by Mike Wagenheim
Joni Ernst told JNS that she learned from the Saudi crown prince on an international trip that the kingdom believes that it’s just a matter of time before it normalizes with Israel.
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Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, on Aug. 15, 2023. Photo by Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons. |
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) met with leaders last month in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt—a trip that made her hopeful that a deal would lead to good news in the war between Israel and Hamas.
In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Ernst and her delegation that “he felt that the IDF was choking out Hamas,” the senator told JNS this week on the sidelines of the Republican Jewish Coalition Summit in Las Vegas. “He felt that they were affecting their resupply of munitions and arms into the Gaza Strip.”
But after the congressional delegation left, Ernst learned that Israel had recovered and identified the bodies of six hostages whom Hamas executed. “Right now, it sounds like a ceasefire may be further away than it was a week ago,” she told JNS.
The Iowa Republican, who is a member of the congressional Abraham Accords Caucus, told JNS that Washington must do a better job of mediating between the countries she visited on the trip.
“We need strong leadership to bring these parties to the table and really talk about what is going on and how to find that path forward,” she said.
Ernst said a “very weak Biden-Harris administration” is “sending mixed messages to the Middle East, and it’s confusing all of those leaders.”
“They’re not sure where their alliances are. Is it with Israel? Is it with Iran?” she told JNS. “So we really don’t know, and they don’t know. If they don’t know, they will not be able to find a path forward.”
The White House is “trying to figure out how to straddle this fence,” the senator said. But “there is no straddling this fence” by trying to show support for Israel while appeasing “people who are raising the Hamas flag over college campuses,” she added.
Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, told Ernst that normalization between Jerusalem and Riyadh, which Hamas thwarted after it invaded and attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, “is going to go forward, but we just don’t know when.”
The prince told the senator that “a lot of that will depend upon what happens in the Gaza Strip,” she said.
‘All about the bartering and exchange’
Ernst didn’t say whether the prince laid out any specific parameters, but she told JNS that “steps towards peace” between Israel and “those in the Gaza Strip” need to happen.
“In order to do that, Israel needs to see the decimation of Hamas. We need to be putting pressure, not only on Hamas but on Iran as well. We can’t continue to appease them,” Ernst said. “Once we see those steps, I think that MBS will come back to the table with the United States and Israel, and I do think that we can secure an agreement.”
Ernst, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told JNS that the recent decision by the Biden administration to resume selling offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, which Washington had frozen in 2021, was “all tied together” with efforts to broker Israel-Saudi normalization.
“Anything one country does affects another. It’s all about the bartering and exchange, and what can we get for a deal,” she said. “So Saudi Arabia, yes, it was frozen for a while, but we will start to see again maybe a little thawing of relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia that’s necessary in order to get everybody to the table.”
Mike Wagenheim
Source: https://www.jns.org/very-weak-biden-admin-sending-mixed-messages-that-are-confusing-middle-east-leaders-senator-says/
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