OPINION:
There are deals, and then there are deals. President Trump could not claim to be the best of dealmakers unless he challenged, in his own words, “the toughest deal ever to make.” And so he is — attempting to end the seemingly endless conflict along the ragged edges of Israel with the creation of a separate Palestinian state. Despite the long history of past failures, this time there is reason for hope.
The president stood before a crowd of well-wishers in the White House East Room on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by his side to announce his “vision” for a two-state solution that would give birth to a contiguous state of Palestine. “Forging a peace between Israel and the Palestinians may be the most difficult challenge of all but I was not elected to do small things or shy away from big problems,” said Mr. Trump.
An 80-page peace plan lays out the primary details for the creation of a new Palestinian nation, and a joint U.S.-Israeli committee will refine it, said the president. The new homeland for the 5 million who now reside in the West Bank and Gaza would come into being following a four-year transition period, during which Palestinians would be required to fulfill certain benchmarks. Chief among them would be a forswearing of their long-standing backing for terror. “Young people across the Middle East are ready for a more hopeful future, and governments throughout the region are realizing that terrorism and Islamic extremism are everyone’s common enemy,” said the president.
True to his business roots, Mr. Trump builds his plan for peace on the foundation of economic incentives. Central is an investment of $50 billion in the nascent nation, backed by the United States and business-oriented regional neighbors. The presence in the audience of ambassadors from Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates gave weight to the promise of new economic opportunity.
Missing from the White House confab, unsurprisingly, were any signs of Palestinian leadership. Still, it is the divide that separates the young from their reflexively resistant elders that is cause for hope. All around the region are rising gleaming spires of progress in neighboring cities like Tel Aviv, Doha, Qatar and Manama, Bahrain. It is the story of human history that each new generation push against the stolid pillars of custom, creating space for original ideas and new opportunities. The renewal process is slowest among the ancient roots of civilization in the Middle East, but it cannot be held back forever.
The region’s Islamic nations have long beaten the drum to the breaking point for the creation of a separate Palestinian state. In reality, though, the scheme has been a Trojan horse with which to penetrate and annihilate Israel. It has only been in recent years that moderate Muslims in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have warmed to the idea of living side-by-side with the Jewish homeland. Extremist Iran remains a dangerous exception, though, deploying their jihad-loving proxies and threatening nuclear annihilation to purify the region of infidels resistant to the strictures of Muhammad.
As is their habit, members of the governing Palestinian Authority (PA) have pre-emptively rejected the peace blueprint. An angry PA President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly told security forces to allow crowds to launch a “day of rage” to protest the Trump deal. Terror paymasters in Tehran may be watching closely, but Mr. Trump has already proved the mullahs are mortal by daring to tear up the Iran nuclear deal in defiance of their threats and by terminating their chief terrorist, Qassem Soleimani.
With U.S. economic sanctions drying up Iran’s funding for terror, sensible Palestinians may notice that legitimate commerce pays better in the long run than killing innocents in terror attacks, and it is more honorable in the eyes of all but the most-hardened extremists. The Trump peace plan, says the president, would double gross domestic product over a decade, add a million jobs and cut unemployment in half.
It falls to a new generation of Palestinians to recognize that their dream of an independent nation is wishful thinking so long as they continue to play the cat’s paw for the puppet masters in Tehran. Mr. Trump’s proposal offers a way out of dependency rooted in terror. The deal could prove the last, best hope for a future Palestinian state. It’s one that should not be refused.
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