Will the Trump Successes in the Middle East Survive?

By: Guy Milliere

December 22, 2020. 9:30 am. A plane takes off from Ben Gurion Airport in Israel for Morocco’s capitol, Rabat. Economic, political, cultural and strategic agreements between Morocco and Israel are signed for a full normalization of relations between the two countries. Morocco is the fourth Arab Muslim country in 2020 to sign such an agreement with Israel.

The Abraham Accords, solemnly signed on September 15, 2020 at the White House by Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and the United States, set in motion a new peace process that many observers would have considered unimaginable just a few years ago. This new peace process has continued well beyond the 2020 U.S. elections and are at the heart of a broader revolution that has changed the Middle East and the Arab world. It is a revolution that is one of the major achievements of the Trump presidency.

With the new administration in Washington, DC showing an eagerness to drag everything that bears Trump’s name through the mud, it may be important to analyze this revolution and the strategy that made it possible – starting from the situation in the region when President Donald J. Trump arrived at the White House.

Syria was ravaged by a catastrophic civil war that left more than 400,000 people dead and millions of refugees. A jihadist terrorist organization had occupied a vast territory in eastern Syria and northwestern Iraq, called it the” Islamic State”, and was using it as a base for preparing bloodthirsty worldwide jihadist attacks.

In Iran, the mullahs’ regime was destabilizing the entire region and advancing toward regional hegemony. Iran ruled Lebanon through Hezbollah; areas of Syria that are still in the hands of Bashar Al-Assad through thousands of Revolutionary Guards and militiamen dispatched by Tehran, and half of Yemen’s territory through the Houthi militias it was financing and arming. It was also financing and arming Hamas in the Gaza Strip and continuing to move towards possessing nuclear weapons, despite the July 2015 nuclear agreement (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA), which had served no purpose other than allowing the regime to dispose of billions of dollars, become the main financier of global Islamic terrorism, and continue its uranium enrichment toward a legitimized nuclear breakout.

The countries of the Sunni Arab world were weak and shaken. Egypt was just beginning to find calm after years marked by the fall of Hosni Mubarak; the rise to power in 2012 of the Muslim Brotherhood; its overthrow a year later by large demonstrations; the rise to power of Abdel Fattah al Sisi, and ongoing Islamist uprisings that the army has severely repressed.

Libya, since the destruction of the Gaddafi regime, has been in ruins, and abandoned to Islamic terrorist groups. Yemen has been largely destroyed. Saudi Arabia was threatened both by Iran and Islamic State, which had launched attacks in the east of the country. Sudan was in the hands of Omar al-Bashir, a bloodthirsty ruler who accepted the use of his country for Iran to transfer arms to the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Authority, after abandoning all negotiations, proceeded to organize bloody anti-Israeli attacks without receiving the slightest reprimand from the Western world, and carry out with impunity a campaign committed to delegitimizing Israel in international organizations.

Israel had been under constant pressure from the Obama administration, as well as from President Barack Obama himself, who constantly stressed the “imperative” of creating a Palestinian state within the “1967 borders”. Obama, apparently hoping to create a Palestinian state on his way out the door, had decided not to veto a UN Security Council resolution on December 23, 2016, which described Israeli settlements as “territories occupied by force”, including the Old City of Jerusalem, and Israel as “acting in violation of international humanitarian law”.

In addition, the Obama administration and Obama had explicitly supported the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and the ascent of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The Obama administration had also distanced itself from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies; contributed to the destruction of Libya’s Gaddafi regime; signed the JCPOA enabling Iran to enrich uranium and possess nuclear weapons — a deal Iran never signed — and had poured more than $150 billion into Iran’s coffers.

President Trump, from the moment he took office, acted quickly and decisively. He destroyed the Islamic State. By December 2017, the group controlled only 5% of the territory it had controlled ten months earlier. By March 2019, it had lost its last stronghold.

On May 21, 2018, Trump moved to incapacitate the regime of Iran’s mullahs by announcing that the United States was abandoning the “nuclear deal”. He then implemented sanctions aimed at curtailing Iran’s adventurism.

Trump also distanced himself from the “two-state solution,” stillborn in diplomatic circles by a Palestinian veto of any suggestion, as well as other untenable Palestinian demands.

Trump improved U.S. ties with much of the Muslim Arab world, and in May 2017, made a crucial trip to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. There, he told the 54 leaders from Sunni Muslim countries gathered for the occasion that the United States would be on their side in facing Iranian threats, and that the US was ready to help them overcome instability on the strict conditions that they lead a fight against terrorism and radical Islam, and that they modernize.

Trump, clearly aware that discreet meetings had been held between Israeli leaders and leaders of several Sunni Muslim countries, suggested that regional economic and strategic rapprochement would help move towards peace. He referred to “citizens of the Middle East” in general and added that if “the three Abrahamic Faiths can join together in cooperation, then peace in this world is possible”.

Trump saw that the intransigence of the Palestinian leadership, which the leaders of the Arab world had long supported, was now seen by them as an obstacle. While in Riyadh, Trump did not say a single word about the Palestinian Authority.

He traveled on the first flight from Riyadh to Israel; visited the Western Wall — the first President of the United States in office to do so — and affirmed his unwavering support for the US ally. He then went to Ramallah, where he accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of being a supporter of terrorism and a liar.

In November 2017, Trump asked a team led by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to draw up a peace plan that respected Israel’s security imperatives and that took into account not the demands of the Palestinian Authority, but benefits for the Palestinian people.

During the following months, he asked the Palestinian Authority to stop its terrorist activities. When the Palestinian Authority refused, Trump reduced the financing granted to it by the United States, and ceased to treat its leaders as constructive and legitimate interlocutors.

On December 6, 2017, Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and decided to locate the U.S. Embassy in Israel there. It was a way of saying that Israel’s presence in Jerusalem was fully legitimate and that no one would be permitted to push Israel around. The US embassy was inaugurated less than a year later, on May 14, 2018.

On September 7, 2018, Trump asked the US Department of State to issue a statement saying that from now on, the US would recognize as refugees only the Arabs who had personally left Israel in 1948-49 and added that the US would no longer fund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), an organization that claims there are more than five million Palestinian refugees, almost all of whom have never set foot in Israel and who therefore cannot claim to “return” to lands where they have never been. (UNRWA includes all the descendants of actual refugees through the generations, in a method of accounting not done by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.)

Trump said that the idea of a “return” to Israel of millions of people who are not actually refugees was no longer on the negotiating table.

Trump’s peace plan, at least its economic component, was presented in Manama, Bahrain, on June 25 and 26, 2019. Representatives from 39 countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Gulf countries were present, as well as businessmen from all over the Arab world.

The plan, presented at the White House on January 28, 2020, talks about a Palestinian state, but stipulates that Israel’s security would be guaranteed. If a Palestinian state were to come into being, it would be demilitarized, have borders controlled by Israel and no border with an Arab state. The plan offered the prospect of sovereignty, within this security framework, to the Palestinian Arabs. The proposal allows Israel to retain a necessary control of the Jordan Valley, and pledges that Israel would be sovereign over 30% of Judea and Samaria — a percentage that many Israelis considered woefully insufficient, considering that historically, Judea and Samaria have been part of Israel.

Above all, the plan says that a Palestinian state can only come into being if the leaders and the Palestinians fully renounce and end terrorism.

Palestinian leaders immediately rejected the offer. A few days later, at the insistence of the Palestinian Authority, the Arab League condemned the plan, however Arab representatives present in Manama continued to prepare the next step.

The Abraham Accords soon followed. They were in line with the prospects for peace mentioned by President Trump in May 2017. They had not been condemned by the Arab League.

As anticipated by Trump in May 2017, the Abraham Accords have both an economic and a strategic dimension. They not only offer economic opportunities to all the signatories but also reinforce their military strength. As the plan includes the Palestinian Arabs, the Arab signatories can say that by signing the agreement, they did not forget the Palestinian population.

             (Gatestone Institute)