The U.S. State Department, along with numerous pundits, academics, and policy experts, has long believed that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a prerequisite to improved relations between Israel and its neighbors, and will also lead to better American relations with the Arab world. While this theory of “linkage” has never been supported by much evidence, and has been entirely discredited in the past six years, Dennis Ross argues that its mirror image could lead, if not to peace, then to progress in that direction:

Benjamin Netanyahu can justify a move toward the Palestinians before his public and government if it is clear he is getting something from [moderate Sunni states], and especially the Saudis, that shows the region is responding to Israel. For Mahmoud Abbas, the Arabs can assume responsibility for the moves he makes. The problem is that the Arabs, in particular the Saudis, are not itching to play this role. . . .

[Thus there is a need for] what might be termed “reverse linkage”: it is not dealing with the Palestinian issue that will draw the Saudis closer to the United States; rather, it is the U.S. showing it will counter the Iranian threat in the region, even as it expects tangible Saudi moves on the peace issue, that can elicit active measures in support of the Trump administration’s efforts. Yes, the Saudis would still need Israeli moves toward the Palestinians to explain their outreach to Israel to their own and other Arab publics, but the [real motivating force] for them would be seeing that the U.S. is serious practically, not only rhetorically, in limiting Iran’s destabilizing moves in the region. . . .

The Saudis could [then] be asked to announce that they will send a delegation to Israel to discuss common threats in the region and security assurances. . . . In return, Israel could announce that because of its commitment to two states for two peoples, it will not build outside the settlement blocs and will forswear sovereignty in the areas that are east of the security barrier—or what amounts to 92 percent of the West Bank.

[Next], the Saudis and others . . . could join the U.S. in pressing [the Palestinian leadership] to stop seeking to delegitimize Israel in international forums; to end preferential welfare payments to the families of those who engage in violence against Israelis; and to recognize that there are two national movements and national identities—Jewish and Palestinian—which is why they accept two states for two peoples.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.