Trump and Israel
Our view: President has softened dangerous positions on settlements, U.S. Embassy
When former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry bluntly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month for sabotaging the chances for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he did nothing more than restate what has been the goal of official U.S. policy in the region for decades: a negotiated agreement between the parties that gives both Israelis and Palestinians their ownsovereign states in which to live side by side in peace.
But now that President Donald Trump has ascended to America’s highest office, it’s an open question whether the U.S. will continue to back that approach, which is the only practical alternative to perpetual conflict.
As president-elect, Mr. Trump named as U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel M. Friedman, a billionaire businessman with no diplomatic experience who has helped finance the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and is openly hostile to any two-state solution.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has declared his strong support for the settler movement, and during his first days in office he’s even flirted with the idea of transferring the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move Palestinian officials say would surely kill any chance of productive bilateral peace talks. The new administration’s message has clearly been heard in the Netanyahu government; Israel has approved the construction of 2,500 new homes in West Bank settlements.
None of this bodes well for the security interests of either Israel or the U.S. Mr. Netanyahu is a political opportunist who will do anything to keep his increasingly right-wing governing coalition in power, even if it means ignoring the long-term dangers his policies pose to Israel’s security.
For his part, Mr. Trump has talked wistfully about resolving the conflict through the intercession of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who’s been named a principal adviser to the new president but who, like Mr. Friedman, has no diplomatic or policymaking credentials. In effect, Mr. Trump has turned over U.S. efforts to mediate one of the world’s most intractable conflicts to a pair of untried amateurs when clearly the situation requires experienced professionals.
Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu seem to be living in a bubble of “alternative facts” about the Mideast they’d like to deal with rather than the one that actually exists. There’s little doubt that a U.S embrace of Mr. Netanyahu’s settlement policies not only would strengthen the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that threatens Israel’s economy but would Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with President Donald Trump in Washington on Wednesday. also alienate important U.S. allies such as Egypt and Jordan — and perhaps even set off a new round of violent protests among Palestinians in the occupied territories. It would utterly discredit America as an honest broker in the region and open the door to malicious meddling by adversaries like Russia, China and Iran.
Former Secretary Kerry and President Barack Obama were both committed to the long-term goal of seeing Israel retain its character as a Jewish democracy. But absent a two-state solution, Israel faces a stark choice: It can either be a Jewish state or a democracy, but not both; it can become either a bi-national Arab-Jewish state in which a large Muslim minority uses its franchise to weaken the country’s Jewish character, or a 1960s-style apartheid regime that systematically denies millions of its citizens the right to vote in order to preserve the status quo.
Mr. Netanyahu clearly sees the handwriting on the wall, but he has neither the political support nor the moral courage to tell his countrymen that their present course is unsustainable. As for Mr. Trump, whether due to inattention or incompetence, his acquiescence in the machinations of Israel’s right-wing extremists bent on destroying the possibility of a two-state solution would condemn Israel to a future with neither peace nor security. Simply repeating the mistakes of the past is unlikely to produce a favorable change in outcomes, but that is nevertheless what Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Trump appear bent on doing, with potentially tragic consequences for both their countries.