Is a Separate Peace in the Making?

When reports that President Trump, early in his first term, was going to get involved in the peace process in the Middle East, we objected. We’d had enough of searching for peace with the Palestinian Arabs. Our view of the pursuit of peace is that it would best come from our enemies. The president and his team, though, ignored our advice and — voila — presented the world with, in the Abraham Accords, a triumph.We mention that as context for the current pass, when, at the start of his second presidency, Mr. Trump is due to travel to Riyadh to resume his search for peace. Saudi Arabia was the first foreign visit of his first presidency, and it’s shaping up to be the first of his second, as well. He is already saying he would have “a big announcement to make, like as big as it gets, and I won’t tell you on what, and it’s very positive.”The way the president talks one would think that not only is the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, going to join the Abraham Accords but he’s going to start keeping kosher. The best for which we can hope, though, is that the Saudis will agree to some kind of a pan-Arab deal to rehabilitate the Gaza Strip when and if Israel is done defeating Hamas there. We wouldn’t suggest lifting a finger to rebuild Gaza until Hamas is history.Meantime, Mr. Trump proclaimed today that he has a deal with the Houthis in Yemen, which would end their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. The Houthis did not outright deny a deal was being made, but vowed to continue attacking Israel, er, “helping Gazans.” If the idea is that the Houthis would merely stop strikes against commercial shipping in the Red Sea — except for Israel-related vessels — that sounds like the start of a separate peace. As a Yemen watcher at Israel’s Open University, Inbal Nissim-Louvton, tells our Benny Avni, the Houthis will “find excuses to continue attacking.” Stopping nearly all commercial shipping in that artery was done, in the first place, under the pretext of helping the Palestinians continue their genocidal war on Israel. The ragtag Houthis have been unreliable interlocutors. Why allow them any opening to return to making trouble? The other much-speculated over announcement that Mr. Trump was going to make before traveling to the Gulf — a deal to end the Islamic Republic of Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon. If, similarly to the Yemen outline, the contours of that deal would be that the Iranians were barred from a nuclear breakthrough, but would be able to continue conventional attacks on Israel through its proxies, that would be an Obama-size disaster. Which brings us back to our reservations in respect of the peace process. Mr. Trump has said that Iran’s nuclear apparatus must be “dismantled.” It would take a Herculean effort to do it in a diplomatic agreement backed by international inspectors. Yet Mr. Trump has made clear, in Ukraine and the Middle East, and Korea that he has no taste for war. Will he be able to resist the siren of a separate piece, which makes war only more likely?

Is a Separate Peace in the Making?

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