The art of the peace deal, Trump’s masterful détente

New York Post ^ | September 16, 2020 | Michael Goodwin

[karpov]

Before Tuesday’s remarkable events began at the White House, Palestinians in the West Bank dutifully protested the decisions by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Later, during the ceremony, Palestinians in Gaza fired two rockets into southern Israel, inflicting minor injuries on two civilians.

The rage of the Arab Street ain’t what it used to be.

Even the limited expressions of anger were mostly for television cameras. The Palestinians could have had their own state several times over the last two decades, but could never take yes for an answer, so now the train of history has left them standing at the station.

They accuse their fellow ­Arabs of betrayal and stabbing them in the back. But in fact, it is two generations of Palestinian leadership that have betrayed their own people and forfeited their veto over peace.

They lost that veto because Donald Trump took it from them. The president, breaking the mold set by his predecessors. Still, he offered the Palestinians a deal, the “deal of the century,” he called it, but they responded with insults and intransigence.

It was a huge mistake, one that reduced them to disheartened spectators as the world watched in astonishment as two more Arab countries took the historic step of normalizing relations with the Jewish State. The likelihood that others will soon follow, possibly including Saudi Arabia, means that Israel will no longer be a pariah in its own neighborhood.

[yldstrk]

Trump is an amazing deal maker.

[Gen.Blather]

“Trump is an amazing deal maker.”

It has been obvious for my entire life that the worst obstacle to peace with Israel was the Palestinian leaders. They had opportunity after opportunity, but they turned them down to maintain a war footing, because, as a leader, you can do things during war that you can’t do during peace. I suspect every Palestinian leader had enriched himself at the expense of Palestinian prosperity. Trump gave them a chance, then cut them out of the process. Now, they have lost the war of their own choosing with none of the gains they expected. However, the big long term winner will be the Palestinian Arabs; the commoners, not the elite.

[jonose]

Trump is good at strategically planning the future. The tide of petro dollars has changed. These countries need US and Israeli tech and economical partnerships for future growth.

[SMARTY]

Politics and ‘statecraft’ is and has always BEEN old-fashioned ‘horse trading’.

Any politician or ‘statesman’ who loses sight of that, can’t succeed and should NOT hold office.

Trump gets it...and brought it with him to the WH. Lucky US!

[hinckley buzzard]

Good article. But the fact is, “the rage of the Arab Street” was never what it “used to be.” We have heard at every turn that we have to be cautious because of the “Arab Street.” This is perhaps a moldy holdover from the State Department’s decades of pusillanimous and futile efforts to manage events in the mid-East, and their aversion to taking decisive action.

‘The Street” was supposed to explode into open war whenever we took any initiative in dealing with the miscreants of the Arab world. It was going to start a war when we recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. It was going to explode when we moved our embassy. On and on. Other than the planned and orchestrated intifadas in the 1990’s did anything even looking like an uprising occur. The genius of Donald Trump is his ability to see through the fog of Foggy Bottom and deal with reality.

[marron]

The answer was always to simply ignore the Palestinians, just stop talking to them.

The Saudis and the Emirates are all more afraid of Iran than Israel, and it was always childishly simple to make our defense of them conditional on them normalizing relations with Israel.

So, add these countries to Jordan and Egypt, and you can add the Saudis, though they aren’t as public about it. They have long offered their territory to Israel if needed to strike Iran. And in the last Lebanon war (under GW Bush) they were publicly begging Israel to take out Hezbollah entirely. Things haven’t been the way they seemed for a long time; Trump is just bringing it into the open.

[Vaduz]

And Pelosi call peace a diversion par for the democrats.