Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Trump defies experts and critics in breakthrough Middle East peace deals

Just weeks to go before the 2020 election, and the Trump administration is full steam ahead, brokering a string of peace deals that the critics and naysayers said couldn't be done.


In August, at the request of President Trump, Israel and the United Arab Emirates agreed to full normalization of relations. Earlier this month Trump oversaw the signing of an agreement between Serbia and Kosovo that includes Kosovo recognizing Israel, and Serbia agreeing to move its embassy to Jerusalem. On Friday, Trump announced the second Arab nation, Bahrain, to normalize relations with Israel within a month. Then on Tuesday, President Donald Trump celebrated the signing of the “Abraham Accords”...
Here's how Trump defied the experts and forged a breakthrough in the Middle East, leading with the UAE and Israel showing that the conventional wisdom was wrong...
Perhaps the most impregnable piece of conventional wisdom over the last three and a half years was that there was no way that Jared Kushner could possibly move the ball on Middle East peace.

Understandably enough. After all, Kushner already had a vast policy portfolio in the Trump White House and no prior diplomatic experience. The idea that he could succeed where people who had devoted their careers to working on this problem had failed seemed far-fetched — at best.

But here we are, with Israel and the United Arab Emirates signing a historic normalization agreement at the White House. Bahrain has now also agreed to normalize relations with Israel, a move it couldn’t have made without Saudi assent.

All of this is what Joe Biden might call a BFD. When the three leaders — President Trump, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed — were considering their handiwork over the phone, according to a senior administration official, “MBZ said, ‘Hey, 2020’s been a really tough year. This has got to be the best news of 2020.’ And the president said, ‘Yeah, what do you think, Bibi?’ And Bibi said, ‘Are you kidding me? This is the best news in the last 20 years.’”

And it all happened against an overwhelming tide of criticism. The senior administration official marvels that Kushner stayed the course “when he was obviously hit like crazy in the media.” “All the experts said that he was wrong. Rex Tillerson rode him like crazy.”

The way Kushner himself puts it is, “The last three and a half years, I think I’ve been the only optimistic person on the region.”

And a beautiful sight in Jerusalem overnight...
The lamestream press can ignore all they want and be left behind, but there's no denying that this is simply historic.
Related links: Trump: Israel-Bahrain-UAE Peace Deal ‘Marks the Dawn of a New Middle East’
Donald Trump predicts Palestinians will seek peace with Israel

ADDENDUM: As if on cue, while the signing of normalization agreements between Israel and two Arab countries was happening at the White House, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired two rockets into Israel on Tuesday. IDF of course responded.
“I’m not surprised that the Palestinian terrorists fired at Israel precisely during this historic ceremony,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said before his flight returning to Israel.

“They want to turn back the peace. In that, they will not succeed,” he told reporters. “We will strike at all those who raise a hand to harm us, and we will reach out to all those who extend the hand of peace to us.”
The administration made the Palestinians good-faith offers on economic development and peace, including plans for a two-state solution, all of which the Palestinian authority rejected, thus a different path forward presented itself. With the usual M.O. of Israel being expected to give the Palestinians even more, and over 60-plus years of Arab governments giving the Palestinians a veto right on their foreign policy, everybody finally said, enough. They've been invited to the table, but if the Palestinian leadership won't join in on discussions, other Arab countries are no longer going to allow them to hold the rest of the region back in peaceful progress. Bravo.

Related link: President Trump’s Three Steps to the Abraham Accords
Posted by an ebb and flow at 1:00 AM