moment. All of our hearts were aflutter. So what does it mean? And what happened? So you know, January 20th at 7pm Israel time, so we were done with our job. And at 6pm Israel time on January 20, 2021, I was still negotiating Saudi overflight for all Israeli flag carriers to Bahrain and to UAE because that hadn't been resolved. So we finished that with one hour left in our administration. And the next day, the hope was that President Biden was going to say, look, I disagree with President Trump about a lot of things. But peace in the Middle East is pretty cool. Let's do it. But they did not pick up the mantle of the Abraham Accords in the initial going. They eventually picked it up. Almost two years ago today, the day after the Afghanistan debacle was the first time that they publicly started praising the Abraham Accords. Also, and the really interesting thing here is that, well, I guess the question is, how important is the US role in this throughout the process of getting there? And how important is it going forward? The US is indispensable to future growth of the Abraham Accords, because the United States of America is the superpower in the world. And when the United States retreats from an area or a geography, so it's not like Costa Rica replaces the United States, it's replaced by China, Iran, Russia. And it's notable that the only deal that's gotten done in the last three years was the reconciliation between Iran, the greatest purveyor of terror around the world, and Saudi Arabia, and that was brokered by China. And that was a loss for Israel, it was a loss for our allies in the region, but it was an enormous loss for the United States of America to not be the number one influencer in the region. And so that's a big issue. If we want to propel the Abraham Accords, in order to create a Middle East and North Africa region where there is peace and prosperity across the board, we're going to need to lead on that situation. Correct me if I'm wrong, I kind of had the impression that the idea was somehow to kind of not make the US central to the whole process, to let those discussions begin bilaterally, right, and with the different countries. Yeah, so all of the conversations happen bilaterally, but not in between the countries in Israel, they happen in between the countries of the United States of America. And the secret to the Abraham Accords was, when President Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, ultimately opened up our embassy in Jerusalem, what signal did that send? The Israelis didn't need us to tell them where their capital is, their capital has been Jerusalem since 1948. And if you're a biblical scholar, it's been that way since King David established Jerusalem as the capital of the original Israelite kingdom almost 4000 years ago, when we the United States of America followed our law passed by Congress in 1996, by an enormous bipartisan majority, 92% approval of this law that wasn't followed from 96 until 2017. That message was sent to the Arab capitals of the world, that we are no longer going to play this game that will support Israel, but only to a point, your boycott, your three nos of Khartoum, the three nos that John Kerry mimicked in December 2016. We don't think that's productive to the region, and we're going to stand closely with Israel. Now, every country in the world wants a deeper connection with the United States of America, at least the good ones do. And if the path to that better relationship runs through Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, that will enhance peace and prosperity. So the United States of America plays a critical role by standing up for the one democracy in the Middle East, Israel. Of course, there's the idea of all this, of course, is ultimately to get Saudi Arabia into that kind of relationship, I guess, as part of the Abraham Accords, or in some way of a similar accord. There's been rumors going around that this is sort of in motion or might actually happen. Do you know anything about this? So the greatest part of the Abraham Accords is it changed the lexicon in the Middle East from will countries ever make peace with Israel, to when will countries make peace with Israel. So we're in the win phase. Saudis and Israelis are certainly speaking to the Americans about what a deal would look like. This should be resoundingly supported, if done correctly, by Republicans and by Democrats. And I've said this numerous times, it's not a secret that I'm going to vote for a Republican in the next general election, whoever he or she may be. If President Biden is able to broker a peace deal on election day, in between Israel and Saudi Arabia, every Republican should stand up and applaud him. It's not a Republican foreign policy, it's not a Democrat foreign policy, it's an American foreign policy. It makes us safer, it makes us more prosperous, and it makes our allies more peaceful. So that's a big win. All that being said, I'm highly skeptical that anything gets done in the next 120 days or so. It's a big hurdle to overcome. And that hurdle was sort of placed by President Biden when he came into office at his inauguration. He said he was going to make the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, known by some as MBS, as a pariah. And since Prime Minister Netanyahu was re-elected to be the Prime Minister of Israel, he has not yet received an invitation to come to the Oval Office. So it's difficult to imagine that some of those personality things can't be overcome in order to achieve enormous policy success, which is what this would be. This would be one of the greatest things to happen in either of our lifetimes. But as you did mention, the Biden administration has signaled support for these. And so how is that manifesting? So it's a good question. Support is something. Action is more. What is the United States of America prepared to do in order to make this happen? The way the Abraham Accords originally occurred was all of these countries, starting with the United Arab Emirates, but going to Bahrain and Sudan, etc., and the Kingdom of Morocco, all wanted to elevate their relationship with the United States of America. Now, we said it's a barrier. If you don't have a meaningful relationship with our ally in the Middle East, Israel, for artificial reasons, or at least not what we felt were genuine reasons, if you don't have that relationship, so our relationship with you is going to be limited. If you make peace with Israel, so our relationship with you can now be unlimited, just like it is with Israel. So the UAE said, okay, we'll make peace with Israel. Now let's elevate our relationship. And that happened and should continue to happen. The way I think it should happen is the Saudis want to be a dominant player in the Middle East. You cannot be a dominant player in the Middle East without a relationship with Israel, which is an economic powerhouse, a technology powerhouse, and certainly a military and intelligence powerhouse. If you want to have that chief role, make peace with Israel. And when you do that, the United States of America will absolutely elevate our relationship with you because you're an important friend, and you'll be an even more important ally after you make peace with Israel. Elevating the relationship, a key part of that, of course, is economically. And of course, I've had Jason Greenblatt on the show, who was also involved in the early stages of this whole process, talking about how important this economic piece of everything, and this is actually your area, right? That's exactly right. Yeah, it is. If you can imagine a Middle East where people are fighting over commercial deals, instead of religious ideology, how much better is the whole world when that happens? Right? We've lived since the specter of 9-11, or even going back to that with the USS Cole bombing. And even before that, Israelis have known terror since day number one. If you can imagine a world without radical Islam or highly minimized radical Islam, and enormous promotion of what I would call moderate Islam in these countries that are powerhouses economically, coming to be a meaningful player in the region, it changes the whole world. There are 1.5 or more billion Muslims who face Saudi Arabia five times a day. Imagine if they look to Saudi and say, you've made peace with Israel, you've made peace then with the whole Western world. Imagine what that means to Muslims around the world. It's a game changer. We can't even fathom what a size game changer it is. That's fascinating. But what about for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What would the impact of such a deal be? It depends on what the details are. I think two different things happen, for sure. Number one is once Saudi makes peace with Israel, that's sort of the last big veto that the Palestinians have over progress. The way negotiations have worked for the last, certainly 40 years, was the Palestinians will show up to a table, the Israelis will show up to a table, the Palestinians will make demands, Israel will accede to, let's call it 80% of those demands. Palestinians will walk away from the table, and oftentimes terror ensues after that. Come back to the table three years later, the Palestinians start then at where they ended the last deal, and have a whole new list of demands. Israel will accede now to 80% of those demands, which is far more than they were willing to five years ago. The Palestinians will say, thank you, take the piece of paper, go away from the table, and come back in five years and start again there. Essentially, they've never won a war, but they've never lost a negotiation. Part of that is because the great veto of all the Arab and Muslim states. If Saudi and when Saudi makes peace with Israel, that veto disappears, which means that the Palestinians, when they sit at the table, I think have to be very circumspect, and very serious about what offer they have, and how seriously they'll consider that offer. For the Palestinian people, I have enormous respect and appreciation for. I hope that they eventually get leadership that is worthy of them. Currently, they do not have that. There was a report recently, where talking about how Saudi has removed some of the kind of anti-Israeli content from their school textbooks and so forth, which seems like a positive step forward. Yeah, not positive. It's a big leap forward. We just have to imagine a region where Israel was the scapegoat for the vast majority of the countries for almost 100 years. If you change your education, you raise your children to respect and support the people across the border from you, that makes you more powerful, not less powerful. Fascinating. That's a great conversation. Any final thought as we finish here? Yeah, I think that why does this matter to sort of Americans who might not be interested in Israel and might not be interested in the Middle East? If you view the great competition that we are facing today and will for the next 25 years, between the United States of America and China, these are two very different ways that the world can wind up looking. So if the United States of America wants to be competitive or be more competitive than China, you've created a place of the Middle East that we're used to thinking is a source of chaos and destruction. And you've turned into a place of peace and prosperity, not only peace and prosperity, one that serves an enormous source of security for the United States of America, which is the exact opposite of how we viewed the Middle East for the last 50 years, where it's been a case where we lose our security, we have enormous risk there. So the opportunities are enormous. We have to do this correctly. We have to do this as Americans, not as Republicans or as Democrats, but we have to do it intelligently. What about all of this in the context of this Iran, Saudi, Russia, China complex that seems to have developed? Yeah, well, it developed because we took a step back from the region. The second we step into the region, and we make not a presidential term commitment, but we make an American commitment. So whether that's for 25 years or 50 years, so many of our friends and allies come and say, how do I plan my future? You don't have an American foreign policy, you've got a Republican foreign policy, or you've got a Democrat foreign policy. And they'll take a Chinese foreign policy, because whether they like it or they don't like it, they know what it's going to be in 25 years. So you can plan based upon that. How do you plan when we're whipsawing people back and forth? It's hard to do. We need to educate Americans, we need to come to a consensus on what these policies are, and then we need to effectuate those policies. So if we're able to do that, there won't be a concern about Chinese influence in the region. If we're not able to do that, gosh darn right, the Chinese will be there, and they'll be there consistently with meaningful influence. And that's terrible for us as Americans. What would it take to do that? It would take, here's how I think it would be demonstrated the best. The President's going to have a State of the Union coming up in February. The President should invite the leaders, or at least their representatives, their ambassadors, to the spectator section of the Capitol when he comes to give the State of the Union. And he's going to stand up and he's going to say, I gave it a shot with Iran. For three and a half years, I let them come to the table. They weren't able to come to the table. Their malfeasance stops now. And not only do I believe that, every one of my opponents on the Republican side believes that also, and every one of my opponents on the Democratic side believe that. Iran, until they reform their behavior, they no longer have any entry into the United States of America. But let me contrast Iran for a moment. And you call upon the five, and hopefully there'll be more at that point in time, members of the Abraham Accord countries and say the United States of America supports you, because you stood up and you made peace without any preconditions. And you will have everybody from the furthest to the right in Congress, to almost to the furthest of the left, let's call it 98% approval, will give a long standing, raucous standing of ovation for those ambassadors or heads of state. And it's not that Americans need to hear that. Every other leader in every other capital in the world will see this is what happens when you stand with our allies. America stands with you, not Republicans stand with you, not Democrats stand with you. But America stands with you and you will have a list of countries waiting to join the Abraham Accords the next day because they need that support. And that's what happens if the US is a superpower. China will pack up their bags and go home the next day. Fascinating. Well, this has been an illuminating conversation. RU Lightstone, such a pleasure to have you on. Thank you, Jan. I very much appreciate it.