WarSclerotic

The withdrawal of US troops from Syria has the potential to warm Israel’s ties with the Sunni Arab states, a prominent American rabbi and interfaith activist with extensive ties in the Gulf said this week, arguing that US President Donald Trump’s unexpected move exacerbates the Arab world’s worries about Iran’s hegemonic ambitions in the region.

The rabbi, Marc Schneier of New York, also predicted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to Bahrain next month, and that the small Gulf kingdom will soon establish formal ties with Israel.

“The US moving out of Syria might accelerate this deal of bringing Israel and the Gulf together,” Schneier told The Times of Israel in an interview Sunday in Jerusalem, citing a conversation with unnamed senior official sources in the Arabian peninsula.

“The Gulf has two existential threats: an economic downturn in the Gulf, [caused by] diminishing demands of oil, and the aggression by Iran and its allies,” Schneier went on. “Now, with US troops moving out of Syria, Iran has now taken over the top position.”

Schneier said Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US, Khalid bin Salman, recently told him that the reason for the Gulf’s rapprochement with Israel was his country’s current enmity toward the Islamic Republic.

“That’s reason number two,” the rabbi cited the ambassador as saying. “Reason number one is economics.”

The kingdom wants to reform its economy, and “we can’t do it without Israel,” Schneier quoted bin Salman as saying.

But, the rabbi went on, “what happened now, based on my conversation last night, is that Iran has now taken over the race” and has become the number one force driving the Sunni Arab world’s opening to Israel.

Trump’s surprising announcement last week that he would withdraw the remaining 2,000 US troops from eastern Syria sparked worries in Israel and across the region about Iran seeking to fill the vacuum and expand its aggressive actions. Tehran’s hegemonic ambitions have been the main factor in the Arab world’s increasingly open but still undeclared alliance with the Jewish state.

Schneier, the founder and head of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, has for many years conducted extensive ties with the rulers of many Muslim countries, including nearly all Gulf states.

Earlier this year, he was named a “special adviser” to the king of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. In this unpaid position, the rabbi was tasked with assisting the King Hamad Global Centre for Peaceful Coexistencebased in Manama, and to “help in preserving and growing the country’s Jewish community,” he said.

“There’s a growing interest on part of Gulf leaders to developing Jewish life,” said Schneier, who established and runs a Jewish community in the Hamptons.

Earlier this month, The Times of Israel for the first time revealed the existence of a tiny Jewish community in Dubai. Jewish communities exist also in Bahrain and Qatar, according to Schneier.

“There is a genuine commitment and desire to establish relations with Israel,” he said. “It used to be, ‘Let the Israelis and Palestinians work our their differences and then call us.’ Now it’s, ‘Let the Israelis and Palestinians be in discussion and at the same time we can discuss establishing relations,’” he said.

“I predict that in in 2019 it will happen. You will see one or two Gulf states establishing diplomatic relations with Israel. I think Bahrain will be the first.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) talks with Sultan Qaboos bin Said in Oman on October 26, 2018 (Courtesy)

Netanyahu, who in October unexpectedly visited Oman, will probably be invited to Manama as soon as next month, he envisaged. “My gut tells me that it’s going to happen in January,” he said. “I know that the king of Bahrain is very committed to establishing relations. Their only hesitation would be to allow the Saudis to have the honor first.”

Earlier this month, Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa defied Arab consensus and defended Australia’s recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. He also expressed support for Israel’s operation to expose and destroy attack tunnels the Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah has dug across the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Schneier, who is married to an Israeli, dismissed the Arab states’ vote against a US-sponsored United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning Hamas. “Two steps forward, one step back,” he said.

Many Israelis mistakenly believe that the Gulf leadership no longer cares about the Palestinians, according to Schneier, who regularly travels to the region. “There is nothing further from the truth. They are still very concerned about the Palestinian cause,” he said.

“I am not saying we have arrived at the promised land of Gulf-Israel relations. But the good news is that the journey has begun. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have hurdles along the trail.”

Amid a series of coalition crises and deliberations over a possible indictment against Prime Minister Benjamin Netnayahu, coalition leaders announced Monday that Israel will head to the polls within four months, with a general election set for April.

“Out of national and budgetary responsibility, the leaders of the coalition parties decided, unanimously and unanimously, to dissolve the Knesset and go to new elections at the beginning of April after a four-year term,” the heads of the five coalition parties said in a joint statement.

Elections were previously slated for November 2019, and the announcement means that Knesset members will vote to dissolve parliament early. Hebrew media reports said the elections would likely be held on April 9.

Despite ongoing disagreements over the ultra-Orthodox draft bill, which was the initial impetus for their meeting Monday, the coalition heads stressed that none of the parties will leave the government and that “the partnership in the Knesset and in the government will continue during the elections.”

The announcement came after MK Yair Lapid announced that his opposition Yesh Atid party will vote against the coalition’s bill on the military draft of ultra-Orthodox men, claiming that the government was preparing an “under the table” deal that would change the import of the legislation.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court granted the government a further month and a half to pass the bill, extending an early December deadline to mid-January. Without the extension, thousands of yeshiva students would have become eligible to be drafted.

Elections will likely mean a further extension will be granted.

The decision to go to the polls comes just a month after Avigdor Liberman resigned as defense minister and pulled his Yisrael Beytenu party out of the coalition, leaving it with a paper-thin majority of just 61 out of 120 Knesset members.

The decision also comes as Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit is set to begin reviewing materials to decide on possible charges against Netanyahu this week, embarking on the most high-stakes stage yet of a several-year legal entanglement that has threatened to upend the country’s political system.

State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan said Wednesday he was wrapping up recommendations on three cases against Netanyahu for Mandelblit, which reportedly include recommendations that the premier be indicted on bribery charges over an affair in which he is accused of kicking back regulatory favors in exchange for positive media coverage.

Mandelblit is expected to convene his legal team to begin working on the hundreds of pages of testimony and other evidence in the three cases on Monday, the Ynet news site reported.

Of the cases Netanyahu is suspected of illegal activity in, the one known as Case 4000 is considered by the State Prosecutor’s Office to be the most serious, according to Israeli television reports.

In that case, Netanyahu is suspected of having advanced regulatory decisions as communications minister and prime minister from 2015 to 2017 that benefited Shaul Elovitch, the controlling shareholder in Bezeq, the country’s largest telecommunications firm, in exchange for positive coverage from Elovitch’s Walla news site.

In another affair, Case 1000, Netanyahu is suspected of receiving benefits worth about NIS 1 million ($282,000) from billionaire benefactors, including Israeli Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, in exchange for assistance on various issues.

A third, Case 2000, involves a suspected illicit quid pro quo deal between Netanyahu and Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon Mozes that would have seen the prime minister hobble a rival daily newspaper, the Sheldon Adelson-backed freebie Israel Hayom, in return for more favorable coverage from Yedioth.