Barak Ravid Despite Netanyahu's efforts, even for Trump, peace with Palestinians comes first
NEW YORK – Three minutes before his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
began, U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out the most powerful weapon
in his arsenal – his Twitter account – to make clear what he considered
the most important issue on the meeting’s agenda. “Peace in the Middle
East would be a truly great legacy for ALL people!” he tweeted.
And
just in case Netanyahu missed Trump’s tweet, the president repeated his
message in an even clearer form in front of the cameras at the start of
the meeting. It was hard to avoid noticing Netanyahu’s discomfort.
Over
the past week, the prime minister and his aides have worked hard to
frame the meeting in both the media and public opinion as one that would
deal mainly with the Iranian threat. Unfortunately for them, Trump had other plans.
What
happened at the start of this meeting evoked feelings of déjà vu. At
almost every talk he had with Barack Obama during the latter’s eight
years in office, Netanyahu wanted to discuss Iran, but the U.S.
president talked about the Palestinians. This ritual repeated Monday
night.
After
Trump delivered his monologue about his desire for a peace agreement,
Netanyahu tried to do damage control by muttering that Trump himself had
termed the Iranian nuclear deal “terrible.” But it was already too late.
Trump
isn’t Obama, far from it. He doesn’t publicly criticize Netanyahu, he
takes a softer line on settlement construction and he does everything
with smiles and hugs.
But
once again, it turns out that for an American president – any
president, even Donald Trump – meetings with Israel’s prime minister are
first and foremost about the Palestinian issue. In the end, Trump wants
from Netanyahu exactly what all American presidents have wanted from
their Israeli counterparts since the occupation of the West Bank and
East Jerusalem began in 1967.
Trump’s
statement also contradicted the messages the White House had
aggressively sent both the American and Israeli media in recent days.
Trump’s aides did everything in their power to lower expectations about
progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process during the UN General
Assembly session.
The
White House even said, perhaps at the request of Netanyahu and his
aides, that the peace process might not be a central focus of the two
leaders’ meeting. But these talking points collapsed in the face of
Trump’s enthusiastic statements about his desire to achieve an
Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
There’s
an enormous gap between Trump’s optimistic statements, on the one hand,
and the reality on the ground in the West Bank and the deep crisis of
trust between Israel and the Palestinians on the other. Still, Trump is
trying to alter reality through his statements. In his career as a
businessman, this worked more than once.
During
his visit to Israel in May, Trump resurrected the word “peace” from the
grave and returned it to the public debate. Despite the skepticism in
both the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem and Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas’ office in Ramallah, it seems Trump is determined to
continue in this direction. The president wants peace talks to resume
and expects gestures and concessions from both sides.
The
Trump-Netanyahu meeting on Monday was relatively short, lasting
slightly less than an hour. This is shorter than any discussion
Netanyahu had with Obama.
The
meeting didn’t deal only with the Israeli-Palestinian issue; the two
leaders also discussed Iran and Syria for a few minutes. But on these
two issues as well, which are so important to Netanyahu, it’s not at all
clear where the White House stands or what it’s willing to do to
address Israel’s concerns about the Iranian nuclear agreement and the
situation in Syria once the civil war ends.
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