Meet the World’s Last, Best Hope for Peace in the Middle East

• Meet the World’s Last, Best Hope for Peace in the Middle East
  by Abe Silberstein and Daniel J. Solomon, https://www.haaretz.com/
  America’s no longer pretending to be an honest broker. The Arab world’s no longer pretending to care about the Palestinians. That leaves France’s Macron holding the whole future of the Middle East peace process in his hands.
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  Israel’s election last week extinguished one of the last glimmers of hope for the country’s beleaguered center-left. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cruised to a fifth term and will, in the coming weeks, likely assemble a coalition government that promises to be ever more vociferous in its assault on the country’s democratic institutions and its refusal to come to fair terms with the Palestinians.
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  The drift to the right we’ve grown accustomed to decrying in the past decade could turn into a determined sprint during the next government. Netanyahu vowed in the closing days of the campaign that, if successful, he would move to annex at least parts of the West Bank.
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  This would have seemed a far-fetched proposition not so long ago, but now is a uniquely propitious timing for Israel’s far-right. Netanyahu benefits from an enabler in Washington, D.C., whose gifts have included the relocation of the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights and, despite opposition from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, naming Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
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  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pointedly refused to say last week if the U.S. would oppose West Bank annexation, and failed to offer a legal basis for the Golan’s annexation that the Trump administration already recognized.
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  Meanwhile, Arab states in the region, once a strong bulwark of support for Palestinians (at least in words), have no interest in pressuring Israel, with whom they are tacitly aligned against Tehran.
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  Now that Washington has shed the pretense of honest broker and the Arab world has dropped its sops to the Palestinians, who will thwart the train headed for annexation?
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  That leaves France as the last, best hope for preventing annexation. And under President Emmanuel Macron, the Gallic republic has a shot at averting this disastrous move – and perhaps even the motive, means and opportunity to advance regional peace.
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  France occupies a seat on the U.N. Security Council and often serves as host for weighty treaty negotiations, including most recently the Paris climate accord. During the post-war era, France has also maintained a unique approach to international relations.
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