Mideast and Trump

Your May 29 article “World shows less tolerance for PA glorifying terrorists, says senior diplomatic official” mentions a Channel 2 report saying US President Donald Trump yelled at Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during their meeting last week in Bethlehem over PA incitement.

Is Trump surprised to see the obvious? Leopards don’t change their spots, and business skills do not always overlap with political and diplomatic abilities – although real businessmen learn fast.

While the blood and tears in Manchester haven’t yet dried, President Trump sounds like he believes that hatred, violence and bloodshed can be eliminated by establishing an additional terrorist state. His successful deals with leading Arab countries might bring many benefits to the US economy, but I doubt the Arabs are interested in and prepared to become fair allies and brokers in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

PETER ROTBERG Ramle

As a liberal critic of US President Donald Trump, I still don’t know why he isn’t as much up for Middle East peace-dealing as any other president. He ran a worldwide business empire and knows how to deal internationally.

In the South Carolina primary, Trump talked about being neutral between Israel and Palestine. In contrast to former president Barack Obama’s admired calm, Trump’s effusiveness toward Israel and instinctive understanding of its risky existential situation, and his equal effusiveness toward Palestine and the Arab world, might be better appreciated over there than here in cool, more modulated New England.

Trump’s desire to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem could reassure the Israeli Right, but not doing it, as well as his opposition to the settlements and firmness about the Green Line, have reassured the Palestinians and the Arab world.

Meanwhile, one has to be amused by Caroline B. Glick’s comment that “Trump is maintaining Obama’s policies on Israel and the Palestinians,” which “were substantively all but indistinguishable from those of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush before him” (“Netanyahu’s challenge with Trump,” Column One, May 26).

What Glick is affirming is that the views of America’s Democratic and Republican parties, and our five current and former presidents – including those as different as Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Republican Donald Trump – share an equally profound lack of any belief in the Israeli farright’s fallacious claims.

Trump’s desire for a peace deal, his remarks about neutrality and his warmth and respect shown to both sides and their leaders may give him at least one venue, like Richard Nixon’s China, where, if he makes progress toward security and peace, he just might be able earn himself some respect and bring a measure of that respect home to the United States.

JAMES ADLER Cambridge, Massachusetts