President Trump has taken two unprecedented steps highly favorable to Israel: recognizing Jerusalem as its capital and cutting funds to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), an organization ultimately devoted to eliminating the Jewish state. These long-overdue actions break antique log-jams dating back nearly 70 years and offer fresh opportunities to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Bravo to Trump for enduring the slings and arrows of conventional thinking to take these courageous steps and then stick with them.
That said, there's a problem. Both moves were undertaken for what appear to be the wrong reasons. This is not an abstract worry but implies that today's celebration could turn into tomorrow's fiasco.
First problem for Israel: Trump says he recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital to settle the Jerusalem issue. Listen to him ruminate on this: "The hardest subject [that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators] had to talk about was Jerusalem. We took Jerusalem off the table, so we don't have to talk about it anymore. They never got past Jerusalem."
This suggests Trump thinks recognition solved the knotty Jerusalem issue, as though this were a New York real-estate transaction and he made a side-deal about zoning regulations or union representation. But it's not. Far from being "off the table," Trump's action made Jerusalem an unprecedented center of attention and contention.
 If not for Amb. Nikki Haley's veto, the U.N. Security Council would unanimously have condemned Jerusalem recognition. |
How will Trump react when he eventually realizes that Jerusalem remains very much "on the table" and that his grand gesture had the opposite effect from what he intended? My prediction: with a frustration and fury that could sour him on the Jerusalem recognition and on Israel; it could even prompt this temperamental and spontaneous figure to rescind the recognition.
Second problem: Trump intends to exact an unspecified price from Israel for the recognition, stating "Israel will pay for that" and it "would have had to pay more." For the moment, with the Palestinian Authority (PA) boycotting American mediation and personally insulting Trump, that price is in abeyance. But the American door is permanently open to Palestinians and when they wise up, some fabulous gift awaits them in the White House. (This dynamic of extracting quid pro quos from Israel explains why I generally prefer low-simmering tensions between Washington and Jerusalem.)
Third problem: Trump did not withhold $65 million from UNRWA out of a scheduled $125 million tranche to punish an execrable organization for its record since 1949 of inciting Palestinians against Israel, encouraging violence against Jews, engaging in corruption, and expanding (rather than reducing) the refugee population. Rather, he withheld the money to pressure the PA to restart negotiations with Israel. As Trump tweeted: "with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?"
So, once PA leader Mahmoud Abbas gets over his extended snit about Jerusalem and agrees to "talk peace," he has a bevy of benefits awaiting him: the possible reversal of Jerusalem recognition, some fabulous reward, and the resumption of full, maybe even expanded, U.S. funding. At that point, the pope, the chancellor, the crown prince, and the New York Times will congratulate a glowing Trump; and Israel will find itself coldly thrust out of favor.
Abbas has already slightly edged back from his histrionics, which are anyway for domestic consumption, showing a radicalized Palestinian body politic that he is just as tough, nasty, and delusional as his Hamas rivals. Of course, he well knows that the United States of America is the one and only power that can pressure Israel to make concessions. So, after a decent interval, Abbas inexorably will mumble apologies, lavish praise on Trump, fire up the Palestinians' horde of proxies, "talk peace" with Israel, and worm his way into the administration's good graces.
 On Jan. 29, 2018, in Gaza City, UNRWA employees protested the U.S.decision to cut funding. |
When that happens, the current U.S.-Israel honeymoon will likely crash and burn, replaced by the usual bickering, where Washington wants Israelis to "take chances for peace" and "make painful concessions," and they resist those pressures.
I've been wrong many times about Trump in the past. I hope I am wrong this time too.
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2018 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.
 The Washington Times graphic for this article. |
Feb. 6, 2018 addendum: I lacked the space above to note that Mahmoud Abbas as implicitly confirmed that American negotiators offered him Abu Dis, a distant part of post-1967 Jerusalem, for the Palestinian capital, an offer he has rejected.
Feb. 11, 2018 update: For more indications of what lies ahead, see my blog building on this article, "Hints of Trump's Forthcoming Palestinian-Israeli Plan."
Dec. 12, 2021 update: Fortunately for Israel, the latent pressures described above did not surface during Trump's term in office, but only after his departure, when he can do far less damage. Some quotes from interviews he gave to Barak Raviv in April and July 2021, as reported by the Times of Israel staff:
"Bibi did not want to make a deal [with the Palestinian Authority]," he said, using Netanyahu's nickname. "Even most recently, when we came up with the maps" as part of his administration's peace plan, Netanyahu's reaction was "'Oh this is good, good,' everything was always great, but he was never... he did not want to make a deal.
"Now I don't know if he didn't want to make it for political reasons, or for other reasons. I wish he would have said he didn't want to make a deal, instead of.... Because a lot of people devoted a lot of work. But I don't think Bibi would have ever made a deal." ...
Trump said he believed that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas "wanted to make a deal more than Netanyahu. And I will be honest, I had a great meeting with him, Abbas, right. I had a great meeting with him. And we spent a lot of time together, talking about many things. And it was almost like a father. I mean, he was so nice, couldn't have been nicer. And he said, 'Well, uh, uh, uh.' And the fact is I don't think Bibi ever wanted to make a deal.
"I [had] thought the Palestinians were impossible, and the Israelis would do anything to make peace and a deal. I found that not to be true." ...
"I don't think Bibi ever wanted to make peace," Trump repeated. "I think he just tapped us along... 'No, no, we want to, we want to'... But I think Bibi did not want to make peace. Never did." ...
Trump, in the interview, said he had stopped the Israeli annexation plan himself. "I got angry and I stopped it, because that was really going too far. That was going way too far, you know, when [Netanyahu] did the big 'Let's build. Let's take everything and just start building on it.' We were not happy about that." ...
Trump said his decision to pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran — which the current administration is seeking to return to — was "because of my relations with Israel," rather than out of personal ties to Netanyahu. And he claimed that had he not done so, "I think Israel would have been destroyed maybe by now."
"Now Biden is going back to the deal because he has no clue. The Israelis fought this deal and Obama wouldn't listen to them. The decision to back out of the deal was because of my relations with Israel — not with Bibi. Those were my feelings towards Israel."
Trump also said he had saved Netanyahu in Israel's April 2019 election by recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli territory. That election was the first of four inconclusive national polls in two years of political chaos that lasted until Netanyahu was removed from power by the current government.
"Take the Golan for example," said Trump. "That was a big deal. People say that was a $10 billion gift. I did it right before the election, which helped him a lot... he would have lost the election if it wasn't for me. So he tied. He went up a lot after I did it. He went up 10 points or 15 points after I did Golan Heights."
