The Prime Minister of the Israeli Regime Benjamin Netanyahu is in an official visit to Washington to meet the high-ranking American officials and discuss about a range of issues, from the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to the issues related to Iran and Syria.
The visit, organized primarily to improve the relations between the US and Israel after years of unprecedented tensions during Barak Obama administration, comes at a time that the recent more aggressive policy of the Israeli regime in expanding the settlements in the occupied territories has come under heavy criticism around the world.
However, as one of the first foreign leaders to meet the new US President Donald Trump, Netanyahu is trying to guarantee the American support through at least the coming 4 years and to push the US toward adopting a Middle East policy more favorable to Israel’s hard-line policies in the region.
At the top of the agenda of Today’s visit between Netanyahu and Trump is the Middle East peace process, which has recently been affected by Israel’s reluctance to commit itself to the necessities of the so-called "Two-States Solution”. Netanyahu is trying to build upon the current ambiguity in the American policy toward the issue, thereby ease the international pressures on Tel-Aviv to come to a compromise with the Palestinians.
In fact, it seems that Netanyahu has been successful in reaching this first goal even before meeting Trump. Earlier today, the new US Foreign Minister Rex Tillerson said after a meeting with Netanyahu that the US will no more insist on the Two-States Solution and that the best solution should come from an agreement between the sides themselves.
This could be considered as the best gift to Tel-Aviv, because since the election of Trump as the new US President, the Israeli Regime has started a new round of settlements expansion and recently the Israeli Knesset voted in favor of such a policy. Thus, at the practical level, Israel has shown that it doesn’t believe in the Tow-States Solution and by gradually expanding the settlements, in fact it wants to integrate the remaining Palestinian territories into just a single Jewish state. This means that in the coming months, we should expect even a more aggressive policy toward the issue.
The second most important issue during Netanyahu’s meeting with Trump, will be the regional developments, including the situation in Syria and the American new approach toward Iran. Generally speaking, considering any act by Iran throughout the region to support its allis as a threat, Netanyahu is trying hard to convince the US administration to take a harder line against the Islamic Republic and to expand the circle of sanctions and other anti-Iranian measures to the new fields, including Iran’s ballistic missiles program.
Moreover, according to CNN, Netanyahu tries to take some assurances from Trump that the supposed US-Russia anti-terrorist cooperation in Syria won’t be resulted in creating a new zone of influence for Iran and its local allies in the southern parts of Syria, close to the borders of the Israeli-occupied territories.
Therefore, the question now is that will Today’s meeting between Netanyahu and Trump bring about a new wave of Israeli aggression in the region? The initial answer based on the positions taken so far by the Americans is "Yes”!
