WTH is going on with peace in the Middle East? Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer on Israel, the UAE and Bahrain

Episode #71 | September 29, 2020 | , , and Amb. Ron Dermer

Danielle Pletka: Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka.

Marc Thiessen: And I'm Marc Thiessen.

Danielle Pletka: he Hell Is Going On? Marc, what the hell is going on?

Marc Thiessen: Peace in the Middle East!

Danielle Pletka: God I never thought we'd have this podcast.

Marc Thiessen: Who would ever believe we'd have a podcast on peace in the Middle East?

Danielle Pletka: It really is ridiculous. People always ask me, "So why did you get into the Middle East as a region of study?" And I always say because it's a gift that keeps on giving. The problems there will never be solved. But in fact, it shows, sometimes they get solved.

Marc Thiessen: Absolutely they do. First of all, just for a housekeeping note, this is going to be the first of two podcasts on this subject because we have today the Israeli ambassador, Ron Dermer who's joining us and then on the next episode we have the ambassadors of Bahrain and the UAE who are going to join us. So we have the three ambassadors from three countries that have reached this historic deal and it's going to be a pair of epic podcasts.

Danielle Pletka: So, you know, there's been a lot of arguing because in Washington of course even peace in the Middle East isn't something that people can agree is a good thing, at least not when is involved. But I would add, second only to Bibi Netanyahu being involved-

Marc Thiessen: You are not exaggerating because Nancy Pelosi's response was, "This is a distraction from the COVID pandemic." I mean how deep must your Trump derangement be to have literally the most significant peace deals, two in a quarter-century in the Middle East, and oh it's just a distraction.

Danielle Pletka: Well, I will give credit to Vice President Biden who said something much more gracious in response but in fact, that graciousness didn't trickle down because

2 what I have now heard repeatedly is "Well, just goes to show you, Israel really doesn't care about democracy, backing all of these dictatorships in the Middle East." And it's like, I'm sorry, what? Wait, a second, what? Is that Israel's fault? A and B, is peace not better than war? Is peace not better than terrorism?

Danielle Pletka: Look I will be the first to say that I think the notion of a president being elected and then putting his son-in-law who has previously only dealt with real estate in charge of the Middle East peace process is, I thought it was completely ridiculous.

Marc Thiessen: He did a pretty good job.

Danielle Pletka: Look, the proof is in the pudding, and as much as I think many, me included, don't want to give credit for this, you have to. You have to. Look, three leaders, that picture on the White House lawn of those flags together brought a tear to my eye.

Marc Thiessen: I loved the image of the foreign ministers of Bahrain and the UAE because there were three copies of each accord. One in English, one in Arabic, and one in Hebrew, and they actually put their names and their signatures on an accord written in Hebrew. That was I thought, just a stunning moment. But I'll tell you the reluctance to give credit is two-fold.

Marc Thiessen: One, no one wants to give credit to Donald Trump for anything. But two, it's a repudiation of the foreign policy establishment's view of how you deal with the Middle East for decades. We were told you have to go through Ramallah. There's not ever going to be a separate peace with the Arabs. There has to be Palestinian peace first. We were told you can't move the US Embassy to . If you do that's going to be provocative.

Marc Thiessen: We were told that President Trump is going to destabilize the whole region by recognizing Israeli sovereignty of the Golan Heights. All of the conventional wisdoms about what the path to peace was in the Middle East have been turned on their heads because the lesson of this is, this is something that taught me years ago, weakness is provocative and strength is the best way toward peace.

Danielle Pletka: Osama Bin Laden said something about the strong horse as well, not just Don Rumsfeld.

Danielle Pletka: I'll tell you who else deserves credit for this, although not in the way people are going to think and that's . Because I think that Obama scared the Arab world so much with the JCPOA, the deal. Scared them so much that the was going to turn it's back on the region and they recognized that they needed to forge new alliances. They recognized that the world wasn't always going to look the way it did for the last 40 years and maybe they ought to do something about it.

Danielle Pletka: And if Barack Obama hadn't made that craptastic deal with the ayatollahs in Tehran, I think we'd still all be dancing the two-step around each other. It really

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

3 was a wake-up call to them. Not in a good way but you know, I will give him credit, I think they wanted to take a new approach to the challenges that we face in the Middle East. The problem was that they took the wrong approach.

Marc Thiessen: They inadvertently helped peace along. The decision by President Trump to pull out of Syria, the decision by President Trump to start pulling back some troops from Iraq, sent a signal, this is a theory, that sent a signal to the Arab world and the Persian Gulf allies that we're not going to be around to police the region quite as much.

Marc Thiessen: And that maybe they needed another ally in the effort to do that. Do you think that Trump's pulling back and saying we're going to end these endless wars and we're going to pull back some of our troops may have contributed to this agreement?

Danielle Pletka: Well, I honestly don't know but I'll say this, I don't believe that we keep troops in Iraq for the peace of Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates and I don't believe that we keep troops in Syria for the peace of Israel. You know what my view is.

Marc Thiessen: Look you know where I stand on this. We've talked about this many times on the podcast. I was against the withdrawal from Syria. I'm against the withdrawal from Afghanistan. I'm against withdrawing troops from Iraq. We should be keeping them there. They're at such low levels now that the added value of having a small deployment in those countries is huge but there's the famous Don Rumsfeld, the big mistakes we made in Iraq-

Danielle Pletka: The second Don Rumsfeld reference in one podcast.

Marc Thiessen: I know, I know. But one of the mistakes we made was that he famously said that at some point you got to take your hand off the bicycle seat. And we took the hand off the bicycle seat too soon in Iraq, but maybe Saudi Arabia and the UAE starting realizing they had to pedal on their own a little bit. And I'm not saying that justifies the actions. I'm just saying it might have been an unintended effect an intended effect, I don't know, but it might have had a role.

Danielle Pletka: Well, it may have played a role. It may have been the negative example that the JCPOA was also to these guys. No matter what-

Marc Thiessen: In other words, American bungling made this possible.

Danielle Pletka: Well you know Churchill did say something about that. But anyway, listen we've had a terrific conversation with Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer. He has worked with Bibi Netanyahu for many, many years but since 2013 he has been the Israeli ambassador to the United States. This is actually his last year of service, he's going to head home to Israel after a very long term and some terrific work. And I have to say, he's really, really leaving on a high note. Enjoy the conversation.

Marc Thiessen: Ambassador Dermer welcome to the podcast.

Amb. Ron Dermer: Great to be with you, Marc.

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

4 Marc Thiessen: So the first Israeli-Arab peace agreement was 40 years ago. The second was 26 years ago and then nothing happened for a quarter-century and all of a sudden we have two in a matter of weeks. What happened?

Amb. Ron Dermer: Well, I'm glad you're talking about the historic significance of this because you right, it is the first time in a quarter-century and we waited 26 years between peace treaty number two and number three and 29 days between three and four. And I think it speaks to a shift, a strategic shift in the region and you can see it Marc in the way that countries and people, governments and people, I should say, in the region have responded to this peace.

Amb. Ron Dermer: Go back 40 years, 1979, Sadat makes actually in '77 his historic decision to go to the and the peace treaty was ultimately culminated and finalized in 1979. But think about how that was received in the Arab world. Wall to wall rejection among all of the governments.

Amb. Ron Dermer: Egypt was thrown out of the Arab League and ultimately Sadat paid for that courageous decision with his life. Now, fast forward 40 years and you see that Mohammed bin Zayed, the Crown Prince of the Emirates makes this also I think courageous decision, but it well received by most of the Arab governments in the region and really by the people as well because it's the peace that is not just from the top down but I think potentially really from the bottom up and we saw that on social media within the Emirates in Bahrain and elsewhere.

Danielle Pletka: What role do you think that the rise of Iran as a regional power, as a power really trying to destabilize, as a power with all these proxy armies everywhere in the region played in this changing balance of the region?

Amb. Ron Dermer: If there was a silver lining to the very dark cloud of the nuclear deal with Iran is that it brought Israel and the Arab states together. Probably unintentionally, but that's the effect that it had. Second, they are concerned, the Arab governments in our region, the rise of Sunni fanatic movements. You have Shia radicalism which is represented by the regime in Iran and I should say Israel doesn't have a problem with the people of Iran. I don't think the American people have a problem with the people of Iran. I don't think they represent a threat to anybody, but there's a regime that oppresses them and endangers the Arabs and calls for the destruction of Israel.

Amb. Ron Dermer: So that's the Shia radical regime, but you have Sunni fanaticism. You had 1.0 in al Qaeda and 2.0 with ISIS and there will be a 3.0. So, these governments are concerned about that duel extremist threat. And I think the third factor that's important before you get into the statecraft of the Trump administration, which was critical here as well, is the perception that the United States is actually withdrawing from the region or at the very least reducing its military footprint in the region.

Amb. Ron Dermer: No one is talking about sending more troops to the Middle East. And I think the extent that there is a perception that the United States is going to reduce its military footprint, I think Israel's importance as a strong, reliable powerful ally with a very, very strong military, certainly in regional terms, a world-class intelligence service, tremendous capabilities in cyber and other areas. So, I think those

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

5 governments in the region understand that the partnership with Israel becomes important strategically for them.

Amb. Ron Dermer: So if you sum up, you have the concern of an Iranian tiger, an ISIS leopard or whatever's going to come next, and the view that the 800-pound American gorilla is leaving the building. And they look around and they see a 250-pound gorilla with a kippah on its head called the Jewish state of Israel and they think, "Well maybe we should ally with them."

Marc Thiessen: One of the recent developments in the Middle East is the recognition that the Gulf economies need to diversify beyond oil. Israel has emerged as a tech powerhouse. Do you think these countries see Israel as a possible tech partner and a partner in diversifying their economies?

Amb. Ron Dermer: Remember, Israel's the second grade center of innovation in the world after Silicon Valley. And to the extent that the Arab states have boycotted Israel which was their traditional position, it's about as intelligent as Oregon, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and half of Southern California boycotting Silicon Valley. It makes no sense. To the extent that you have leaders in the Arab world, and I think you do, that would like to propel their countries forward in terms of technology I think a partnership with this great center of innovation is very smart for them to do.

Amb. Ron Dermer: So both for their security and prosperity, a partnership with Israel is a very good thing and I think that is the background to the breakthrough and that's what has happened for several years underneath the surface. You've seen a strengthening of the relationship. The problem with surfacing it was essentially that for several decades, many of the governments in the region have poisoned their populations against Israel. And it's very hard after seven decades of poisoning to simply turn on a dime.

Amb. Ron Dermer: And we were able I think, to do it with the critical support of the United States, of President Trump, of Jared Kushner and the team that they had to figure out how we can surface what I think, and bring the strategic underpinnings of this relationship, bring it to light. And we're very pleased that we did it and I suspect that you are going to see other countries follow as well. I'm pretty confident of that.

Danielle Pletka: Well we want to talk to about that as well but there's so many things I want to ask you and you've touched on really a lot of the important factors here. The rise of Iran obviously, Sunni extremism. But I'll tell you something, I've been traveling both in Israel and in the Arab world now for four decades and one thing that has been remarkable to me, not just in the places that have made peace with you in the United Arab Emirates, in Bahrain and obviously in Egypt and in Jordan, but elsewhere, for example, even in Saudi Arabia is that antipathy toward Israel, towards its existence and toward the Jews has in some ways dissipated despite the fact that we still have all of these terrible education systems that you mentioned. Despite the fact that there's all of this indoctrination against Israel and all of this antisemitism. What do you think that's about - that change? Is it just the distance from 48 or is there something else going on?

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

6 Amb. Ron Dermer: I think part of it is a new generation and a very young generation because the last time I checked about two-thirds of the populations in these states are under the age of 35, so they don't recall '48 or '67 or '73. '82 was of course in Lebanon and in conflicts that we've had in recent years that many of these governments because of their concerns with both Iran and with Sunni fanatic movements or the Muslim Brotherhood per se.

Amb. Ron Dermer: And when it came to the confrontation with Hezbollah in 2006, and that's a proxy of Iran, the Hezbollah terror organization, which has effectively taken over Lebanon, but you could see also that they backed Israel when we were in a confrontation there. So there's a shifting that has happened and I think some of those old things have dissipated. You were quite right in the media and the school system, it's still there. But if I have to go back to one factor I actually think it's the Arab Spring.

Amb. Ron Dermer: It's seems like from the moment I got involved in Middle East issues I was hearing the same thing. Solve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, you'll solve all the conflicts of the region nd in fact, I think it was in 2009 if I'm not mistaken General Jones who was the former national security advisor said something, it was a very bizarre analogy. He was God in the analogy and he was telling Obama if you could solve one problem in the Middle East make it the Israeli/Palestinian conflict because that's the problem that will transform everything.

Amb. Ron Dermer: And this view, as you know, was very prominent in Washington and it was utter nonsense. I mean the Israeli/Palestinian conflict should be solved because we shouldn't be in conflict with the and we'd like to solve it and reach a peace agreement with them, but that's not going to change the situation in Libya or Syria or in Iraq or in Yemen where you have forces of modernity battling forces of medievalism.

Marc Thiessen: What role do you think the Arab Spring played in all these changes?

Amb. Ron Dermer: I think what happened is after the Arab Spring and the violence that happened in its wake and what happened in Libya and certainly what happened in Syria and the fact that you had this instability that was going throughout the region that along with good things that it unleashed, there were many bad things that were unleashed and the fears of many of these governments for their own fundamental security.

Amb. Ron Dermer: I think it puts the Israeli/Palestinian issue in perspective for people. People don't know this, but in the 100-year conflict between and Palestinians the total number of people who have died on both sides, without even getting into the question of right and wrong, and it's clear what my view is, but without getting into that question, the toll was about 22,000 people have died on both sides. In 100 years of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. In the Israeli/Arab conflict if you add Israel, all of the soldiers who we've lost in the battles and all the conflicts that we've had with Egypt and Syria and Jordan, you name it.

Amb. Ron Dermer: If you add it all together it's 125,000. And the Israeli/Palestinian piece is 22,000 of that. Now compare that to what you've seen happen in recent years in the Middle East where you have half a million people in Syria. Look at the situation

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

7 that's happening in Yemen and many other problems in the region. I think it puts that problem into perspective.

Amb. Ron Dermer: I think it was, as I said, the rise of Iran, the rise of this fanaticism, a new generation that emerges there, maybe the power of social media to actually see the reality and to bypass the traditional sources of information so if the normal media is still saying the same things it doesn't mean that that's the information that everybody is getting. And I think a growing recognition that Israel is not an enemy, but an ally.

Marc Thiessen: That would be literally the only good thing about 2020 if that happened.

Amb. Ron Dermer: You have pandemics and peace. As the Prime Minister said at the White House on Tuesday, long after the pandemic is gone, the peace will endure.

Marc Thiessen: That's true. Well listen, you've pointed out that these agreements have undone conventional wisdom in the Middle East and it's not just that peace goes through Ramallah. I mean John Kerry in 2016 said exactly that. There will be no separate peace with the Arabs as recently as 2016. But he also said that if you move the US embassy to Jerusalem it would create an absolute explosion in the region that would peace out of reach. And we were told that if the Trump Administration recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights it would undermine peace, and none of that has come to pass. What should we learn from that?

Amb. Ron Dermer: Well, there was an explosion I guess. It was an explosion of peace. Why did this happen? There's nothing more powerful-

Marc Thiessen: And what was wrong with the thinking that... Could this have happened sooner if we had taken a different approach?

Amb. Ron Dermer: Yes. No question. No question because the strategic reality was there. I don't think it could have happened two decades ago. I think in 2002 when you had the Arab Peace Initiative I think the context of that was actually very different. It was right after 9/11. There was tremendous pressure on the Saudis at that time and I think the context of that was a little bit different.

Amb. Ron Dermer: If you asked people at that time if you could wave a magic wand and end the Arab/Israeli conflict, or the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I should say. If you had asked most Arab governments a couple decades ago I think the answer would have been no. And I think it's served a purpose for them. I think now in the last several years if you asked that question to Arab governments, if you could end the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by waving a magic wand, would you? And the answer would be yes.

Amb. Ron Dermer: Now the question is how you do that given the history of enmity and all of the poisoning of the populations and the brainwashing against Israel for so many decades. I mean that is the challenge. But the strategic reality was there. And I think the Arab countries understood that was not in their national interest to do - to essentially give dysfunctional Palestinian leadership veto power over their futures.

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

8 Amb. Ron Dermer: The question not be why did they do it in 2017, why wasn't it done in 1950 before the Oslo process? Everyone links it to the peace and what's going to happen with peace, well that started in '93. What happened in the four decades before when we made Jerusalem our capital?

Amb. Ron Dermer: And it suggests, or it implies, that there's some question mark hanging over the legitimacy of Israel. And when Trump made the decision, he not only did the right thing, but he did the right thing for peace. And we said it at the time that it was going to advance peace because it punctures this lie that Israel is some foreign colonialist power. It shows that Israel's legitimate and that we have a right, not just the might to be in the region, but the right to be in the region.

Amb. Ron Dermer: And I think that decision in Jerusalem, no question, made this more likely. I think the decision in the Golan Heights made also the peace more likely. And, frankly, I believe one of the things that people don't focus on, I think it was Israel and particularly the Prime Minister of Israel, Netanyahu's public decision to oppose the nuclear deal with Iran which dramatically, and I know this, it dramatically accelerated the relations we have beneath the surface with many countries in the region.

Danielle Pletka: That makes a lot of sense. So, we're talking a lot about the Arabs, we're talking a lot about Israel. We're talking about the role of the United States and you've touched on the question of the Palestinians. I just finished writing a piece about this, so it's right on the front of my mind. I have to say that some have suggested in op-eds, people who I respect a lot, that this is an opportunity for the Palestinians, but to me, it just feels like history has passed them by. That they've missed opportunity after opportunity and that so much of this, and I think the Arab states would agree, privately, although not publicly, so much of this is on them. Unfair? Fair? What do you think?

Amb. Ron Dermer: Look, ultimately, there are people who believe that if Israel can end the Israeli/Arab conflict that that will force the Palestinians to make peace with us. I don't believe that. I think you're going to have to have Palestinian leaders who will emerge, who will recognize the Jewish state, or the legitimacy and permanence of a nation-state for the Jewish people in our region. That crossing of the psychological Rubicon has never happened and people I think for decades got caught up in sideshows.

Amb. Ron Dermer: When the U.N. presented a partition resolution in 1947, there was no refugee issue. There was no post '67 settlements issue. Jerusalem was not even the issue because they said that would be under some sort of international regime. It was o you accept two states for two peoples? A Jewish state and an Arab state They didn't call it Palestinian at the time. And the Arab world and the Palestinians, particularly their very radical leadership at the time, refused to accept it because they were against the idea of a Jewish state and any boundary. And that's been the core of the conflict.

Amb. Ron Dermer: And people have been running around trying to solve this conflict without looking at the core. So will this help forces within Palestinian society who would like to make peace with us? Will the ending hopefully overtime of the Arab/Israeli conflict, will it empower those forces within Palestinian society

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

9 who'd like to make peace ultimately with the state of Israel? I think it will, and I think it will marginalize the rejectionists because they've been arguing now for decades, really since Sadat.

Amb. Ron Dermer: I think that if we're able to move forward with these Arab states we could reach a situation where you could have a moderate leader that would emerge that would recognize that you know what? We are the children of Abraham, both of us. Jews and Muslims, and Jews and Arabs. We are descendants. We are actually native to the region. We are the last surviving people of the land.

Amb. Ron Dermer: And the rejectionists have been saying for years, "You know what? Let's not do it. We have the entire Arab world behind us." But now the Arab states are crossing the Rubicon and therefore I think it won't necessarily end it on its own, but it will enable us to reach a point where a Palestinian leadership can emerge in a regional environment within the Arab world and also the broader Muslim world where an acceptance of Israel is okay.

Amb. Ron Dermer: They're not going to be facing a headwind, but they might get a tailwind. And I think that gives us the best chance to solve this conflict.

Danielle Pletka: Do you think we can get there as long as the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to stand?

Amb. Ron Dermer: That's a very good question. I don't think breakthroughs you can have with Syria or with Lebanon, because Lebanon is effectively controlled by Iran, and, of course, Syria with the relationship they have with Iran, and potentially Iraq, but virtually all of the other countries, I think, you could get there.

Amb. Ron Dermer: Now, the Palestinians are not Shia. They don't have Shia minorities or majorities there, so is it possible to do it? It's a very good question. I think if tomorrow, all of a sudden, the Iranian regime disappeared, then there's no question that that will aid those forces of moderation and be a huge blow to the forces of medievalism in the region.

Amb. Ron Dermer: Can it happen without them? I don't know because sometimes common enemies obviously can bring people together and I don't know if this would have happened the way it happened if Iran would have been a different country 10 or 20 years ago. I mean the fact that they have this danger has really brought us to this point and I think what we need to do and hopefully, we'll reach a day where this regime is not running Iran, but that the Iranian people will actually run their own and determine their own future.

Amb. Ron Dermer: But I hope that before that day comes, and I pray for it every day, that we will be able to build bridges between Israel and the Arab world that will sustain themselves after that threat is removed.

Marc Thiessen: So, at the ceremony, one of the things I noticed, and I wanted to ask you about, is that how significant was it that the UAE foreign minister delivered his remarks in Arabic? Because we've noticed here in watching this issue that Palestinian leaders tend to say one thing in English and another thing in Arabic for their

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

10 domestic-

Danielle Pletka: Many Arab leaders do that actually. Even those who are warming up to Israel have done that in the past.

Marc Thiessen: So, they condemn violence in English but their language in Arabic is something else and yet he started out in English and then he said, "Now I'm going to switch to Arabic." How significant was that?

Amb. Ron Dermer: I think it's a good point. I mean it was significant for me because it made it twice as long sitting there and I don't speak Arabic, but I think there's no question he was trying to speak to his public back home and I give great credit to Mohammed bin Zayed and also to his brother for promoting this actively among the public. Remember in the case of Egypt and Jordan a cold peace is definitely better than a hot war.

Amb. Ron Dermer: And when Egypt made its move we went from a hot war to a cold peace and in the case of Jordan, which actually had a de facto relationship with Israel for about 25 years since 1970, we went sort of from a cold war to a cold peace. But we would definitely want to have a warm peace. What has happened in those countries, in both Egypt and Jordan, unfortunately, is there are many political- economic, and cultural forces that militate against a warmer peace.

Amb. Ron Dermer: So if an Egyptian businessman or a Jordanian writer would make a positive deal with Israel or write something positive about Israel, all of a sudden you've got boycotts on your hands. Even though you formally have a peace agreement which is, of course, better than the alternative. But here I don't see those forces either in the Emirates or in Bahrain and in other parts, I think they're smaller, that are militating against this.

Amb. Ron Dermer: And I think that bodes very well and the fact that he spoke Arabic directly to his people I think is a piece with that. And I think it's a good sign and there's no question that this peace is both top-down and really pushing from the top and bottom-up. And we saw that in Israel a couple weeks ago, three weeks ago, I think, at this point, we had this historic flight.

Amb. Ron Dermer: It's the first flight from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi and you saw the reception that you had and it's much broader than, you can, a non-democratic regime can do a lot to make things look like it's warm but this was genuinely warm and you could see it on social media. You could see it with the public. People are very excited to have Israelis come there. To be able to go from the Gulf to Israel.

Amb. Ron Dermer: The flying over of Saudi airspace, which I think is a very big deal and it might be Danielle and Marc that you'll go to Dubai in a hotel in a year or two when we can all travel again and you'll hear more Hebrew in the hotels there than you will Arabic. Or on your next visit to Tel Aviv you're going to hear more Arabic from the Gulf than you will Hebrew. And I think that's why this moment I think is a much bigger deal than people think because it is as the Prime Minister said, a pivot of history.

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

11 Danielle Pletka: From your mouth to God's ears. Okay here's my exit question.

Amb. Ron Dermer: Inshallah.

Danielle Pletka: Inshallah, as they say.

Marc Thiessen: Inshallah. Amen.

Danielle Pletka: But here's my exit question, Ron, so we know that let's say that speculation is rife that Sudan will be the next country to make peace with Israel, maybe Oman. What about Saudi Arabia?

Amb. Ron Dermer: Well, I don't want to speak about any specific country because I want to do everything I can as ambassador to enable that peace to happen. I mean one of the reasons I think this succeeded with the Emirates is because so few people were aware of it, frankly. And it was very close hold. And this speculation creates a problem because things are half baked and then they surface and then you get a lot of denials from a lot of people and then it makes it harder to actually cross over that bridge.

Danielle Pletka: That happened with Sudan I think, so I agree.

Amb. Ron Dermer: Sudan there's definitely been a shift there from a government that was working very closely with Iran where we had missiles being delivered there and then making their way up through the Sinai and going to Gaza. And now a big shift of their policy vis a vis the Gulf and they're in a different place. The Prime Minister met with the leader of the government, Burhan, not that long ago in a meeting that was made public afterward.

Amb. Ron Dermer: There are a lot of things that are happening with a lot of different countries. There's no question that Saudi Arabia would represent a dramatic step forward, but I think Bahrain tells you something about the Saudi position. And I think the fact that airspace has now been opened up for Israeli planes to fly to the east, not just on that one flight where the Americans senior officials Jared Kushner and the national security advisor, O'Brien was on that flight.

Amb. Ron Dermer: On the return flight, they'd allowed it to cross the airspace and now they've opened their airspace for Israel to fly to the east and that's very important for all countries in Asia. It cuts down the time by about three hours, but I think that tells you something. Another thing you may have noticed, you probably did, was as sermon very recently in one of the most important mosques in Saudi Arabia or in the world where positive things were said about Jews in that sermon.

Amb. Ron Dermer: And I think this is a critical shift because I have believed for many, many years that we are not going to solve this problem by thinking that the secularists will defeat the religious. I think that's the wrong way to look at it. We will solve this problem when the devouts spit out the fanatics. And when you have religious forces in the Muslim world and particularly in Saudi Arabia that have taken a different track, and this happened in recent years with the head of the Muslim World League. He was in Washington, I don't know if you had a chance to meet with him.

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

12 Danielle Pletka: I saw him in Saudi Arabia and in Washington as a matter of fact.

Amb. Ron Dermer: Right. So you know, I mean this was inconceivable. I hate to use that word he Princess Bride so I hate to say that word but it was inconceivable that this would happen 10 or 15 years ago but it's happening now and people should look at it as leading indicators of what can happen in the future. And I hope that the policy community within Washington and you both are in there...

Amb. Ron Dermer: The policy-making community of the swamp we all live in. I hope that they will put aside a lot of the differences and the arguments and actually invest in success. Because this is a huge success and I think there can be much more to come and instead of having to face headwinds of a lot of bad ideas and bad policies, hopefully, people will come together who care about the region and would like to see Israel at peace with all of our Arab neighbors and ultimately at peace with the Palestinians and understand the dangers that Iran poses.

Amb. Ron Dermer: I hope they will, to the extent possible, it may be harder for them to unite than the politicians in your politics but maybe in that world of think tanks they can also unite and have policies that can be a bi-partisan consensus to really take advantage of this historic moment and to give it a tailwind rather than to face the headwinds and the difficulties that we've had to overcome in recent years.

Marc Thiessen: Well, Mr. Ambassador, I know you played a critical role in that historic achievement and so we are so grateful to you for joining us today. Thank you for being here.

Danielle Pletka: And Shanah Tovah.

Amb. Ron Dermer: Shanah Tovah. Thank you both and let's hope the next year will have no pandemic and a lot of peace.

Marc Thiessen: Amen.

Danielle Pletka: Amen to that.

Marc Thiessen: So Dany one thing we forgot to ask the ambassador about is this controversy over the sale of F-35's to the UAE. It seems to have been part of the back channel negotiations with the UAE over this deal. There was a big piece in that Israel is very concerned about it, that they oppose it and I don't know, is this going to go forward? What's happening?

Danielle Pletka: I think that the Emirates probably rightly thought I'm sorry, we just made peace with you and you're opposing the sale of advanced fighter aircraft tests? What the hell?

Marc Thiessen: What the hell is going on?

Danielle Pletka: What the hell is going on? But look the Israeli's didn't get to the supreme military position they hold in the Middle East by making mistakes or by underestimating

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

13 what risks could be ahead. So, I imagine they think to themselves what may be next? Are there risks here? Nonetheless, I think that, that sale will go ahead. Probably a modified version of the F-35, that's what we've done in the past, and I can imagine to myself that this is probably going to happen.

Marc Thiessen: Do you think this is going to have a domino effect now? That other countries are going to fall in line? I mean there's rumors about Oman, there's rumors about Sudan. Some have even said that maybe if there's a second Trump term that Saudi Arabia might normalize relations with Israel. Do you think that's possible?

Danielle Pletka: You know, it's funny and in fact, I told the Israelis this. I was in Saudi Arabia, it must have been two years ago on a particular trip, and we had a very nice guy from the foreign ministry who was looking after us. Actually no, from the royal court who was looking after us and he was asking me about Israel because I still live in Israel. What's it like? How is it? I'm telling him about it and he said, "Do you know ?" And I said, "Yes I do, in fact, I interviewed him for AEI's annual dinner a few years back."

Danielle Pletka: Anyway, off we went, we continued the conversation. The next morning I came and he'd watched the entire interview on YouTube. And I got to say, for me, this is a guy who was 31 years old. For me, that was just like the dawn of a new day in Saudi Arabia. I think it's a harder sale to make and I think that, as we've discussed many times, Mohammed bin Salman, the young Crown Prince, has got a lot of enemies and made a lot of mistakes certainly from the standpoint of the United States and some among his people and his neighbors. And I don't know if he would be willing to take the risk, but yeah maybe. I could see it happening in four years.

Marc Thiessen: So here's an interesting question that I want to raise with the Bahraini and UAE ambassadors in our next episode is that are they worried about a backlash from the Sunni radical movement? Is this something that might now... Because the proximate cause of al Qaeda's rise was the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia. That's the excuse that they use, right? To justify their terrorism. That we had to drive the US out of the Middle East and all of the rest of it.

Marc Thiessen: And the other proximate cause is hatred of Israel. These are the two driving forces for Islamic radicalism. Is there a danger that al Qaeda might use this or ISIS might use this or other radical groups might use this as a pretext to rally followers and to attack these countries in response?

Danielle Pletka: Will they use it to rally followers? For sure. I mean the Palestinians have already tried to do that. They rejected it and called out the betrayal that they faced from these Arab leaders. But I think the one thing, and this is another thing we didn't talk about with Ambassador Dermer, the one thing that we're not taking into account is just how adamantly these Gulf countries have declared war on Sunni radicalism. And of course, for them, it is personified okay in al Qaeda and okay in ISIS, but most importantly in the person of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey.

Danielle Pletka: And they don't miss an opportunity to lambaste these sort of twin pillars of extremism in the Middle East. Ankara on the one and Tehran on the other. The Sunni and the Shia faces of terror and so from that standpoint, I think they are

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

14 ready for it. I think they are ready to take on that fight. When they declared the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, when they declared Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, I think they crossed the Rubicon.

Marc Thiessen: Well, I think the one thing I take away from this is that history has passed the Palestinian leadership by. That their one source of power was that they held the keys to peace in the Middle East and that nothing could happen until there was a peace deal made with the Palestinians and that was their leverage. And then all of a sudden basically eah whatever we're moving on.

Marc Thiessen: They have a choice, they can either completely isolate themselves, or they can decide to change course and recognize the legitimacy of Israel and make real peace. And really at this point, it doesn't matter because they're not holding anything up in terms of the rest of the region. If they want to live in the conditions that they're in right now, that's their choice.

Marc Thiessen: If they want to have a Palestinian state, then that's their choice as well. But they don't hold leverage anymore in terms of holding the whole region hostage.

Danielle Pletka: I'll say this, just as we talked about a new generation in the Arab world that really has changed, I think that the Palestinians are victims of the kleptocratic dictatorial leadership of the last generation that they live under.

Danielle Pletka: They've had Abu Mazen, Mahmoud Abbas the Palestinian "President" was elected in 2005 for a four-year term, he's still president. There hasn't been another election. He won't let another soul presume to lead. He's not grooming anybody. He has a vice-like grip on power and Hamas and Gaza of course is in Iran's thrall, totally dependent on them. At the end of the day, who is being screwed here? The Israelis have moved on, the Emirates have moved on, the Bahraini's have moved on. It's the Palestinians who are being screwed just as they always are. And it is a tragedy for them.

Marc Thiessen: Well, I will tell you that when you look at the polling, for example, about support for suicide bombing in the Middle East, almost nobody supports suicide bombing in almost any Arab country. The only ones where you have majority support for suicide bombing is in the Palestinian territories. Now I'd be fascinated to see whether... I haven't looked at those polls in three or four years, but I'd be fascinated to see whether there's a reckoning within the Palestinian people that's saying maybe what we've been sold-

Danielle Pletka: Maybe terrorism is not the way.

Marc Thiessen: Maybe terrorism doesn't pay. Maybe terrorism doesn't pay. Maybe what pays is diplomacy and peace. I hope you right and that a younger generation of Palestinians will learn a lesson from this which is that your leaders have failed you. They've taken you down a wrong path, and it's time for you're to rise up and create your country by taking your territory back.

Danielle Pletka: God willing.

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

15 Marc Thiessen: Inshallah.

Danielle Pletka: Inshallah, Mashallah as they say. That's what we're looking for. So a happy episode and for our Jewish friends on the podcast, Shanah Tovah and for everybody else you can have a Shanah Tovah as well. Send suggestions to us, complaints as always to Marc, and thanks for being with us.

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org