The Art of a Mideast Deal Trump was willing to break with a failed conventional wisdom.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-art-of-a-mideast-deal-11600211909?mod=opinion_lead_pos1
How would official Washington respond if a Democratic President brokered a peace deal between Israel and two Arab states? The papers would be stacked with play-by-plays of how the historic breakthrough was achieved and adulatory profiles of the people in the room. The hosannas to the President’s strategic vision would flow from think tanks and academia, if not also from Oslo’s City Hall.
The reaction Tuesday to the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain at the White House was more muted, and maybe that’s for the best. Some groundwork for the cascading thaw in Arab-Israeli relations was laid by a decade of shifts in the Middle East’s balance of power as Israel grew stronger, the Iran threat persisted, and the U.S. signaled its intention to draw down.
Yet the Trump Administration deserves credit for taking advantage of these strategic shifts, and for setting aside the failed conventional playbook for how Arab-Israeli comity could be achieved. The Abraham Accords, named for the prophet of Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, are based on mutual interest. Mr. Trump has been criticized for a transactional view of world affairs, and we sometimes worry about how that will play out, for example, in East Asia. Yet in the Middle East, hard-headed transactionalism may have been what was needed.
American negotiators have tried for years to press the Israelis and Palestinians to give up something in a leap of faith and hope that peace will follow. Each side saw that as a lose-lose proposition. But peace between Arab states and Israel offered a win-win.
The most obvious benefit, besides strategic cooperation against Iran’s regional mayhem, is economic. Long-running Arab boycotts against the most dynamic economy in the Middle East have hurt investment and exacerbated the region’s poverty. As the Washington Institute’s Michael Singh notes, there should be opportunities for Gulf capital to flow into Israeli start-up companies—potentially displacing Chinese investment in Israel that has worried the U.S.
For all the talk of Mr. Trump scorning American allies, the achievement here was possible because he backed allies to the hilt, giving them confidence in U.S. support. He rejected Barack Obama’s failed courtship of Iran and withdrew from the flawed nuclear deal. He showed the nerve to kill the leader of Iran’s regional aggression, Qasem Soleimani.
Mr. Trump also moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a gesture that was said to be the death-knell for peace but sent a signal that Israel will not be wished away. No other U.S. President had been willing to take that risk. The Administration also stood by Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen. The Saudis haven’t normalized relations with Israel, but as the U.A.E. travel embargo ends they are allowing flights to and from the Jewish state to pass through Saudi airspace.
The Abraham Accords offer little to the Palestinians, beyond an Israeli pledge to suspend annexation of West Bank territories. Militants on Tuesday launched rockets from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel—a symbol of the rejectionism that has made Arab states tire of the Palestinian cause.
But Israel’s wider recognition may eventually cause the Palestinians to come to the table in a realistic way. This may seem unlikely now, but Tuesday’s agreement shows that political arrangements that look permanent one day may not be the next.
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