Remember when the Democrats were telling us that the election of Joe Biden would usher in a new-found respect for the United States around the world? Remember when we were told by the credentialed media assured us that the end of Donald Trump’s wicked regime and ‘America First’ policies would bring foreign relations back to normalcy?

Yet, as we have previously reported, things have not quite gone as well as we might like. Now, from The Wall Street Journal:

Saudi Officials, Hamas Leaders Set to Meet in Jeddah to Discuss Re-Establishing Ties

A reset would mark a setback for U.S. and Israeli efforts to counter Iranian influence in the Middle East

By Summer Said, Dov Lieber, and Aaron Boxerman | Updated Sundy, April 16, 2023 | 12:55 PM EDT

Senior Saudi officials were planning to meet with leaders of the Palestinian militant and political group Hamas on Sunday to discuss renewing diplomatic ties which have been cool since 2007, part of a diplomacy spree led by Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman that has seen Riyadh move closer to Iran.

In other words, diplomacy at least partly aided by the younger President Bush helped to push the terrorist organization Hamas away from Saudi Arabia, while American diplomacy under President Biden has undone that, and a lot more. Mr Biden took a politically risky trip to visit the Crown Prince in October of 2022, and through either planning or simple ineptitude, managed to insult the Prime Minister in private, and later call him a liar, in public. As the de facto authoritarian ruler of Saudi Arabia, perhaps that wasn’t the wisest idea. A brief description from Wikipedia:

Mohammed rules an authoritarian government. There are no democratic institutions in Saudi Arabia, and elements of repression are evident. Islamic scholars, human rights activists, women’s rights activists, journalists, former insiders, Islamists, and other political dissidents are systematically repressed through tactics including torture and jailing, and some reports have alleged that Mohammed uses a group known as the Tiger Squad to carry out extrajudicial killings. He was personally linked to the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian Washington Post columnist who had criticised the Saudi government, but he has denied involvement in the killing. Mohammed was the architect of Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen which has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis and famine there. His government was also involved in the escalation of the Qatar diplomatic crisis, the 2017 detention of Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, a 2018 diplomatic spat with Canada, the arrest of Saudi princes and billionaires in 2017, the 2018–2019 Saudi crackdown on feminists, an alleged phone hack against Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos in 2019, and treason charges against his cousin and rival Muhammad bin Nayef in 2020. Saudi Arabia’s relations with the Biden administration have been strained, especially after Mohammed’s refusal to increase oil production in the wake of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Prince Mohammed was hardly well disposed to the United States, and the ideas of Western classical liberalism even prior to being insulted by President Biden, despite a couple of ‘liberalizing’ changes regarding the religious police and restrictions on women. But now the Crown Prince is moving in a direction which directly endangers the fragile not-exactly-peace-but-not-outright-war in the Middle East.

Re-establishing ties between Iran-backed Hamas, which is a U.S. designated terrorist group, and the Saudi kingdom would mark a setback for efforts by the U.S. and Israel to establish a military alliance between Israel and other Sunni-majority countries against Iran and its allies. They also complicate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal of normalizing relations with Riyadh, with opposition to Iran as their primary shared interest.

Hamas exists, of course, solely to destroy Israel. While Hamas are also the de facto government in the Gaza Strip area of the Palestinians, an area that Israel completely evacuated under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, their policies have been nothing but resistance and war. When Israel pulled out, in 2005, the Palestinians were given control of the area and the ability to make it into whatever they could. With fabulous beaches, the Palestinians could have turned the area into a warm-water beach resort which would have drawn Europeans, and euros, by the hundreds of thousands.

Instead, they turned it into just another Palestinian base from which to attack Israel, and Israel retains some external control over the 141 mi² territory.

Hamas was invited to the kingdom by Saudi leaders, Hamas officials said. Senior officials are expected to land in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, late Sunday, the officials said. The effort to re-establish ties is being pushed by Iran and Syria, said Saudi officials.

As part of the talks, Hamas officials hope to free scores of Palestinian prisoners held in Saudi Arabia who were imprisoned when the two sides were at odds, according to Saudi officials and a diplomat familiar with the matter.

“We seek relations with all forces in the region and the world, and we have no enmity toward anyone, except for the Zionist enemy,” tweeted Mousa Abu Marzouk, a Hamas official who will be attending the meeting on Sunday.

Jewish voters in the United States normally give around three-quarters of their votes to Democrats; this is what they’ve achieved with that.

Israel is the only real democracy in the entire area, the only one with a Western civilization culture, one which, though officially Jewish, tolerates Islam and Christianity. Yet we have previously had fairly strong and respectful relations with Saudi Arabia . . . and President Biden has managed to help torpedo that. American policy has been, for decades, the isolation of Iran, but with the Iranian nuclear deal under President Obama, and Mr Biden’s current diplomacy, American Democrats have managed to not just weaken that isolation, but help Iran to gain allies. More, in our attempts to fight Russia in Ukraine, it has pushed Iran, Saudi Arabia, and China into closer ties with Russia.

With Joe Biden as President, you can count on it: things will only get worse.
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