Trump rewards the friends, not the enemies. It pays off.
The decision of Israel and the United Arab Emirates to establish diplomatic relations is a dramatic step toward peace.
The longstanding informal relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that peace in the Middle East was not dependent on a resolution of the Israel-Palestinian issue, formed the major impetus in the dramatic diplomatic step last week. But these factors have been at play for a couple of decades. It took President Donald Trump’s approach to the Middle East to get them across the finish line.
Trump’s diplomatic approach was the logical one: reward friends, punish enemies. Reward Israel and the UAE, punish Iran. Recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and sanction Iran due to its nuclear threat, its ballistic missile threat, its export of terrorism, and its incessant threat to destroy Israel.
Trump’s approach: Reinforce the trust of friends, make the enemies pay.
Trump reversed the Obama diplomatic approach of reward Iran, punish Israel; of deliver hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to Iran, and vote against Israel at the UN; of give Iran a nuclear deal with an expiration date, and of pressure Israel on the spurious premise that West Bank settlements make peace impossible.
No more can it be said, as Obama and Joe Biden and the rest of the political left in the US have long said, as well as the political left in Israel has long said: There can never be peace in the Middle East without first resolving the Israel- Palestinian issue.
Any rational observation of the Israel-Palestinian issue showed it to be relatively insignificant within the larger Middle East context. The Palestinian question was more of a political dogma than a realistic analysis based on the history, the legitimacy and the logic of the Palestinian demands. They prevented the Palestinian issue from being the linchpin of peace, or, indeed, of being resolved at all.
To be sure, Trump has his Middle East blind spot in not seeing the danger in removing all US troops from Syria, and Obama has his shining spot in sustaining military aid to Israel. That said, on balance, it is the Trump approach that has pushed peace forward.
Why is it that the Israel-Palestinian issue could not stop the UAE from coming to the peace table? In a word, the irrationality of the Palestinian claims:
• the unwillingness of the Palestinians to get past its opposition to the existence of Israel as a permanent, Jewish state, that is, to recognize even in principle the value of a permanent peace that ends all political, territorial and demographic claims of the one against the other.
• the unwillingness of the Palestinians to settle its refugee problem as literally every other refugee problem has been solved, with an exchange of populations or the absorption of refugees into new host countries, or both.
• the Palestinian embrace of terrorism — the inhumane murder of innocents — that coerced Israel, among other defense mechanisms, into constructing a security barrier, which was then irrationally deemed an “apartheid” barrier by Palestinian apologists for whom, again, a barrier that halted the murder of Israeli innocents was an anathema.
• the Palestinian illusion that thriving Israel population centers on the West Bank of the Jordan River would be dismantled; that is, a stubborn unwillingness to settle, which only increased the dimensions of the Israeli settlements, as good an example of diplomatic irrationality as any.
The American domestic irony here is that just as the Palestinian intransigence was superseded by Arab flexibility, Congress’ beacons of eternal hostility to Israel — the likes of Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — were busy building their coalition of pro-BDS Democrats. Just as Israel and an Arab country were finding their way to peace despite the outraged opposition of the Palestinians, a small but loud and growing cadre of Congresspeople in the US were reinforcing the eternal Palestinian hostility toward Israel.
A few months ago Trump set forth a peace plan that suspended all Israeli settlement activity for four years — which the Palestinians rejected, as again they “never lost an opportunity to lose an opportunity.” So Trump looked elsewhere. He tried something else, and he made it happen, together with the pragmatic Arab leaders who no longer saw the need to sacrifice their diplomatic and economic interests for a Palestinian leadership that would never settle with Israel, no matter the terms. Bridge-building with the UAE fostered by the Simon Wiesenthal Center laid groundwork on a different, human level that contributed to the final result.
To be sure, the UAE conditioned its establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel on Israel’s setting aside its plan to annex Israeli settlements on the West Bank. If ever there were a demand that was purely symbolic, and if ever there were a concession that meant nothing in practice, this was it. No annexation had taken place, nor would it make any practical difference if it did, or if it did not. The Israeli communities remain in place. Whether they formally become part of Israel, or whether they do not, changes little for Israel, for the Palestinians, or for the UAE.
The hope, of course, is that more Arab countries will follow in the path of the UAE. The next hope — and it seems more than a hope — is that the Israel-UAE peace will not resemble the “cold peace” of Israel’s treaties with Egypt and Jordan.
It seems that the chances of a true peace between Israel and an Arab country are inversely proportional to the distance of the Arab country from Israel, and directly proportional to the economic wealth of the Arab country. The greater the distance, and the greater the Arab wealth, the better the chance of a real, not just a formal, peace.
In the case of the UAE, wealth is not only a consequence of oil. It is a consequence of technological sophistication. In this, Israel and the UAE share a lot in common, which bodes well for an intense cooperation between the two countries, not just the forswearing of war.
Mr. Trump, Mr. Netanyahu, the seven leaders of the UAE, and all the lesser known actors in intelligence, in sports, in technology, in dialogue over the past three decades: Take pride in a job well done.
Copyright © 2020 by the Intermountain Jewish News
