Negotiations that are intended to lead to the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia have begun, but they aren’t the only parties that must agree to a potential deal. These negotiations are being conducted very quietly, because they are touching on issues that are extremely sensitive. As you will see below, we are not likely to learn much about the exact details of the deal that is being formulated until it is finalized. The Biden administration is brokering these peace negotiations, and one thing we do know is that there will be no normalization of relations unless Israel is willing to make major concessions regarding the Palestinians. Benjamin Netanyahu is unlikely to agree to recognize a full-blown independent Palestinian state, but another plan is being floated that could potentially be acceptable to all of the parties.
This plan was initially conceived by a close confidant of Mohammed Bin Salman named Ali Shihabi.
According to the plan, Jordan, Gaza and the West Bank would be merged into a single unit known as “The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine”…
One topic for discussion will assuredly involve the implementation of the Saudi-based Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution published in Al Arabiya News on 8 June 2022. Its author – Ali Shihabi – is a confidant of Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister – Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) and also a member of MBS’s advisory board on Neom – a US$500 billion megacity being built in north-western Saudi Arabia covering an area equal to the size of Israel.
Shihabi’s plan calls for the merger of Jordan, Gaza and part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into one territorial entity to be called “The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine”
The Netanyahu government has always been deeply concerned about the security risks that an independent Palestinian state would pose, but putting the Palestinians under the umbrella of Jordan would potentially mitigate those security risks.
And it is important to note that this plan has not been publicly rejected by Jordan, the PLO or Hamas since it was first published…
Shihabi’s plan has not been rejected by King Abdullah (Jordan), Mahmoud Abbas (PLO) Ismail Haniyeh (Hamas) or MBS in the seven months since its publication.
Needless to say, I am 100 percent against this insidious plan.
But it doesn’t matter what I think.
What matters is what the parties think, and right now they appear to be optimistic that a deal can be achieved.
Just last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boldly declared that we are “about to witness a pivot of history”…
Saudi Arabia is a leader of the Arab and Islamic world. It has never formally recognised Israel since the creation of the state in 1948.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talked up the possibility last month, claiming: “We’re about to witness a pivot of history.”
That doesn’t sound like a man that is about to make a relatively minor deal.
Rather, that sounds like a man that is thinking about his legacy.
And we are not likely to know all of the details of any potential agreement in advance.
In recent years, Netanyahu has become a big proponent of secret negotiations. He made this quite clear during an interview with Al Arabiya TV last December…
Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu made that perfectly clear in his 50 minute interview on Saudi Government-controlled Al Arabiya TV on 15 December:
“You know, I’m sort of a champion of a slight twist in what Woodrow Wilson said in the Versailles Peace Conference. He said he believed in open covenants, openly arrived at. I believe in open covenants, secretly arrived at or discreetly arrived at. There we will have to have discussions about all the questions that you asked today and see how we can advance this. If you try to sort it out in advance you get stuck. That’s what happens.
I am entirely convinced that a deal is coming, and when it is finally unveiled it will shock the world.
For now, the Palestinians are taking a cautious approach to any potential deal, and they have made a list of some of the things that they would like to see included…
- Transferring parts of the West Bank currently under full Israeli control (known as Area C under the 1990s Oslo peace accords) to the governance of the Palestinian Authority
- A “complete cessation” of Israeli settlement growth in the West Bank
- Resuming Saudi financial support to the PA, which slowed from 2016 and stopped completely three years ago, to the tune of around $200m (£160m) per year
- Re-opening the US consulate in Jerusalem – the diplomatic mission to the Palestinians – that was shut down by President Donald Trump
- Resuming US-brokered negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians from where they stopped under then-Secretary of State John Kerry in 2014.
And the Palestinians are also promising “to avoid embarrassing Saudi Arabia” during these negotiations…
US diplomats have obtained assurances from Palestinian officials that they will neither publicly reject nor undermine the White House-promoted normalization talks between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
A diplomat from the US State Department told The Media Line that the Palestinian Authority has pledged not to publicly criticize any potential normalization deal with Israel, to avoid embarrassing Saudi Arabia.
An American official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the subject, indicated that the Biden Administration was working closely with Saudi Arabia. They aim to develop a financial and political package intended to placate the Palestinians and prevent a response similar to that generated by the 2020 Abraham Accords, which established diplomatic ties between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain.
The Saudis are very eager to reach a deal within the next year, because they know a deal may not be possible if Joe Biden does not win the 2024 presidential election in the United States.
And obviously the Biden administration is motivated to move things along quickly too, because their days may be limited.
But if the land of Israel is formally divided in 2024, that is going to have enormous implications for all of us.
I have been warning that this was coming, but for a long time it appeared that any sort of an agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians would be impossible.
Unfortunately, this new plan to merge Jordan, Gaza and the West Bank into a single entity called “The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine” may provide the basis for a major breakthrough.
It won’t be easy, but if a way can be found to satisfy the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Saudis and the Biden administration, 2024 could potentially be a year when the unthinkable becomes reality.
Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here. Article cross-posted from End of the American Dream.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.