T. Belman. Israel should reject this out of hand.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump administration is holding discussions with several Arab states to create a NATO-style alliance with Israel in order to thwart Iran and its Shiite allies.
The report, citing five officials from the Arab countries involved, says the alliance will be on the agenda when Trump and Netanyahu speak later today.
Countries involved would include Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as Egypt and Jordan, though Israel’s role would be in intelligence sharing and not combat-related, according to the report.
The officials say cooperation with Israel would be contingent on the administration keeping the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and other demands. Saudi and Emirati officials also say cooperation with Israel could be done more in the open in exchange for a freeze on settlement building.
Mike Flynn, who was Trump’s national security adviser before resigning this week, was reportedly heavily involved in the talks, along with defense chief James Mattis.
Earlier in the day, the Israeli Haaretz daily reported that Netanyahu and Trump would discuss a regional peace deal for Israel with the Palestinian issue playing a smaller role.
@ Frank Adam:
Israel would only lose in this deal, and nothing would be gained. It is not of any benefit to Israel.
It made sense to draw Turkey and Greece into Nato because both ad a real enemy in USSR. That is not the current case over Arabs and Iran who both wish to see Israel buried. The condition that the US embassy stay in TA is still a slap in the face to Israeli self det and independence and amounts to exceptionalism so bigotry.
Why should we freeze settlement construction for the right to openly support the Arabs openly with our intelligence?
What’s in it for Israel?
Egypt, Israel, and Jordan are already Major Non-NATO allies; O44 proposed same for UAE and Saudi Arabia. This is what Mattis can build on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_non-NATO_ally
This plan sounds like what Israel is already doing with Jordan and Egypt re: ISIS
There is a variety of ways by which this could be achieved, and because of the Arab custom of taquiya and treachery, none is reliable. So whether Trump would believe them, or whether Israel would agree to abandoning it’s cherished goals, -which they might do short term- is still uncertain. We don’t know what is coming out of the present meeting.
Whatever arrangement made would be temporary at best anyway, but may pay dividents later in the form of greater familiarity with important Arabs and their inner military mode of operations as well as a close-up look at their actual military capabilities.