Israel’s New Path To Peace

            It is not my custom or inclination to heap praise on the Trump administration, but recent events may be an indication that this misbegotten conglomeration of grifters and sycophants may have actually stumbled onto a path to bring about peace between Israel and its neighbors.  I say “stumbled” because the path they have uncovered does not appear to be the journey they originally embarked upon.

            In 1948, Harry Truman, by supporting the creation of the State of Israel, ripped off the scab that was obscuring the festering hatred of the Arab States toward their Jewish neighbors. Beginning in the 1890s, Jews came as pilgrims from all over the world seeking refuge in a land once viewed as the “promised land” by their ancestors.  From the perspective of the those living in Palestine, this seemed like yet another invasion of the territory once conquered for them by Mohammed in the seventh century. Although the Palestinians have long considered the incoming Jews as infidels, with a few notable exceptions, they have refrained from following their Grand Mufti exhortations to kill or expel these newcomers. The war initiated by Israel’s declaration of statehood resolved little.  Israel’s territorial boundaries remained unclear since the Arabs never accepted those contained in various U.N. resolutions and the Israelis seized land beyond those boundaries in the wake of the 1967 and 1973 wars in an effort to enhance their ability to fend off future attacks.  These territorial issues, as well as the claims of Arabs who fled Israel at the outset of the 1948 war to return to their homes, lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has persisted for over 70 years.

            Operating under the belief that the entire Middle East would remain in turmoil until that conflict is resolved, every U.S. administration since the founding of State of Israel has undertaken to bring about peace between Israelis and the remaining occupants of the land once called Palestine.  Like his predecessors, President Trump also set out to to achieve this seemingly unobtainable goal.  His strategy was both simple and logical.  He would have an Arab state convene a conference of the oil-rich countries surrounding the Persian Gulf to create a fund (rumored to total $50 billion) which would be used to finance economic development within West Bank.  The ostensible underlying theory was that if the Palestinians could develop a growing and viable economy they would have something to lose by continuing their state of war with Israel.  Bahrain, an oil-rich kingdom that has long enjoyed the protection of the United States, was called upon to host this event.  Since the Arab states to be invited to participate have been financially supporting the Palestinians for years, such an investment seemed to be in their own interest.  Also, an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord would open the door to their own relationships with Israel, the region’s fastest growing economic power.

            For its part, the U.S. would provide the road map and encouragement for achieving a resolution to this long-standing conflict. The Trump administration’s plan, however, was doomed from the outset.  First of all, the plan totally ignored the Palestinian long-standing demand for a right to return to the lands their families had once occupied within Israel’s borders.  It has always been Israel’s contention that the Palestinians’ forbearers had abandoned those lands in collaboration with the attacking Arab armies in the 1948 war. They did this with the expectation that following the war they would not only recover their own lands but also those that had been purchased from them by the soon-to-be vanquished Jewish settlers, an expectation that was never realized.  The Palestinians, while conceding that their parents and grandparents had left their homes and villages out of fear of being trapped between warring armies, nevertheless contend (with some legitimacy) that they were later prevented from returning because their homes and villages had been destroyed by the victorious Israelis.

            A second no less formidable obstacle was that the plan proposed by the Trump administration was a Netanyahu fantasy, with Israel’s annexing an additional 30% of the West Bank territory, the Palestinians being confined to a series of small and separated enclaves, and the Israeli troops continuing to occupy those enclaves for an undetermined period of time.  On top of that, overseeing the administration of this plan would be the same Trump administration that had moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and had threaten to cut the financial aid they were receiving from the U.S.  As a result, the Palestinians rejected this effort before the conference was even convened.

            In proposing this plan, the Trump administration had given its tacit approval to Israel’s annexation of further territory within the West Bank.  This prompted Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to immediately announce his own plan to proceed with that annexation.  What had seemed like a logical way of achieving peace between two long-standing antagonists had suddenly turned into a cause for renewed armed conflict.  Yet, out of this debacle, a new path toward Middle East peace arose.

             Since the creation of the State of Israel, the oil-rich states bordering the Persian Gulf had steadfastly aligned themselves with the Palestinians. This was more based on a need to preserve domestic tranquility than concerns for the plight of their Arab brothers living in Palestine.  These were authoritarian states whose rulers bathed in wealth and whose people were hungry for more personal freedom and a better lifestyle.  To distract and curb the revolutionary zeal of their own people, their rulers denounced Israel for the suffering of the Palestinian people. Their political alignment with the Palestinians was in furtherance of this narrative.

            For almost a full century their security had rested on the fact that they sat on large deposits of oil needed to energize factories around the world. During this period, they enjoyed the protection of the armed forces of the United States which needed that oil to fuel its factories, its cars and its economy.  But many things were now changing.  The United States, through hydraulic fracking, had become oil independent; and a global concern over climate change was moving the world away from fossil fuels.  In addition, under President Trump, the United States had turned its back on several of its allies and had walked away from two trade treaties, a global climate accord and a multi-national treaty to halt Iran’s production of nuclear weapons. How much longer could they depend on the protection of such a fickle nation that no longer needed the sole basis of their existence?  On top of that, Iran had become an even more formidable enemy since Iraq, its previous arch-enemy, had become allied with it following the downfall of Saddam Hussein.  These factors cried out for a reassessment of their security needs.

             They didn’t have to look far for a new protector.  Situated right near them was the region’s only nuclear power, with well-equipped and well-trained armed forces that shared their concerns about the dangers posed by a mischievous Iran. Israel also possessed a wealth of technologies that could help them restructure their own economies and was the world’s leader in fresh water technology.  Moreover, notwithstanding their lack of official recognition of the State of Israel, they had been quietly accepting Israel’s assistance on a number of issues, including issues of national security.  Under the circumstances, it seemed unthinkable that the Gulf States were still going to allow the Palestinians to continue to control their foreign policies. After all, the Palestinians’ two political factions could not even agree among themselves. What were the chances that they would ever enter into a peace accord with Israel?  Thus, in response to Netanyahu’s declaration of Israel’s intention to annex portions of the West Bank, the UAE Ambassador to the United States wrote in an Israeli newspaper that Israel could either have “normalization or annexation, but not both.”  This article seemed to imply that his country might be willing to proceed with its recognition of Israel if Israel would simply renounce its plan to locate further settlements on the West Bank.  Israel wouldn’t even have to remove its existing West Bank settlements.

             To his credit, President Trump, always an opportunist, jumped at the chance to salvage his failed peace initiative and inserted himself in the negotiations between Israel and the UAE.  The parties did not even have to negotiate a peace treaty because they had never been at war with each other.  Nor did they have to agree that an attack on one would be an attack on the other. All they had to do was agree to “normalize” their relationship by establishing embassies in each other’s capitals.  For his part, Trump offered to sell the UAE an unspecified number of F-35 aircraft, unmanned “Predator Drones” and airborne electronic jamming systems. The President, having obtained Netanyahu’s informal blessing for these sales, was seemingly unconcerned that they would violate our nation’s long-standing policy of not providing to a Middle Eastern country with more advanced weaponry than that possessed by Israel. While it remains to be seen whether these sales will ever take place, the UAE was nevertheless willing to proceed.

            It was not long before Bahrain also recognized the advantages of engaging in similar discussions.  How big a political price would Bahrain’s King have to pay for “selling out” what was universally considered a corrupt and incompetent Palestinian leadership?  Probably, very little since Yasser Arafat had sided with Saddam Hussein when he invaded neighboring Kuwait in 1990. The obvious conclusion was that there was more to be gained by expanding ties with the Israelis than would be lost by uncoupling from the Palestinians.

            Trump kept himself in the middle of these developments by hosting on the South Lawn of the White House a joint signing of the parties’ two memoranda of understanding (dubbed “Abraham Accords”).  The two accords, however, are not identical. Whereas the UAE-Israel agreement has a number of well-intentioned but vague clauses touching on such issues as the establishment of embassies, respect for each other’s sovereignty, prevention of terrorism, expansion of trade, mutual cooperation regarding science and technology and the promotion of tourism, the agreement with Bahrain simply provides that the two nations will “open an era of friendship and cooperation.” 

            Since the UAE accord had few specific terms outside of the mutual commitments to exchange ambassadors, it’s curious that Bahrain did not simply enter into a similar accord.  There are two possible explanations. First, Bahrain, an island that is physically attached to Saudi Arabia via a causeway, does little without the concurrence of Saudi Arabia; and the Saudis appear to have been waiting on certain future developments before giving its consent.  A second possibility is that Bahrain may be holding out to see if the U.S. would be willing to sell advanced aircraft to it before taking more definitive steps.

            There is much speculation as to what will happen next. It has been suggested that similar deals with Oman and Sudan are to follow shortly and that Morocco and Kuwait may also be ready to seek closer ties with Israel.  Saudi Arabia seems to be waiting to see if President Trump, whose friendship its Crown Prince has been cultivating, will be re-elected as well as to gauge popular reactions in the UAE and Bahrain.  The Saudi Kingdom is the center of Sunni Islam and a hotbed of radical Islamic thought which means it will take far more political courage and perhaps many more advanced aircraft to get the Saudis to join this growing party.

            The Palestinians’ hopes of eventually regaining control of their former homes and villages are now quickly evaporating.  This seems evident even though Israel’s new Arab friends will likely continue to support the Palestinians financially. With their bargaining power rapidly diminishing, the decision as to whether they should continue their current state of belligerency has taken on greater urgency as the longer they wait, the less bargaining power they will have.

            There never has been an issue as to whether the Palestinians could make a deal with the Israelis. The only unknown is the terms of any such deal. To be sure, there is a large and highly vocal faction of Israelis (currently occupying a prominent position in the Likud government) that would like Israel’s boundaries to include most, if not all, of the territory west of the Jordan River.  Even so, a peace treaty with the Palestinians would be so beneficial to the continued existence of the Jewish state that their opposition is not likely to stand in the way of a satisfactory peace agreement.  For Israelis, the principal objectives are unconditional recognition of the State of Israel and arrangements that will secure a lasting peace.  For the Palestinians, the principal objectives will be to establish the size and shape of their new state with reasonable access to their holy sites in Jerusalem.  While they will continue to push for a “right of return,” it is unlikely that this issue will be open for discussion. 

            It’s not that the Palestinians have nothing to offer.  Peace itself will allow Israel over time to reduce the resources it currently devotes to its own security.  This will help accelerate its own economic growth. It would also eliminate the nasty issue of how Israel can remain a democratic and Jewish state if it were forced to expand its population to incorporate another 4.75 million Arabs.  Also by eliminating hostility with the Palestinians, Israel would bring an end to the BDS movement and gain additional customers for its own products and services. An agreement with the Israelis will undoubtedly not get the Palestinians all of the territory they crave and will require them to bury their hostility toward their Jewish neighbors. It should, however, bring them an immediate improvement in their standard of living as the Gulf states are likely to continue their economic support and Israel will likely be willing to provide water resources, technology and assistance in the economic development of a new Palestinian state. As the Palestinian state assumes greater responsibility for policing its citizens, Israel would undoubtedly relax its own costly security efforts and permit greater interaction of Palestinians within its borders.

            Even though an agreement seems like a win-win situation that should quickly become a reality, that hasn’t happened primarily because the ownership of ancestral lands tends to be a highly emotional issue and generations of hatred are not easily set aside. Sadly, the political and financial support which the Palestinians have been receiving from the neighboring Arab states so far has only served to keep those emotions enflamed. The questions that remain are how many Arab States must accept Israel’s right to exist and how long will it take for the Palestinians to set aside their demand for a “right of return” and their hatred for their Jewish neighbors before there will be peace.

            Two Scandinavian legislators have already suggested that President Trump be nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, suggestions that have been echoed on Fox News. There are a number of problems with their suggestions.  First, what has been achieved to date is not particularly remarkable as neither the UAE nor Bahrain have been at war with Israel and those two counties have been cooperating with Israel for the past several years.  Secondly, what has been achieved was neither a plan conceived nor brought about by the Trump administration. In fact, the Trump administration’s most important contribution in bringing the parties together was its generating insecurity as to the future protection the U.S. would be providing to the two Arab nations.  In addition, Israel’s own efforts undertaken over a period of years to prove itself a good and valuable friend must be deemed the primary motivating factor underlying the Abraham Accords.  In this sense, President Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize about as much a kid who catches a foul ball at a baseball game deserves deserves to receive a Golden Glove Award.

            Also weighing against Trump is the fact that over and over again he has demonstrated a penchant for creating chaos and discord among nations, insulting America’s allies and embracing the world’s cruelest dictators. Perhaps his most notable actions have been breaking important international agreements aimed at furthering world peace like the Paris Climate Accord and the JCPOA calling for Iran to set aside its nuclear ambitions. Under the current circumstances, even nominating Trump for a peace award seems like sheer blasphemy.

            It is still perhaps wishful thinking that the Israelis and the Palestinians will soon be resolving their differences.  That, however, should not overshadow the enormity of what may prove to be a change in the conditions for achieving peace between Israel and its surrounding Arab states.