Now is the moment to lead: Can Trump succeed on Mideast peace where others failed? - opinion

Over the past 14 months, the Middle East has proven to be dangerously volatile and unpredictable – creating veritable threats to America’s interests and allies, requiring the US to expend significant resources and even to deploy and use force in their defense. This is in the face of President-elect Donald Trump’s determination to minimize American embroilment in regional conflicts and the expectation that America’s allies take responsibility and craft ways to achieve security and stability.

Providentially, unfolding events and the attitudes of important regional leaders have indicated the way to achieve the necessary security and stability while protecting the United States’ interests: Enhance the Trump-led Abraham Accords to create a robust regional alliance of peace-oriented states, expanded to include Saudi-Arabia, integrating Jordan and Egypt as well. Such an alliance would isolate the greatest threat to regional stability – Iran – while weakening Chinese and Russian encroachment in the region. 

The stabilizing and even pacifying potential of such an alliance was clearly demonstrated by the concerted action to thwart the attacks by Iran against Israel this past April and October. Forging such a regional architecture is in the bulls-eye center of America’s interests.

While the Islamic Republic of Iran is the biggest instigator of regional instability, the fulcrum that has given it and other players motivation for violence, traction, and leverage across the Middle East is the festering and heretofore intractable Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It is the key to the horrendous October 7 pogrom, followed by a horrific year of fighting in Gaza, the accession in war by Hezbollah, direct attacks by Iran on Israel, and the Houthi war on international shipping off faraway Yemen. This series of events has also contributed to the collapse of the Syrian regime, chaos in Lebanon, and ongoing attempts to undermine the Kingdom of Jordan. 

Very troubling has been the war’s suffocating and eroding effect on the vitality of the Abraham Accords.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not only the fountainhead, but it promises to continue to fester, metastasize, periodically explode as on October 7, and disrupt regional stability  – unless steps toward its resolution are taken. On the flip side, launching a process toward settlement of this conflict may provide the key to creating the envisioned regional alliance. 

Over the past year, there have been ample private and public expressions by members of the Arab League and even the OIC (representing 57 states), in particular leaders of Saudi Arabia, reiterating their commitment to the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 and their willingness – nay, desire – to normalize relations, advance cooperation with Israel and even guarantee its security. In the short term, they are prepared to take practical steps to stabilize the situation, including by participating in governance and the reconstruction of post-war Gaza. But all on condition that credible and significant progress is made toward the ultimate goal of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. 

Is Israel being led in an antithetical direction?

Unfortunately, the key local players suffer extreme leadership misdirection and deficit. 

Israel is being led in a perfectly antithetical direction. Its current government is in the throws of rapid de facto annexation of the West Bank, a process quickly approaching a point of no return. On the other side, the Palestinian Authority (PA), the only legitimately recognized governing Palestinian body, has proven to be weak, corrupt, unrepresentative, and inept. It elicits little confidence – even among Israeli and Western leaders who would want to advance down the two-state path. Positive movement requires that Israel change course, and that the PA reform. Alas, neither party will pursue change on its own accord.

The US is the only nation with the power and leverage necessary to pull this wagon out of the rut and put it on a propitious path. And now is the moment to lead: In the wake of the positive geostrategic changes of recent months, and given that “left alone” the underlying situation would only deteriorate beyond repair, there’s a tremendous opportunity and imperative, not only to salvage past accomplishments but to actually drive an unprecedented positive sea of change in the security environment of the broader Middle East. 

It requires grabbing the bull by the horns and wrestling the Palestinian-Israeli impasse to the floor, where success has eluded past administrations. 

The US’s regional allies have reportedly internalized the key lesson of this past year: Absent a dynamic constructive process, the Israeli-Palestinian arena is bound to explode, undermine regional stability, and create threatening internal dynamics – from Jordan and Egypt next door to Saudi Arabia and others in the Gulf.

In light of this development, a determined US initiative is likely to be reciprocated by its Arab allies mobilizing to do much of the heavy lifting. Regional contributions – missing from past efforts – might prove a game changer, making it possible for Donald Trump – as the 47th president of the United States of America – to succeed where all predecessors failed, yielding tremendous strategic advantages for all relevant parties, not least the US.

The writer is a brigadier-general (res.) and a member of Commanders for Israel’s Security.