In The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg makes the case that a Sunni-Jewish alliance against the rising Shiite power in Iran could help solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem:
The conflict between Sunni and Shia is the most consequential in the Middle East because it is so profound and elemental. But precisely because it is so intractable, it might hold the key to solving another seemingly eternal Middle East conflict, the one between Muslim and Jew. The definitive Middle East cliché is, of course, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Well, it turns out that today, more than at any other time in the ruinous 100-year encounter between Arabs and Jews on the strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the two parties in the dispute have a common enemy: the Shia Persian Islamic Republic of Iran. President Obama’s skills and charisma just might bring Sunni Arabs and Israeli Jews together, but he will be helped inestimably if he considers that the road to peace runs not through Jerusalem but through Karbala. Consider the possibility of a grand, if necessarily implicit, Jewish-Sunni alliance as a gift to Obama from his predecessor.
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So, how to make use of what the Middle East expert Martin Indyk calls the “symbiotic anxiety” shared by Israel and its Sunni Arab adversaries? It might be too late, of course, to forge a Sunni-Jewish alliance, though not because the two parties hate each other; hate has never stopped the formation of pragmatic alliances in the Middle East. It might be too late because the Arab enmity for Israel in the wake of last December’s Israeli attacks in Gaza might make it impossible for Arab governments to be seen entering even a tacit alliance with Israel. “It’s a good time in theory for something like this, but it won’t happen now unless Israel makes certain strategic decisions to bring real compromises to the table,” says Abdel Monem Said Aly, of the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, in Cairo. “It is a difficult situation because Iran has presented itself as a guardian of Islamic and, in particular, Palestinian interests by taking the maximum stands, however hollow. If Israel and the Palestinians can be seen making progress, there is a chance. But this requires Israel to rethink its strategic priorities.”
Read the entire piece here.