Biden’s visit puts US interests and Israel ahead of legitimate Palestinians rights and regional security 

US President Joe Biden is visiting the Middle East in the next few days. He will meet the Zionist leadership in occupied Palestine followed by a courtesy meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem. Biden will then head to Saudi Arabia on a direct flight from Tel Aviv to Riyadh. According to his article in the Washington Post, this is a deliberate move intended to help achieve one of the most important goals of the visit: the “normalisation” of the Israeli entity’s relations with regional states.

Biden will conclude his visit with a conference in which the leaders of some Arab countries will announce the establishment of a new security forum that brings them together with Israel under US auspices. The hope is that this will be a Middle East “NATO” to coordinate over security developments in the region. It is a major step on the way to institutionalising the apartheid state, which is a radical move against regional history and values.

Biden visits the region after eighteen months of political mismanagement that may lead to a resounding midterm election setback for him. His management of international affairs has been confused; we may be edging towards a third world war.

There are three primary objectives for his visit. For a start, he wants to solve the global oil crisis which is affecting economies worldwide, including America’s. Rising prices and inflation, the highest rate in 40 years, foretell a deep economic recession with all that this implies in terms of political and social repercussions. Biden thus seeks to persuade the Saudi government to boost oil production in order to bring prices down and deprive Russia of record receipts from the current high cost of oil. In all of this the US president is going back on many of the policies he announced at the beginning of his term, especially sticking to democratic values, human rights and good governance.

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Moreover, according to the US vision, the Middle East needs to be re-engineered to allow the integration of the Zionist entity and legitimise its existence without resolving the ongoing conflict in occupied Palestine, despite the declared US preference for the two-state solution. This will present the occupation state as a regional leader in terms of security and military affairs, apparently under US supervision in compensation for the decline in America’s physical presence in the Middle East, at the expense of focusing on other conflicts, with China and Russia for example.

The courtesy visit to meet Abbas is a sop to buy Palestinian calm in return for empty political promises and pockets full of dirhams. The talk is that the Palestinian Authority will get $200 million and approval for 4G telecom provision.

Biden has no practical political vision in his back pocket for resolving the conflict, even according to the US-backed two-state solution and Washington’s rejection of Israel’s illegal annexations and settlements. The current administration has adopted the same vision that Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, included in the so-called “Deal of the Century”, with “economic peace” improving the conditions of life for Palestinians in the Zionist’s open prison. This is regarded as an improvement in the position of the occupation state and its strategy of conflict management rather than conflict resolution.

Meanwhile, Biden will meet Israel’s temporary leadership against the norm in the relationship and carries with him political investment with huge economic prospects for the occupation state, helping to break the siege imposed on the entity for decades within the region. The US president wants to continue with Trump’s “Abraham accords” normalisation policy.

All of the signs suggest that the Biden administration will fail to achieve any of its goals in the medium to long term, and he will not be able to save himself and his party at home; nor will he succeed in legitimising the fascist apartheid entity or integrating it fully in the region. There will be no regional consensus behind Washington’s policies, either on its stance towards Israel and Iran, or even in the confrontation with Russia and China.

On the Palestinian level, these latest superficial measures may extend the life of the Oslo PA a little, but it is facing unprecedented popular rejection. The PA and its political and legal basis — the “Oslo Accords” — have outlived their purpose, killed by US-backed Zionist policies. The Palestinians know the extent of the destruction and the labyrinthine policies that Oslo brought us, and they will not allow this farce to continue. They will adhere to their legitimate rights and will insist on realising their dreams of freedom, independence and return, no matter how long it takes, by all means, including legitimate armed resistance.

The Palestinian people have read their history well, and extended their hand to justice and peace based on legitimate rights, but this gesture was met with unprecedented racism and brutality imposed with international cover and support, especially from the US. Our people began their resistance to the Zionist project more than a hundred years before the establishment of the occupation entity, and are ready to continue this resistance for another hundred years until the end of Zionism and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

A Middle East “NATO” will aim to integrate the apartheid entity and legitimise its existence. It is an expression of superficial strategic thinking and ignorance of the nature of the region. It is likely to face enormous challenges that will, inevitably, see it fail sooner or later just as other political and economic regional entities have in the past. All have failed to achieve their goals, despite their great potential for success, because they have never been based on the free will of the people. Instead, as with this new “NATO”, they existed to defend the interests of unpopular regimes and polices that are inconsistent with regional history and culture.

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Like it or not, non-Arab regional countries such as Iran and Turkey will remain at the centre of the Middle East. What they share in common with other regional countries is too great to be undermined by such schemes imposed by the Zionists. Apartheid Israel has contributed directly to the weakening of the region, and will remain alien to the region’s DNA.

The real problem is not in US policy or in Zionist ambitions, but rather the fact that there are regimes in the Middle East which are keen to form alliances with an entity that has for decades spared no effort to destabilise the region and continues to occupy Arab territory. How can regional countries allow the establishment of Israeli military bases on their lands to threaten their Arab and Muslim neighbours? Concerns about the regional policies of, for example, Iran, are a red herring; the bottom line is that Iran is a neighbour with which we all share strategic interests. This will not be changed by artificial alliances intended to waste regional energy and resources in pointless battles.

What’s more, how can the Zionist entity bring stability to the region when it cannot even produce a stable government of its own? Far-right extremism is a disease that has pushed Israel towards a fifth General Election in less than four years, and all indications are that it will lead to a sixth soon thereafter.

On top of that, despite US support at every level, including “military aid” of $3 billion every year, the apartheid occupation state was caught off guard by the largely civilian Palestinians in all of their occupied land and beyond during the historic Battle of the Sword of Jerusalem last year. Israeli cities and settlements could not be protected from locally-made resistance rockets, despite the advanced technology at the occupation’s disposal. How can such an artificial entity based on fragile foundations and alien to its surroundings be capable of protecting others?

The only solution for our region is strategic dialogue to build a consensus to turn it towards a better future of unity, independence, prosperity and the liberation of Palestine. The dismantling of the occupation entity is essential, not only because it is the usurper of Palestinian land and rights, but also because it is an agent of Western colonialism intended to sabotage and destabilise the region.

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Middle East leaders who want the region to have a vibrant and viable future should form a solid political alliance to stand against the settler-colonial project and its strategic interests. The US and its protégé will not back down from the project if they know that there is no solid, coherent and extended resistance across the region which can drain their capabilities and put their interests at risk. There have been a number of examples to learn from in recent history, from Vietnam through Somalia and Iraq to Afghanistan. In this context, such a regional resistance alliance can be strengthened by open and strategic relations with emerging international powers, particularly Russia and China.

The official Palestinian leadership has failed repeatedly to take serious steps to reform the local political system so that it expresses the will of the people and represents all. It is still taking political gambles and betting on parties that have never paid any attention to the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and don’t make them a priority. Palestinian political and civil forces must not delay in forming a national salvation front to correct the nation’s course and reform the system in a way that serves our national project and the just aspirations of our people. We remain assured of the justice of our cause and the inevitability of victory, the return of refugees, and the demise of the Zionist entity.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.