Iran
If you get a moment try to watch the Saban interview with Jared Kushner. Jared really didn’t divulge a whole lot but he did make a few points which should be obvious.
The world is a different place now than it was even just a decade ago, let alone decades ago. All these conflicts are old and really nobody is helping themselves by holding these old grudges. Today the Saudis need to diversify their economy. They need to keep Iran in check. They don’t need a conflict with Israel as a thorn in their side - in fact they would benefit from allying with Israel to defeat ISIS and stop Iranian hegemony over Syria and Lebanon.
All these countries - and none more than the Palestinians - would benefit from good relations with Israel. Economically Israel is 4x-20x larger than some of these places. The poor cannot trade their way to prosperity with other poor people! They need to open up trade with Israel, not just trading goods but trading technology - nobody knows better than Israel how to turn the desert into farmland. Israel has incredible desalination technology. And on and on.
One thing that may not have changed in 5000 years - Israel is the crossroads of the region. From the far east to Africa, from India to the Mediterranean the silk roads lead through Israel. Israeli gas pipelines are coming on, and moving an oil pipeline from Saudi most sense moving through the stable countries of Jordan and Israel than any other route.
So if the goal is to end the conflict and resettle the Palestinian refugees into a homeland - 99% of whom have never lived in Israel anyway - then why do they need to argue about slices of the Negev desert if they can make a deal that would include land from Sinai, or even Jordan? Get them a country, get them to give up the nonsensical idea of destroying Israel, and the world can move on.
Trump is being opposed by so many - he may turn out to be one of the greatest presidents of all time. They accuse him of being simple and linear, but it seems to me he is a very good non-linear thinker and willing to think outside the box. He has to live with the politics he has inherited but he doesn’t have to follow the folly of past policy. The Obama-Iran deal was absolutely wretched (and Trump said so all along, as a candidate and as POTUS). He may be exploiting the Saudi/GCC fears of Iranian hegemony to cut a major break in this generational conflict and I hope he can pull it off.
There is a lot more to this as well. Egypt recently gave / “sold” 2 islands to Saudi Arabia in return for billions in investment. Egypt really needs a lot of cash, and they could be convinced to cede 2000 square miles of Sinai land to expand Gaza into the main Palestinian state - in return of course for investment and security.
Also of note is the pressure on Qatar. Qatar had been the major supporter of Hamas. As of this moment, Hamas is nearly broken financially and they have always used cash as the means to muster support from the people. They are losing both. Meanwhile Abbas is being pressured and the rumors are that he has been frantically calling world leaders to find support to oppose Trump but has found none.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia a few months ago, and led a summit of 54 of the Muslim countries. He asked for their support and he may be getting it now. Also of note is that the world has been very quiet at the Saudi Crown Prince’s actions to round up his country’s billionaires and detain them, reportedly torture them, and take billions of dollars of some of them in return for their freedom. He is literally shaking them down, and we are quiet about it. Why? Possibly part of a larger quid pro quo, or possibly he knows he can get away with this because we want some other important cooperation from him. We could be seeing the end game of all these seemingly unrelated events come to being.
Prince Alwaleed was recently reported to have been arrested. He’s the one that tried to put all the American independent drillers using hydraulic fracturing (frackers) out of business by dumping massive amounts of OPEC oil into the oil markets. It didn’t work.
I suspect when President Trump met with the Saudis, he told them the game was over. Now they’re so friendly.
Art of the Deal.