Israel-Palestinian conflict back at center of Middle East agenda
The confrontations at Jerusalem’s holy sites, recent terror attacks inside Israel, the killing of Al Jazeera Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a dire Palestnian economy and a more assertive Hamas have put the Palestinian question back at the core of the region’s many issues.
It was just about six weeks ago, on March 27, that the Palestinian issue seemed relegated to the back burner when Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid hosted his Abraham Accords counterparts from the United States, Morocco, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, along with the foreign minister of Egypt, as Ben Caspit reported here.
It was left to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry to keep the Palestinian issue toward the top of the summit agenda. Elsewhere, King Abdullah II of Jordan, custodian of the Muslim Holy Places in Jerusalem, seized the diplomatic initiative, anticipating the storm to come in Jerusalem given the coming intersection of the Muslim, Jewish and Christian holidays in April. See here the readout of the king’s meeting with US President Joe Biden on May 13.
This week, the agenda has defined itself.
Israel can’t win this one
