Trump, bullish on Mideast Peace, will need more than confidence
Ever since Britain declared 100 years ago that there should be a Jewish homeland in Palestine, harmony has eluded that dry, benighted land. Presidents and kings and prime ministers and diplomats and special envoys have laboured for a century in a futile search for peace.
President Trump, however, is not daunted by the challenge of bringing together Israelis and Palestinians. “It’s something that, I think, is frankly maybe not as difficult as people have thought over the years,” he said on Wednesday.
Whatever else may be said of him, Mr. Trump does not suffer from a confidence deficit. As he hosted the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, Mr. Trump proclaimed that he would be the president who finally makes peace in the Middle East. “We will get this done,” he said. He even suggested that, with his leadership, “hopefully there won’t be such hatred for very long.”
Never mind that he also thought repealing and replacing his predecessor’s health care program would be “so easy.” Or that he predicted he would have no trouble bending North Korea to his will, or forcing Mexico to pay for a border wall. Then there was Mr. Trump’s assertion as a candidate that he knew more about the Islamic State than the generals. And his insistence that he could “fairly quickly” pay off the entire $19 trillion national debt accumulated over the last 182 years.
Braggadocio, of course, has been at the center of Mr. Trump’s persona for decades, and arguably helped make him into a swaggering celebrity real estate tycoon and reality television star with enough appeal to win the presidency. In the White House, though, it has historically been more problematic. Presidents who make bold predictions often come to regret them. All Mr. Trump would have to do is ask those who, for decades, have banged their heads against the Middle East brick wall.
“When the president says we’ll do this deal, he thinks in terms of a one-off real estate deal,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator who spent years trying to bring Israelis and Palestinians together. “And while that’s partly true,” the specific issues dividing Israelis and Palestinians “transcend the ‘art of the deal’ in ways I’m not sure he can now even begin to imagine.”
Mr. Trump’s introduction to Mr. Abbas made that plain. The president said he would do “whatever is necessary” to negotiate an agreement without offering any sense of how he intends to do that, or what such an agreement might look like.
Mr. Abbas, by contrast, repeated the conditions the Palestinians have insisted on for years - the creation of an independent Palestinian state based on borders that existed before the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital; the right of return for refugees; and freedom for prisoners in Israeli cells. That formulation has been a nonstarter for Israel, which itself has shown no sign of backing off its own fixed positions.
Mr. Trump has made clear that details do not matter to him, abandoning the longtime American commitment to the so-called twostate solution. When he hosted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in February, Mr. Trump said he would be fine with either a twostate or a one-state solution if both sides agreed. Palestinians hoping he might be more supportive of the two-state plan with Mr. Abbas were disappointed when Mr. Trump made no mention of it on Wednesday.
“We want to create peace between Israel and the Palestinians,” Mr. Trump said. “We will get it done. We will be working so hard to get it done.”
Turning to Mr. Abbas, he added, “I think there’s a very, very good chance, and I think you feel the same way.”
Mr. Abbas, 82, who was among the negotiators at the signing of the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn in 1993, indicated that he did feel optimistic that, nearly a quartercentury later, Mr. Trump might finally build on that initial agreement to forge a final resolution.
Praising Mr. Trump’s “courageous stewardship,” “wisdom” and “great negotiating ability,” Mr. Abbas said, “We believe that we can be partners, true partners, to you to bring about a historic peace treaty.”
Mr. Abbas implored Mr. Trump to understand the Palestinian perspective. “It’s about time for Israel to end its occupation of our people and of our land after 50 years,” he said. “We are the only remaining people in the world that still live under occupation. We are aspiring and want to achieve our freedom, our dignity and our right to selfdetermination.” Mr. Abbas, 82, who was among the negotiators at the signing of the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn in 1993, indicated that he did feel optimistic that, nearly a quarter-century later, Mr. Trump might finally build on that initial agreement to forge a final resolution
Echoing Israel’s position, Mr. Trump pressed Mr. Abbas to discourage Palestinian instigation against Israelis. “There cannot be lasting peace unless the Palestinian leaders speak in a unified voice against incitement to violence and hate,” Mr. Trump said. He did not publicly mention Palestinian financial payments to the families of convicted terrorists, but his spokesman, Sean Spicer, said Mr. Trump raised the issue privately.
Mr. Abbas insisted that Palestinians were not preaching hatred. “I affirm to you that we are raising our youth, our children, our grandchildren on a culture of peace,” he said, a contention Israeli officials would reject.
By all accounts, Mr. Trump seems genuinely determined to pursue Middle East peace and has assigned his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his longtime lawyer, Jason Greenblatt, to lead the effort. The president may visit Israel this month before a scheduled trip to Europe.
Mr. Trump seems drawn to the idea of succeeding where others have failed. “Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve always heard that perhaps the toughest deal to make is the deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” Mr. Trump said. “Let’s see if we can prove them wrong.”
Yet few think conditions are ripe. Aging and unpopular, Mr. Abbas may not have the clout to deliver even if he were willing to make concessions. Similarly, Mr. Netanyahu, now in his fourth term and under corruption investigations, faces significant pressure from his political right not to make a deal, and does not seem especially eager to do so anyway. Both leaders have an interest in making Mr. Trump think they are serious even if they are not.
“I think the Palestinian calculation is that they can follow this further than Netanyahu can,” said Grant Rumley, the co-author of “The Last Palestinian,” a biography of Mr. Abbas to be published in July. “I think they expect that when the time comes to resist or say no to Trump, as it inevitably will for both leaders, that Abbas can do so and still maintain his grip on power, while the same likely cannot be said for Netanyahu.”
John Hannah, senior counsellor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who served as former Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security adviser, said failure has a cost. “The peace process is nothing if not a huge diplomatic time suck,” he said. “And the more time the president and his top advisers spend trying to push this particular rock up that hill, the less time they are focused on addressing the profound strategic challenges like Iran, ISIS and Al Qaeda.”
Still, Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, a pro-peace lobbying group in Washington, said “there’s a scenario where this falls into his lap later in his term, not necessarily because of the brilliance of his diplomacy.” With Sunni Arab states aligned with Israel in the regional struggle with Iran, he said, pressure may build for a resolution to the Palestinian question.
If nothing else, Mr. Ben-Ami said, not being steeped in the details has advantages. “People who’ve been hardened by 20 or 30 years of doing this may think they know it all and they come in with their preconceived approach and it doesn’t work,” he said. “So maybe this is better.”