DONALD TRUMP’S JERUSALEM MOVE IS A NECESSARY STEP.
The illusion that there is some progressing peace process in the Middle East has itself ironically become the latest impediment to peace. Smashing that illusion carries risks. But as the last five decades of violence between Palestinians and Israel make clear, so does indulging it.
President Donald Trump’s declaration this week that the United States will officially recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is good news. Partially because it recognizes the long- evident facts on the ground: Jerusalem, the ancient capital of the people of Israel for thousands of years, has been the declared capital of the modern state of Israel for half a century. And it is undeniable that some configuration of the city will remain so forever, regardless of future negotiations concerning the city’s eastern side. There’s no serious question of that, except in the minds of fanatics who truly believe the population of a ( putatively) nucleararmed state will one day be driven into the sea.
Trump’s decision is welcome also because this was a promise America made to one of its closest allies more than 20 years ago, but was perennially stalled by previous presidents. There is no meaning, nor honour, in a pledge forever unfulfilled. But the announcement will also be helpful in sending a clear signal to Palestinian leadership that the U. S. will not keep pretending a breakthrough peace deal is just around the corner. An even partially viable peace process would not be threatened by the acknowledgment of a geopolitical and demographic reality.
That’s a message that needs to be sent directly and loudly to Palestinian leaders whose rigid hold on power is captive to interests other than those of the Palestinian people themselves. Generations of Israelis and Palestinians have suffered the tragic necessity of Israel’s occupation of lands it would have surely handed over long ago to an effective Palestinian government truly committed to peace, had one existed. There’s no sign of hope for that basic precondition for a successful deal happening any time soon. Palestinian leaders are too preoccupied with their own internecine battles to focus on the peace process they claim Trump has scuttled.
Progress will only be possible when Palestinian leaders become a serious, motivated partner for peace. Of course Israel’s conduct has not always been faultless, and we have criticized certain Israeli policies in the past. But there is no escaping the fundamental truth of the so-called “peace process”: Israel has been declaring its readiness to make a deal for decades. It has done so already with Egypt and Jordan, two formerly mortal enemies, and has even in recent years begun working, unof- ficially but effectively, with Saudi Arabia, another former foe, against their mutual enemy Iran. Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and was promptly repaid with rocket fire and terrorism. The Israelis are not perfect, but they’ve shown a clear willingness to take risks for peace.
Yet the world’s political and diplomatic elites have indulged in the delusion t hat Palestinian l eaders mean to be equal partners in pursuit of a better, more peaceful life, and that a deal was always tantalizingly close at hand. Surely no one genuinely believed that. But that fiction was, at least for mandarins and diplomats, too polite and convenient to abandon.
Over time, however, real life has overtaken more palatable fantasies, as it tends to. The Arab world is now far more gripped by more pressing concerns — chaos in Libya, carnage in Syria and an expansionist Iran, to name a few — to focus much attention anymore on the Palestinian issue. In Arab capitals, Israel has also now become too valuable in helping confront some of those challenges to risk antagonizing over something so evidently obvious as Israel’s enduring control over western Jerusalem. We suspect European leaders will also find they have more important priorities than to expend much effort trying to prevent a U.S. president from voicing Mideast realities.
The unfortunate truth is that the Palestinians now find themselves largely abandoned. The Arabs, the Europeans and the U.S. especially have tried repeatedly to produce a peace deal that delivered both security to Israel and a self- governed state to the Palestinians. That remains a paramount goal. But the world, bluntly, has given up for now. So long as the Palestinian territories remain divided between the virulently anti- Semitic Hamas and the only moderately less truculent Fatah party, there’s no path forward.
But it is no betrayal of the Palestinians to speak the truth about Jerusalem and about the utter failure of the peace process. On the contrary, it is a necessary step toward actual peace. There will surely be rioting and violence in response, regrettably, as well as pro forma declarations of outrage from the usual anti-Israel corners. But when the uproar finally dies down, the Palestinians will find themselves right where they’ve been for decades and where they might easily languish for decades more: alone and abandoned by its self- interested and cynical so-called friends, and living next door to a massively powerful country that holds every advantage, but one nevertheless willing to negotiate peace.
Those, too, are the facts. Things will only get worse for the Palestinians the longer they wait to take Israel up on that offer. Delay has only weakened their position and will continue to do so. We can only hope they delay no further so that a new era of peace can soon begin. Better the world should expend its energies not arguing over the truth of Jerusalem, but speaking truth to Palestinian leaders. It is long past time to gamble for peace so that the Palestinians, too, can someday prosper as Israel has.
PALESTINIANS NOW FIND THEMSELVES LARGELY ABANDONED.