Trump's negotiating mantra seems to be If you bludgeon someone hard enough, they will cave. That may work in the real estate market of New York city, particularly when you are protected by bankruptcy laws, but it is a highly questionable tactic in foreign policy particularly in the Middle East. Surely Trump of all people can understand the importance of a core constituency and in the Middle East that often means Muslims, Military, and Minions. Ignore the interested parties in the hopes of bribing or bullying your way to success is a prescription for failure at best.

Trump sees the Palestinian issue as a transaction - if we pay - you have to play. The dynamic duo of Kushner and Friedman have seized on the idea that the Palestinians owe it to the United States to talk peace with the Israelis if they expect us to pay for the refugees. There are many problems with the United Nations program, UNRWA, starting with the assumption that refugee status is like your grandfathers’s legacy and is passed down from generation to generation. However, cutting it off to spite the Palestinian will more likely lead to renewed violence than Palestinian capitulation. While Trump has never appeared to be a long term thinker, perhaps it is time for the rest of us to think strategically rather than as game show promoters.

In the June 25th edition of “Atlantic” peace process veterans Philip Gordon and Prem Kumar labeled Jared Kushner’s Middle East efforts a “fantasy’. Their article is a well reasoned description of why Kushner and Trump are on the wrong track. That would be true only if Trump was serious about his deal of the century and not just pandering to elements of his political base. Unfortunately, it is likely that Trump believes that Middle East peace is a golden edifice like Trump Tower rather than like a bankrupt 666 5th Avenue. Neither Trump nor his mini-me seem to understand the history, the pain and suffering, or the aspirations of the people who live in the West Bank or Gaza. Nor do they comprehend that bribes are not likely to work with the successors to Palestinian leader Abu Mazen.

In talking about the promised US Middle East peace plan, President Trump is saying there will be something for each side to like while Nikky Haley points out that each side will have something to dislike. The real question, however, is whether either side can survive the plan. 

The President has made it clear that it is up to the parties, or more accurately, the Israelis to make decisions about the West Bank and settlements - not Trump or the United States. Perversely, that did not, stop him from saying that “he” had taken Jerusalem off the table of negotiations. 

To those who argue that we have revoked our credentials as an impartial mediator because of Trump's Jerusalem statement, I would respond first that they should read what Trump actually said and second that, in all the negotiations in which I have engaged over the years, the US was never impartial.  Now more than ever, it is only the US that can provide the necessary reassurance that can give the Israeli body politic sufficient comfort to make a reasonable peace that the Palestinians can live with. 128 UN member state voters cannot substitute for the US.  Our negotiating style has always been to probe for the Israeli bottom line and then try to sell it to the Palestinians - almost never the other way around.  Without the US there will be no Israeli partner and without Israel there will be no solution leaving us with the very unstable and unsustainable  status quo..  

The Administration needs to pick a clear policy in Syria, almost any policy, and stick with it so that our allies and enemies know where they and we stand.  We have flipped and flopped over the future of Assad to the point that he can justifiably claim that he is not an impediment to peace. Perhaps it is time to stop worrying so much about which personality will rule. The problem is not Assad. The problem is the regime itself.  Get rid of Assad and you solve nothing unless the regime goes with him.  Get rid of the regime and its levers of suppression and then there will be a chance for a new and different Syrian day. But that would require an investment and a firm policy that the US appears unwilling to make, at least thus far. 

The US claims it is an honest broker in the Middle East, but in my 35 years of working on the problem the only “honest brokers” I encountered were the Norwegians.

Anyone who has carefully considered the Palestinian problem knows that it is not just an issue of territory or borders - it is not a real estate problem or an economic problem so much as it is an identity problem. It is the land that sets the Palestinian apart from any other Arab, and it is the land that establishes Jewish permanence apart from the diaspora. Until we focus on this essential issue - two peoples - both seeing their existence in perpetuity as defined by one piece of land, then the problem will persist and all we can hope for are temporary accommodations that offer a degree of tranquilly and well being, but fall short of resolving the problem. Perhaps that is enough for now. 

President Trump’s Ambassador to Israel,  David Friedman. has stood US Middle East policy on its head by reinventing the intentions of the drafters if UNSC Resolution 242, and ignoring US policy toward a “two state solution" as well as toward 800,000 Israeli settlers living in the West bank and Jerusalem.

Devoid of lofty rhetoric and replete with dystopian angst along with direct and implied threats against Iran and North Korea, Trump’s maiden UN speech fulfilled the expectations of both his critics and his cheering section. His focus as expected was on North Korea, with Iran as a also ran, and Venezuela as a poor cousin.