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Why is Mike Pompeo risking a one-day trip to Israel amid the pandemic?

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Jonathan Cook
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The US has been supportive of Israel stepping up attacks on Iranian positions in Syria, with at least six airstrikes alone in the past two weeks. Both would like to see Tehran denied any say in the post-war rebuilding of Syria.

But their agreement is less clear-cut about Russia filling any vacuum left by Iran's departure.

The US state department is still in thrall to a Cold War agenda of containing Russia and treating it chiefly as a military threat.

Israel's approach is more ambivalent. Reportedly on good terms with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Netanyahu cannot afford to antagonise a great power on his doorstep.

He also needs to weigh Moscow's influence over 1.2 million Russian speakers that immigrated to Israel in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago and usually support his rightwing bloc.

Fault lines with Washington could quickly open over Syria, where Russia is angling to turn Bashar Al Assad's government into a client state, guiding and controlling economic and military reconstruction.

Moscow wants Iran out of Syria nearly as badly as Israel and the US, and has been turning a blind eye to Israel's attacks. For that reason, a Russian-controlled Syria may prove the least of all bad options for Israel.

For the US, on the other hand, it would allow Putin an escape hatch from the box into which Washington has been progressively corralling Russia over the past 30 years. Should Moscow make a success of rebuilding Syria, its influence might grow in the region's other war-ravaged areas from Iraq to Libya and Yemen.

Discussions are likely to be less contested on the issue of annexing swaths of the West Bank, as envisioned by Trump's Middle East "peace plan".

Last month, shortly before Netanyahu finalised his new coalition, Pompeo stated of annexation that "the Israelis will ultimately make those decisions" apparently unconcerned by how the Palestinians might view their land, and a future Palestinian state, being stolen from them.

The coalition agreement allows Netanyahu to advance annexation any time from July well ahead of the US elections. But Trump will expect close coordination in order to maximise the benefits in the final stages of his re-election campaign.

The fly in the ointment could be Gantz. He has not opposed annexation but has said it must happen with US approval and in ways that maintain regional stability and do not jeopardise Israel's peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt.

Most likely, Pompeo will use his visit to sound out Gantz more closely now he is inside the government and, if needs be, gently lean on him on Netanyahu's behalf to ensure he doesn't publicly waver on annexation from within the coalition.

With Gantz as defence minister, and his colleague Gabi Ashkenazi, another former general, as foreign minister, any dissension could embarrass the US administration just as it is trying to sell annexation as a peace move in skeptical foreign capitals.

Pompeo and Netanyahu whether masked or not may prefer to give away little beyond platitudes about their discussions, but events on the ground may soon tell the full story.

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Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the 2011 winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: (more...)
 

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