Sending a dangerous signal: Rubio and Netanyahu frame discussions with religious and civilisational symbolism

 

By James M. Dorsey

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US Secretary Marco Rubio’s first engagement after arriving in Israel this weekend to discuss the Gaza war and the fallout of Israel’s strike in Qatar sent a dangerous signal.

By visiting Jerusalem’s Western Wall, a Jewish place of prayer and pilgrimage together with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the United States’ Christian Zionist ambassador to the Jewish state, Mike Huckabee, Mr. Rubio was implicitly framing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a religious and civilisational rather than a national dispute.

The wall is what remains of the ancient barrier that once surrounded what Jews and Christians call the Temple Mount and is the Haram ash-Sharif for Muslims.

The third holiest site in Islam, the Mount or Haram ash-Sharif, is the most emotive Israeli Palestinian flashpoint that evokes deep-seated passion across the Arab and Muslim world.

By locating the wall in what he called “Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem,” in line with Israeli policy and US President Donald Trump’s recognition of the city as the Jewish state’s capital, despite its eastern half ranking as occupied territory under international law, Mr. Rubio reinforced the framing of his visit.

Credit: Peace Now

Fuelling the fire, Mr. Rubio was also scheduled to attend an event organised by a religious settler group in a politically sensitive tunnel excavated underneath Palestinian homes in the East Jerusalem district of Silwan.

Archaeologists believe the tunnel marks the Roman-era route traversed by pilgrims making their way to two successive Jewish temples that once stood on the Temple Mount.

Muslims charge that the excavation threatens the fundament of the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the site.

Messrs. Rubio and Netanyahu’s framing came on the heels of their campaign to prevent US allies, including Britain, France, Canada, and Australia, from recognising Palestine during this month’s United Nations General Assembly.

Mr. Rubio downplayed reports that Israel may annex a significant chunk of the West Bank in response to a recognition of Palestine. He refrained from publicly counselling Israel against annexation.

“What you’re seeing with the West Bank and the annexation, that’s not a final thing — that’s something being discussed among some elements of Israeli politics. I’m not going to opine on that today. What I am going to tell you is it was wholly predictable,” Mr Rubio said earlier this month.

Even so, Mr. Rubio, despite his gestures in support of Israeli moves to make impossible a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict involving the creation of a Palestinian state, is likely to have urged Mr. Netanyahu to go slow on annexation so as not to fuel the fires sparked by Israel’s targeting last week of the Hamas leadership-in-exile.

Israel attacked a villa in Qatar where the leaders were discussing an Israeli-endorsed US proposal for a Gaza ceasefire. Six people were killed in the attack, but none of the leaders.

The Trump administration fears that annexation would lead to the collapse of Mr. Trump’s crown foreign policy success during his first term in office: the 2020 recognition of Israel by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco.

Messrs. Rubio and Netanyahu’s framing of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fits a global pattern of far-right leaders, including Messrs. Trump and Netanyahu, who prioritise civilisationalist values over legal, nation-state, and humanitarian principles.

“What does this mean?.. This Judeo-Christian religious bonding…with the Secretary of State hanging out at the Wailing Wall doing all sorts of religious ceremonial swords while Gaza is being bombed, after Doha was bombed… This sends the message of a religious war. You don’t want to have a religious war with the Arab and Islamic world. It’s short-sighted, it’s reckless, it shouldn’t be done,” said Marwan Bishara, a harsh critic of US and Israeli policy and Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst.

A religious wanderer, Mr. Rubio migrated from Catholicism to Mormonism, back to Catholicism, to an evangelical megachurch and finally back to Catholicism. Mr. Netanyahu firmly roots his ultra-nationalism in Judaism.

Mr Rubio, who doubles as Mr. Trump’s national security advisor, and Mr. Netanyahu made their civilisational gestures as Arab and Muslim leaders gathered for a summit in Doha in solidarity with Qatar and to discuss a collective response to the Israeli attack.

The leaders, palpably angry, were in their final statement rich in condemnations of the attack and Israel’s conduct of the Gaza war, but short on concrete measures aimed at deterring further Israeli strikes.

In one of their few concrete suggestions, the leaders asked the 57 members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to consider challenging Israel’s membership of the United Nations because of its repeated violations of the UN Charter.

The suggestion is likely to figure prominently in next week’s deliberations in New York of the United Nations General Assembly.

The leaders also urged “all States to take all possible legal and effective measures to prevent Israel from continuing its actions against the Palestinian people, including by…imposing sanctions on it, suspending the supply, transfer, or transit of weapons, ammunition, and military materials — including dual-use items — reviewing diplomatic and economic relations with it, and initiating legal proceedings against it.”

Without identifying them by name, the call was particularly directed at the five Arab states that have diplomatic relations with Israel– the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco, as well as non-Arab Muslim-majority countries such as Turkey.

Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a prominent Emirati intellectual with close ties to UAE rulers, tweeted as the leaders met, “The UAE alone, and based on its own calculations and national interests, decides when to sever ties with Israel.”

Even so, the call could prompt OIC members to join South Africa’s case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel, accusing it of committing genocide in Gaza. It could also lead Gulf states to fund cases in various countries against Israeli soldiers who served in Gaza.

In a separate statement, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) leaders ordered their militaries to assess threats to Gulf security and the bloc’s defence capabilities and “activate joint defence mechanisms and Gulf deterrence capabilities.”

The statement noted that the United States was unable to alert Qatar about the Israeli attack even though Qatar hosts the largest US military base in the region.

By framing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a religious and civilisational conflict on the eve of the summit, Mr. Rubio was reinforcing perceptions that the United States despite its commitments to secure the region, defines security in civilisational terms.

“This entire episode has exposed the hollowness of Gulf reliance on civilizational outsiders for protection. Americans may enjoy collecting Gulf rents, but they feel no kinship or emotional attachment to Arabs, nor a shared destiny that would make sacrifice plausible. Betting their safety on friendship with Washington…was simply a colossal misjudgement,” said journalist Murtaza Hussain.

By attacking Qatar against the advice of much of the Israeli security establishment, Israel escalated its long-standing efforts to undermine the Gulf state’s credibility as a Gaza mediator alongside Egypt and the United States.

Israel is likely to use Qatar’s harsh response to its unwarranted violation of the Gulf state’s sovereignty as evidence that it cannot serve as a neutral go-between, even though the same can be said for the United States, which acts as Israel’s advocate in the negotiations.

In doing so, Mr. Netanyahu may be at odds with Mr. Trump, who walking a fine line between Israel and its Gulf allies, praised Qatar as Mr. Rubio reframed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Arab and Muslim leaders were meeting.

“We’re with them. They’ve been a great ally. A lot of people don’t understand that about Qatar… They also lead a very difficult life because they’re right in the middle of everything. So, they have to be a little bit politically correct in their terms,” Mr. Trump said.

Addressing Mr. Netanyahu days after the prime minister threatened to attack Qatar again if it failed to expel Hamas leaders or “bring them to justice,” the president said his message was, “They (Israel) have to be very, very careful. They have to do something about Hamas, but Qatar has been a great ally to the United States… People talk of (Qatar) so badly and they shouldn’t.”

Even so, Mr. Rubio dampened hopes that the US would act more forcibly to restrain Israel by refraining from condemning the Israeli attack on Qatar and wholeheartedly endorsing Israel’s war goals in Gaza during a joint news conference with Mr. Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

Mr. Rubio was scheduled to fly to Doha on Monday for talks with Qatari leaders.

“What Netanyahu is doing is just creating another chaos… Everything for him comes from the Testament… He doesn’t believe in international law; he doesn’t believe in borders. It’s all things that are inspired by religion,” said Fuad al-Mudahka, editor-in chief of Qatar’s Gulf Times.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.