Let My People Know: The Incredible Story of Middle East Peace — and What Lies Ahead. By Aryeh Lightstone. Encounter Books, 2022.
It took Israel some six weeks in 2020 to do what Israel could not do for 72 years: Make peace with four Arab countries.
Thirty-one years (and five wars) to make peace with Egypt.
Forty-six years to make peace with Jordan.
Then, just six weeks?
Four peace agreements?
Let My People Know provides a ringside seat to the inside story, written by a Denverite, Aryeh Lightstone, who wasn’t just watching. He was doing. He was making history. He was senior adviser to the US ambassador to Israel during the Trump administration.
It was a heady time in US-Israel relations. Many decade-old assumptions were overturned and Lightstone had a direct hand in pushing the ball forward toward peace and a stronger US-Israel relationship. His memoir conveys not just the intriguing twists and turns in the diplomacy but the excitement and drama that America’s diplomats, their Israeli counterparts and, in the end, Arab diplomats in four countries shared.
This memoir is the classic page-turner. I mean, whoever would have thought that yarmulked Jews would walk side by side with Muslims in full regalia on the streets of the United Arab Emirates? Lightstone tells how it happened, and how he made it happen.
He comes off as extremely deferential to all the other leaders on Trump’s Middle East team who had more experience that he, but his intuition is also on display. His instincts. Finesse. Warmth. Candor. Eloquence. Lightstone’s narrative is a window into what it took to bring the long sought paradigm shift to the Middle East.
It’s bad when the best overshadows the good. Because once upon a time the good was deemed the best. As in: The very best would be if the US recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital not only as a matter of law but in practice, by moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. What could be better than that?
Peace, it turned out.
It overshadowed what was long deemed the best — and unrealistic — hope of Israel and its advocates: the US embassy in Israel’s capital.
Let My People Know provides the inside story on that, too.
There are many other “goods” in this book that also would have been “bests” had the Abraham Accords not transcended them.
The inside story on these “goods” is also in this book. I’ll come back to the one about Sudan, but first: the most important sentence in this book has nothing to do with Middle East peace, nothing to do with the Abraham Accords, with Jerusalem, with the Palestinians or all the charming anecdotes and Lightstone’s general reportorial gesture, commingling hard-nosed analysis and unabashed enthusiasm.
The most important sentence is this: “In the great competition between the United States and China, it is increasingly important for countries and companies to choose sides.”
Why?
“Technology such as 5G, quantum computing, metadata, hyperspeed, and more will be key to global leadership in the way that gunpowder, assembly lines, automobiles and airplanes were in the past.”
Why worry?
“China has three distinct advantages.” Lightstone names them: 1. China’s resources for technological progress are larger than all other countries’ combined. 2. China does not abide by laws protecting innovation, patents, etc. 3. China’s ruling communist party can make decades-long plans; but the US, usually, can make only two-year plans, enough to take a current administration into the next election.
So?
So, the US ambassador to Israel needs to talk to Israel about more than defense, intelligence, military aid, energy, etc. The US ambassador needs to know where Israel stands on the global struggle between the US and China.
Put differently, Lightstone believes that if Israel and the US do not work closely together in all areas, “they are destined to see what life is like when other countries are the superpowers.”
China’s blandishments are big and many. If I read accurately between the lines, the tight relationship between the US and Israel under Trump did not always extend to the China question. Should Israel accept Chinese investments? Perhaps the Israeli and American perspectives diverged.
Even if so, it’s clear that the Trump administration’s approach was always to lay down the realities in such a way as to seek a strong, joint, US-Israel path forward. This is precisely what led to the Abraham Accords, via, surprisingly enough, the realities in the Israel-Palestinian relationship.
They were going nowhere. And they should have been going nowhere, given the Palestinians’ unbending and unrealistic demands. Like: Israel should dismantle every Jewish community in the West Bank and uproot hundreds of thousands of people, then maybe we can talk peace.
Instead of beating that dead horse, the Trump administration simply said: We won’t let Palestinian demands stop us from seeking peace elsewhere — supposedly, as American presidents and American and European diplomats said repeatedly, an impossibility.
Think different.
Think big.
How would the Trump administration send that message? Of all things, through a shiva call.
An Israeli who lived on the West Bank had been killed in a terrorist attack. Aryeh Lightstone made a shiva call. Sounds like not a big deal. Certainly not a big diplomatic deal. But wait. An American diplomat making an official call in the West Bank? That was a big deal. It said to the Palestinians: You no longer have veto power over our diplomacy.
As Lightstone records it, the impact of that call was felt in Arab capitals around the world — including capitals that not long after made peace with Israel in the absence of an Israeli-Palestinian peace, supposedly, as former American Secretary of State John Kerry swore, an impossibility.
I, for one, wish Aryeh Lightstone, had quoted himself more often. He is a very effective speaker, by turns penetrating, humorous, systematic, anecdotal. No doubt, this skill played a key role in his effectiveness. Lightstone lets the reader into actual deliberations in his account of the final stage of the Israel-Sudan peace agreement. We hear his voice — welcoming, critical, respectful, demanding, visionary, all wrapped in one, as he faces down Sudanese negotiators who want to sign a non-belligerency agreement, but not a full peace agreement, with Israel. How did Lightstone change a country’s mind in a few minutes?
Here is what he tells the Sudanese:
“Every American is rooting for your success. We want to see a strong and proud and safe Sudan. It is good for you, good for your people, and good for us. However, there is a miscalculation of leverage here. We are the United States of America, and we have relations with nearly every country on earth, some productive and some less productive. We hope that all of these relationships grow and evolve and help us become more secure and prosperous. Out of all the countries in the world, the one that gives us the most reciprocity in our relationship is the State of Israel. They get an enormous amount of our attention because they contribute significantly to our growth, prosperity, and security. I landed at your airport, and it is important for you to know that two of my neighbors in Israel are F-35 pilots. Your offer of no longer threatening them militarily is kind, but unnecessary. Israel is a first-world military power, and you are trying to figure out how to feed your people breakfast tomorrow. We are not here to take baby steps. We are here to discuss a full peace opportunity. If a relationship with Israel is successful for us, it will be successful for you. I don’t understand your internal politics, so you have to make the decision that is best for your country, but please understand that if we choose between Israel and Sudan, we will choose Israel every time. Our plane must depart in ninety minutes, so we can discuss this for eighty minutes but then we will leave the compound. And unfortunately, we are unlikely to come back again. It is your choice, and we wish you well in your decision-making process.”
Done.
The Sudanese negotiating team came back within 10 minutes: Full peace.
I cannot close this review without saluting Lightstone’s critical references to the “peace processors.” By this he means those who agonize over every detail of every Palestinian complaint and claim, never-ending, leading to this overall result of Israel-Palestinian negotiations: paralysis. Trump’s team also initially sought to forge an Israel-Palestinian peace, but when they saw it was going in circles, instead of diving in deeper or ratcheting up the pressure on Israel, the team changed course. In doing so, it changed history.
Peace “process,” as Lightstone hammers away, cannot by definition lead to a solution. It can only lead to more process. Do people realize that the “peace process” began in 1979? So Lightstone, together with the rest of the Trump team, focused on peace. And got it.
They got it in part by affirming in word and deed the obvious:
Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.
Israel is here to stay.
The West Bank cannot morally be off limits to American diplomats, especially for expressions of condolence to victims of Palestinian terror.
The Arab world is bigger than the Palestinians.
Don’t pick up this book unless you have some time on your hands.
You will not be able to put it down.
Copyright © 2022 by the Intermountain Jewish News
