Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) together revived the old, failed conventional policy Tuesday of seeking a Palestinian state before other peace agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
The policy was infamously embraced by then-Secretary of State John Kerry in 2016, who adamantly insisted that there could never be a “separate peace between Israel and the Arab world” before going through the Palestinians first.
President Donald Trump proved the opposite in 2020, when he launched the Abraham Accords between Israel and several Sunni Arab states. Once he denied the Palestinians a veto on other peace deals, the agreements came swiftly.
President Joe Biden and his advisers have returned to the old approach as if the four years of peace and calm under Trump never happened.
Blinken and Van Hollen — a strident critic of Israel — repeated the old, failed mantra in a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Van Hollen: … it’s in our national security interest to have a durable end to the conflict in Gaza, and to the larger Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And that we can only achieve security and self-determination and dignity and justice for Israelis and Palestinians alike by securing normalization of relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia, and other states, as well as a clear plan — I think you said, time-bound plan — to establish a Palestinian state. Am I paraphrasing that fairly?
Blinken: That’s correct.
Van Hollen: And you agree that it’s not possible to achieve a secure and just end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by jumping over the equities of the Palestinian people, is that right?
Blinken: Absolutely not. That’s impossible, it would be self-defeating.
Van Hollen: I want to emphasize that point. Because you know, Mr. Secretary, you’ve been around Washington a long time, because it has been fashionable in some foreign policy circles to believe that you could do that, that you could somehow achieve peace and stability and security by jumping over the Palestinian issue. So — and I want to emphasize this, because you have said that the Saudis are insistent on a clear path to a Palestinian state …
Far from being “impossible,” Trump did it — against what is “fashionable” in foreign policy circles. Moreover, the Saudis have not insisted on a Palestinian state — at least, not uniformly: the foreign minister has, but Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman has not.
Notably, not one Arab state has joined the Abraham Accords since Biden took office in 2021 and restored the Palestinians as the top priority.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.