Whether you love him or hate him, U.S. President Donald Trump in his first year in office showed a singular ambition to take on the globe’s greatest problems.
Trump replaced Washington’s world-weary resignation with the ruthless can-do mentality of a businessman. His stated aim was to shake things up, make unexpected deals.
He took on North Korea, Iran, and China, though his Russia policy was ambiguous. He discussed overthrowing the disastrous Maduro regime in Venezuela. A foreign policy of why not and what the hell.
Thus, Trump’s great plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The deal of the century, this would be. King Abdullah’s rejection of a confederation joining his country, Jordan, to the West Bank is but one sign that Trump’s plans in their present form won’t succeed. But Trump is always willing to change the deal if necessary.
This is promising for the Palestinians. Their best bet is not to reject Trump; it’s to use him just as he wants to use them.
At a Council on Foreign Relations meeting several days ago, a three-person panel discussed a new HBO documentary looking back on the failed Oslo Accords. The nostalgia that predominated was not for a past era, but for what might have been. Oslo turned out to be a tragedy. We were so close. We almost made it work. If only Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had not been assassinated or if only…
When the lights went up, several in the audience were crying -- veterans of the Peace Process Generation. Their fierce embrace of the two-state solution, of helping the Palestinians achieve their just demand of national self-determination, had failed.
One of the panelists, an Israeli, expressed the general sense of grief. Now, he said, despite all good will on both sides, Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation and a final status agreement was not possible in his lifetime. It wouldn’t be his children’s lifetime either. Perhaps in his grandchildren’s generation.
A questioner from the audience replied that this simply cannot be true. It can’t be true that the Palestinian people will be left to suffer another 10, 20, or 30 years of misery and spoiled life chances. That the population of Gaza will continue to live in a tiny open-air prison whose exterior walls are controlled by the Israelis, and the interior by Hamas.
The speakers talked of Oslo as if it were an Israeli-Palestinian affair. They left out the way conflict is wrapped in a larger crisis involving larger rival states, as well as outside powers fighting still larger battles involving still higher stakes and much larger populations. They left out the consequences of the Arab Spring that continue to destabilize the region. They didn’t address the Islamic State and its fanatical caliphate that has come and gone. Unmentioned were the hundreds of thousands who have died in the Syrian wars, and the millions more displaced. They didn’t mention that one of the region’s largest, most hidebound states, Saudi Arabia, with its many links to terrorism, is now run by a ruthless young modernizer -- a man, like the American president, in a hurry. Nor did they discuss how Iran’s malign ambitions in the region have made Israel a preferred partner rather than a target.
Against these bigger conflicts, the fate of the Palestinian people and their supposed longing for a nation-state of their own no longer mean much abroad. The outside world has moved on. Palestinian leaders know this. Yet they insist on continuing a hopeless war.
In a paradoxical way, however, Trump gets it. He’s deeply pro-Israel and doesn’t care much about the Palestinians. He wants to pressure them to accept what they cannot prevent, to give up illusions and change Palestinian history. He wants to get the Israeli-Palestinian conflict out of the way. He wants to be a hero and quickly. The best strategy for a new Palestinian leadership is to help him in order to get as much out of a deal as they can.
The Israeli negotiator at the HBO meeting looked glum but then took a new and surprising tack, with an unexpected sense of determination.
Yes, he said. Peace would be possible if there were a change in leadership. Leaders are crucial. They can make things happen. The tragedy of Oslo was that Rabin’s assassination removed the one man who could have brought the Israelis along. Whether Yasir Arafat would have come through is another question.
Today what’s necessary, he said, is leaders capable of creating a new situation, determined to change the game. He gave the example of South Africa, of Nelson Mandela and Frederik de Klerk. He should have added Sadat and Begin.
Game-changing leaders, he said, had to appear at the same time. Is Benjamin Netanyahu a potential Begin or Rabin? He needs to be convinced. Is there a Palestinian equivalent of Mandela or Sadat? There must be.
Whomever that person is, outside governments, starting with Washington, need to find him. They need to get him elected (a little evil for a greater good) and then protect him as the deal of the century is done. They may have to face off with Hamas in the process.
Exactly what the deal will be is not clear and less important. What is clear is that the Palestinians need to be led out of the desert.