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Benjamin Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister of Israel, and now its leader of the opposition, almost torpedoed the signing of the Abraham Accords due to “cold feet.” Netanyahu also, apparently, never really wanted to make peace with the Palestinians, according to statements made by former President Donald Trump to Barak Ravid.
The new revelations were made by Ravid on the Axios podcast called “How it Happened.”
Israeli journalist Barak Ravid has a new book in Hebrew called “Trump’s Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East,
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“I don’t think Bibi ever wanted to make peace,” Trump told Rvaid in April, “I think he just tapped us along. Just tap, tap, tap, you know?”
It is not surprising that Trump would say such things to make Netanyahu look bad. Over the weekend Israelis entertained themselves at dinners with family and friends by talking all about the new book’s previous revelation: Donald Trump said of Netanyahu “F*** him.
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???? LISTEN to Season 3 of How it Happened, from @BarakRavid and @jonathanvswan.
They reveal how the failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace deal unfolded, and how it led to the historic Abraham Accords with 4 Arab countries. https://t.co/ork3TbKZEx
— Axios (@axios) December 13, 2021
Trump said that about Netanyahu because Trump thinks that just by congratulating President Biden on his victory last year Benjamin Netanyahu committed an act of personal betrayal. Netanyahu, apparently, did not know that he was expected to go along with Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 elections. Trump’s exact line as quoted by Barak Ravid was, “It was early. OK? Let’s put it this way — he greeted him very early. Earlier than most world leaders. I’ve not spoken to him since. F**k him.”
On making a possible settlement with the Palestinians, Trump said, “My whole life is deals. I’m like one big deal. That’s all I do, so I understand it. And after meeting with Bibi for three minutes … I stopped Bibi in the middle of a sentence. I said, ‘Bibi, you don’t want to make a deal. Do you?’ And he said, ‘Well, uh, uh uh’ and the fact is, I don’t think Bibi ever wanted to make a deal.”
But they were still able to get the Abraham Accords – the peace deal between Israel and the two Arab Gulf States the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain – signed and sealed which then led to the African Arab nations of Morocco and Sudan joining in later on.
But according to Ravid, Netanyahu almost kept the historic treaty from ever happening. First, Netanyahu was insistent on annexing parts of the West Bank. If he had done so then any deal with the UAE and Bahrain would have been dead and he knew that. Finally, Netanyahu agreed to drop the annexation plans in order to get the deal done.
And then, at the last minute, Netanyahu told the Americans that he would not be able to sign because he was going to have to dissolve his government over a budget dispute and call for new elections. So, the Americans told him that the deal was done and that he had no choice but to move forward with it.
As for Israel’s coalition government, it dissolved itself a few months later because it could not pass a new budget and new elections were held. This led to an entirely new coalition government being formed and after more than 12 continuous years in power Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to move back into the opposition.
