Trump to the Rescue ... ! ?

"The Saudis, Emiratis, Omanis, and Bahrainis aren't exactly besotted with Israel, they just hate Iran more and view it as a serious destabilizing influence and even an existential threat. They see the Israelis, however, as being clever, strong, tenacious, powerful and as close to fearless as it gets. Israel also has quite the knack for technology and security, both attributes of significant value to its Arab neighbours."
"To top it off, many Arab countries are fed up with Palestinian extremism, which has yielded nothing positive for more than 70 years."
Vivian Bercovici, journalist, former Canadian Ambassador to Israel

Trump and Netanyahu announce the peace plan at the White House Tuesday. Photo: Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images

The election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States was hailed worldwide with great acclaim and hopes for a more peaceful future under his guiding hand. So great was that anticipation of his post-racist election victory to the most powerful political post in the world body in the affairs of humankind that before the genial, smiling man of mixed ancestry could prove the expectations were not misplaced, he garnered the distinction of becoming a Nobel Laureate.

As a Democrat, he looked first to ensure that greater equality of recognition and opportunity be apportioned to all those whom he governed, and the long-awaited American universal health care system was introduced accompanied both by praise and censure. Bipartisan relations in Congress were to be healed, but under his administration they grew even more divisive and remote than under the previous Republican administration.

On the international stage he went to Egypt to inform the Islamic world that America was prepared to interact differently with the Middle East and to surrender any vestiges of command-and-control of purely Arab and Islamic fortunes. To hostile Islamist Iran, he extended the hand of friendship, and the Islamic Republic was pleased to slap it away in contempt. When Syrian President Bashar al Assad brought mass destruction of lives and heritage to his own people, President Obama stirred his sense of outrage warning that the use of chemical weapons on Sunni Syrian opposition would bring harsh consequences. None arose.

When Egypt's Arab Spring revolution brought down Hosni Mubarak, its long-time president and ally of the United States, Barack Obama favoured the presidency of Mohammad Morsi, and was content to let Mubarak dangle in the wind. The Muslim Brotherhood was well entrenched in Washington and the White House appeared content with leaving Egypt in their hands. Whereas, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House his treatment was invariably frosty and insulting.

Enter Donald Trump, whose accession to the presidency stunned the international community by the very absurdity of the choice; a crude, egotistical, boastful bully and womanizer, a man of base intellect and baser instincts; the very thought of whose residence in the White House was beyond understanding. His tawdry reputation both as a businessman and a human being was wince-inducing. Then time revealed that where Mr. Obama failed to meet his promises, Trump met his unfailingly.

Where Mr. Obama felt justified in his worldly wisdom in negotiating clandestinely with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, and finally handing over to the Islamist theocracy both trust and treasury for an agreement whose loopholes Iran laughed at and grasped, Mr. Trump wrote the U.S. out of the agreement and reinstituted crippling sanctions. In the time between the transition, Iran was enabled to unleash its malign power and influence in Syria and Yemen and to handsomely fund its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas.

Warm relations striven for with Iran and its vassal state Qatar, and icy relations with Israel. The Sunni Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, threatened by Shiite Iran, found common cause with Israel which Iran directly threatened repeatedly to annihilate. The U.S. Congress had agreed decades ago to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, but no president would take the risk, until Trump did. From Presidents Carter to Clinton, Israeli-Palestine 'peace plans' came to nothing.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Palestinians do not support the US President's peace plan

Palestinian leaders from Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas refused all offers extended by Israel, even those acceding to all Palestinian demands. President Donald Trump has now proffered his own, offering the Palestinians what they claim they are owed, but from the perspective of a history that includes Judaic heritage and Arab belligerence in failed efforts to destroy Israel which retook its historical geography.

The Palestinians are much misunderstood by the world at large, which accepts their narrative of victimhood and eagerness to achieve peace. What is not understood is that peace is consonant with the disappearance of Israel and the Palestinians given free rein to repopulate all of the territory that had originally been Biblical Judea, while excluding amy Jewish presence. For them, the very prospect of a Jewish State is horrifying, though that state has given citizenship to two million Palestinian Arabs and the Palestinian Authority will permit not one Jew to live among Arabs in what they foresee as a Palestinian State.

This is decidedly not the end of the story. Arab-Palestinian intransigence and commitment to belying history and denying Jewish heritage shows no sign of abating. Nor can it, given the reality of fomenting hatred against Jews among Palestinians from birth to death and celebrating martyrdom in the cause of destroying the Jewish presence in the Middle East. Days of Rage interminably mounted. Incitements to violence ongoing. Refusal to countenance a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount, the most sacred site in Judaism, a touchstone of malicious hatred.

In 2008, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made an offer to provide 100 percent of (Biblical Judea and Samaria) the West Bank (with land swaps that would cut out portions for the existence of Israeli settlements in exchange for the Arab towns within Israel's borders), along with an agreement for a divided Jerusalem where each would have their capital. Mahmud Abbas flicked it away, deeming it unworthy of any kind of response whatever.