Antony Blinken is likely to be feeling relieved. After a weekend of frantic negotiation, the secretary of state managed to forestall a vote Monday morning at the U.N. Security Council demanding that Israel halt a new wave of settlements in the West Bank territory it has occupied since 1967. That Blinken was so determined to avoid having to use America’s veto to block the draft resolution, a move that has been a hallmark of American foreign policy at the United Nations for decades, speaks to a new hesitation in Washington to defend an Israeli government that threatens not only any lingering hope of peace with the Palestinians, but also the rights of all of its citizens, Arab and Jewish alike. But in the end, he worked to preserve a status quo that no longer exists.
While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is again running the show in Jerusalem after a brief period out of power, this time around things are markedly different. In November’s Knesset election, the fifth in the last four years, his right-wing Likud Party turned to ultranationalist, ultra-Orthodox and anti-LGBTQ politicians to cobble together a majority. The characters empowering Netanyahu’s Faustian return to power are “emblematic of a fundamental shift in Israeli politics: The extreme has entered the mainstream,” The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg determined in a recent article. Though the far-right extremists Netanyahu has blessed with key positions in his Cabinet “garnered just 10 percent of ballots, it is now in position to exercise outsize authority in a coalition that cannot function without its support,” Rosenberg continued.
Blinken worked to preserve a status quo that no longer exists.
Despite the continued swerve toward intolerant authoritarianism by Netanyahu and his allies, Blinken has previously offered unwavering American support for Israel. “We will gauge the government by the policies it pursues rather than individual personalities,” Blinken said at J Street’s annual…
Read the full article here
