Pence fails in attempt to nudge Israelis, Palestinians toward peace
As America’s most prominent evangelical, Vice President Mike Pence has courted conservative Christians on behalf of President Donald Trump and borne witness to Trump as a true “believer,” although some remain skeptical.
When Pence announced his first trip to the Middle East, he initially hoped to draw attention to the persecution of Christians in the region, as well as nudge Israelis and Palestinians toward peace.
Things didn’t go as planned.
Pence wrapped up the trip to Israel, Egypt and Jordan on Tuesday, having been rebuffed by top Christian leaders in those countries in protest over Trump’s decision last month to break with decades of U.S. policy and recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
It’s still mysterious just how Trump believes he has advanced the cause of peace, or fortified America’s standing in the world, with that decision. Its costs in terms of U.S. isolation, on the other hand, were evident throughout the trip. Pence also didn’t meet with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who flew instead to Brussels to ask European leaders for protection from Trump’s bad decisions. Neither did Pence sit down with other Palestinian leaders, any Israeli-arab citizens or Israeli opposition members.
During Pence’s stops in Amman and Cairo, King Abdullah II of Jordan and President Abdel-fattah el-sissi of Egypt criticized the Jerusalem decision (although secret tapes reported by The New York Times suggest the Egyptians acquiesced in Trump’s choice).
One place Pence did strike an enthusiastic chord was in Parliament in Israel, where a hard-line government is largely hostile to a two-state solution. Members interrupted him with standing ovations. His address was replete with biblical references to Jewish ties to the Holy Land. He referred to God’s promise to the Jews that “he would gather and bring you back to the land which your fathers possessed” and to “the Jewish people’s unbreakable bond to” Jerusalem.
Even more striking was what Pence didn’t say. He mostly chose to ignore Israelis’ shared history with the Palestinians, only reaffirming support for a two-state solution “if both sides agree.” Pence, who had urged Trump to recognize Jerusalem, also announced that the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv would move to Jerusalem by the end of 2019, sooner than expected.
He further played his political and religious cards by inviting West Bank settlers as his guests at the event. The contrast could not have been starker to Parliament’s Israeli-arab members, who held up signs saying, “Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine.” They were forcibly removed by security as Pence began speaking.
For Israelis, the speech was “as ringing an endorsement of the Zionist enterprise as one could pray for” and evidence that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump have “an unprecedented meeting of the minds,” wrote Chemi Shalev, a columnist for Haaretz. But for the Palestinians, he said, it was a “slap in the face.”
Yet another slap in the face. Although Trump insists he wants an Israeli-palestinian peace deal, he has, unlike his predecessors, chosen to disqualify America as an honest broker. He has weakened the Palestinians by cutting millions of dollars in aid for health and education projects for Palestinian refugees and then fanned new tensions with his one-sided decision on Jerusalem. At the same time, the gulf between the United States and Europe, once close partners in the peace process, is growing. Such divisions only serve to make good outcomes harder to achieve.
Pence’s trip, especially his speech to Parliament, satisfied U.S. evangelicals and Israeli hard-liners who dream of a greater Israel. That kind of support may help Trump and Pence with their electioneering at home.
If they want to advance Israeli-palestinian peace, however, they will have to appeal to the Palestinians and Christians who now shun them.