The US President thrives on challenges. He wants to be the person who succeeds where all before him has failed. He has set his sights on brokering an Israel-Palestinian peace deal. “We will get it done,” he told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with extraordinary confidence during their recent meeting at the White House.
In the unlikely event he succeeds, he will be bathed in glory, a giant among men; a veritable miracle worker whose name will forever be writ large in Middle East history books.
Amazingly, a smiling Abbas gave the impression that he actually believes he can. Either that or he was grateful for the invitation following years being left out in the cold.
I am highly sceptical. Like many others, I believed Barack Obama when he announced “a Palestinian state is a must for me” and promised President Abbas that a sovereign state would be created within two years. That turned out to be hot air. If Trump thought getting a replacement health care plan passed by Congress was uphill going, he will soon discover that cementing peace between Israelis and Palestinians is akin to climbing Everest with shackled feet. At least, he gets marks for trying whatever his true motivation.
But despite the fact that he has appointed his colony-supporting son-in-law Jared Kushner as mediator while his ambassador to Israel fantasises about a desk in Jerusalem, I don’t wish to be wholly negative.
Trump does have something going for him. His approaches to problems are unorthodox and he’s unconstrained by diplomatic norms. A fresh eye may be exactly what this half-a-century-old impasse needs. Trump will not be deterred by the trials and tribulations of his predecessors, primarily because it’s unlikely he knows anything about them. His mind will not be clouded by the past but will be solely focused on situation as it exists today.
Before we get too excited, I should highlight one tiny flaw in his game plan. He has not thrown his weight behind either a two-state or one-state solution. He has left that detail to the parties concerned. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects both. One state would alter the Jewish state’s demographic and the sprawl of Jewish colonies has virtually spelt RIP to a contiguous Palestinian state.
Netanyahu is content with the status quo. He’s comfortable with his country being an eternal occupying power secured by nuclear weapons and apartheid walls. The only Palestinian entity he might be willing to contemplate is a version of Gaza — a demilitarised excuse for a state without control over its own airspace, shores and borders. After decades of struggle, is that a deal the Palestinians would sign-off on? Doubtful!
On what seems like a positive note, this ‘America First’ president has chosen to visit Saudi Arabia towards the end of this month to meet with the King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud as well as other prominent Muslim leaders as yet unnamed, ostensibly with the aim of talking terrorism. Presumably Israeli-Palestinian peace will also be on the agenda.
From there he will fly to Israel to reinforce American-Israeli friendship where he will give a speech on the plateau of Masada, a Roman fortress symbolising Jewish victimhood. It is there that Israeli soldiers who have completed their training are often sworn-in, a ceremony ending with the pledge “Masada shall not fall again”. If Trump hopes to be trusted as an impartial broker, then he’s going about it the wrong way.
Who is he trying to kid! There is no such creature as an American honest broker in this conflict. Israel is America’s regional proxy. Any realistic peace discussions should feature Israeli and American negotiators on one side of the table with Palestinian and Arab negotiators on the other. Even home purchasers don’t generally rely on a vendor’s own lawyer to fine tune the details.
The likelihood of a deal as long as the Trump-Netanyahu combo is batting for one side is dim. Palestinians have few bargaining chips. Resistance hasn’t worked. Playing by White House rules hasn’t either. The lack of a unified Palestinian leadership gives Netanyahu a pretext to claim he has no single peace partner.
There is, however, one route yet to be tried, active engagement by Arab leaders in face-to-face discussions with Israeli counterparts.
Netanyahu has indicated in the past that he is interested to make peace with the Arab world, in particular with those countries with which Israel shares a common enemy. With sufficient incentives and guarantees from the neighbourhood, he might be tempted to take the idea of a Palestinian state with the seriousness it deserves.
