Link to article: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/28/blinken-and-arab-foreign-ministers-meet-at-negev-summit
Meeting in a region near the tomb of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime minister, Israel hosted a summit with foreign ministers of four Arab nations (not including Palestine) and the U.S. This is an attempt to strengthen their position in the Middle East, which is rapidly shifting. The Arab ministers and Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, made a pledge to increase cooperation in order to include energy, environmental matters, security matters, and attempts to include others in the agreements made. The Palestinian Minister was not invited to attend the summit, though all of their residence was a pivotal feature in Arab-Isreali relations in the past half decade. All of the Ministers involved in the summit have expressed their grievances about Iran’s behavior recently across the middle- east region, as well as the renewal of the international nuclear accord with Iran. The Israeli Foreign minister Yair Lapid said that the group of ministers was making history with the announcement of the summit becoming an annual event. Lapid also said “Creating a new regional architecture intimidates and deters our common enemies, first and foremost Iran.”
In my opinion I feel like this is an interesting move by Israel. I think that it was a good idea to gather the Arab Nations, but not such a strong move to leave out Palestine. I get that Palestine and Israel don’t get along, but it isn’t the worst idea to gain a good relationship with the country you border. With their past, I get the hesitancy to not want to invite them, but in a lot of the issues I have heard about, Israel seems to be the aggressor. So, with that being said, if they really want to do something about Iran, the strongest way to do that is to have everyone in the region be a united front and not exclude one country from the fight.
This relates back to class due to levels of analysis. On a state level, after the past fights with Palestine, Israel may have felt like the best move would be to exclude Palestine since they figured they probably wouldn’t agree with one another. Israel may have also been using this as a way to try and win something over Palestine. They may have thought that Palestine may have felt threatened by the four Arab Nations and the US meeting with Israel and may have tried to seek a truce. On an Individual level it was probably a more personal choice to exclude Palestine from the summit due to the bad blood between Israel and Palestine over disputed land.