Donald Trump is set for his first overseas trip as the U.S. president, with stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel, Italy and Belgium. The trip will include meetings with Pope Francis in Rome, NATO leaders in Brussels, and G7 members in Sicily in addition to Saudi, Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
The Saudi visit, which kicks off the trip, is expected to result in the announcement of a large arms sale package, as well as demonstrate that the American posture in the region is no longer based on balancing Iran and Saudi Arabia, former President Barack Obama’s inexplicable strategy which has done nothing but to encourage Iran to be an even more provocative and aggressive actor. So too, early and frequent American efforts at the United Nations by Ambassador Nikki Haley to stop the constant Israel bashing, and the Trump-Netanyahu meeting, which offered a warm American embrace of Israel, seemed a part of an effort to restore close ties between the two traditional allies and put an end to the distancing of America from Israel, a strategy carried out throughout Obama’s two terms.
While the Trump administration has worked to put U.S. relations with Israel on a more traditional path, there is renewed hope among the career Middle East peace processing contingent, and the vast majority of foreign policy journalists who do such a poor job covering the region, that perhaps Trump will be serious about dealmaking, and is at work setting balls in motion to get another peace process between Israelis and Palestinians going. The new hopes stem from the warm welcome that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas received on his recent official visit to the White House, and other signals that the president and his team seem to have been sending to Israel.
Many are putting weight on the fact that long-time Trump friend Ronald Lauder has been encouraging the White House to launch a new peace process initiative, arguing that Abbas is a moderate and open to a deal and that the time is right given the new American team in place. (Presumably, the timing and people were wrong on all prior occasions.) Attached to this theory is the notion that Abbas could sell a deal to Palestinians, including those affiliated with or supportive of Hamas, a bitter enemy of the PA and currently in control of Gaza. Selling a deal would mean that Israel and the Palestinians could reach a deal, and there is no evidence today of overlapping sets of minimally acceptable positions between the two parties, just as there never has been. Most who have studied Palestinian politics believe that Abbas, who has long overstayed his elected term, is hardly strong enough to conclude a process that would require moderation or abandonment of core Palestinian positions, such as the so-called “right of return” for millions of descendants of refugees.
When Trump administration officials have met with Israeli leaders, both at the White House and in Israel, the issue of settlement construction, the obsession of the Obama White House, has come up. Trump chose not to get into a public fight with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the issue on his first visit to meet with the president, but nonetheless made clear that expansion of settlements beyond their current boundaries would be viewed as problematic.
