Should the US withdraw from the Middle East Quartet?
JERUSALEM, Israel – In a letter to Vice President Mike Pence, published Friday by the Israeli daily Israel Hayom, the vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies suggested the US consider pulling out of the Quartet (US, UN, EU and Russia).
The Middle East Quartet was established at the Madrid Conference in 1992 to lead negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Pence, who planned to arrive this weekend to meet with Israeli and P.A. officials, delayed the trip by a few days to support the administration's tax reform efforts.
Senior P.A. officials, angered at the Trump administration's support of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, said the US invalidated its role as mediator in the peace process and would not meet with the vice president.
In the letter, Weinberg says Israel's establishment as a modern nation-state is a "vindication of the spirit" and a "validation of the tenaciousness of faith."
"History knows no parallel to the prophecies of the Bible, which foretold of Jacob's and Joseph's exiles, of the breakup of a people into a thousand pieces across the world, to every culture and civilization, yet destined not to assimilate but to return," he writes.
As Israel's strongest ally, the US has played a crucial role in the history of the Jewish state, he continues.
President Trump's recent validation of Jerusalem as Israel's eternal capital and the plan to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem has strengthened Israeli support for its longtime ally.
That validation stands in sharp contrast to the EU, whose current foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherina, much like her predecessors, makes little effort to mask her distain for US efforts to advance the peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Weinberg writes, "Speaking as a grand high commissioner of Europe – which has a 2,000-year history of vicious anti-Semitism and which 75 years ago was saved by American troops from homegrown Nazis – Mogherini mocked America in disparaging tones and literally smirked as she scoffed at Netanyahu."
Despite P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas' rejection of the US and Israel, Mogherini voiced EU support for the "urgent" establishment of a Palestinian state in the pre-1967 armistice lines (also referred to as the "Auschwitz Lines" because they are indefensible), with "east Jerusalem" as its capital.
Meanwhile, a new poll released earlier this week revealed that a significant majority of Israelis support President Trump – a percentage that's increased with his support of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
The Smith Research poll, commissioned by the Jerusalem Post, showed that a whopping 76 percent of Israelis believe the president is pro-Israel, while only 2 percent say he's more pro-Palestinian.
