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President Trump is new to one of the world’s most intractable and damaging problems, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which culminated Tuesday with the signing of historic agreements with Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize diplomatic relations.
This resolution also polished Trump as a sedist and peacemaker less than two months before facing the electorate for re-election.
In a rite in the South Garden of the White House, the president said that revolutionary cooperation between Israel and the two moderate Arab and Muslim states is a key step in ending the war in the Middle East.
“We’re here this afternoon to replace the course of history,” Trump said, “after decades of department and conflict, we’re marking the beginning of a new Middle East. “
As a component of the agreement, the first of its kind in more than a generation, the 3 countries agreed to exchange embassies and ambassadors, who will cooperate on a wide variety of business, school and health care matters.
Israel has also accepted its annexation of territory in the West Bank for an undisclosed period.
Shortly after the ink was dry in Washington, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired two rockets at Israel, injuring at least six people. Israeli forces reportedly intercepted one of the rockets with their Iron Dome system.
By forcing Gulf states to recognize Israel rather than waiting for Palestinians to get their own state, U. S. officials say the agreement will put pressure on the Palestinian Authority to resume negotiations. Trump said other Gulf states would soon sign the deal. such as the “Abrahamic Agreements” in reference to the unusual traditions of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. He predicted that Saudi Arabia would soon enter the fold.
“Thanks to the wonderful courage of the leaders of those three countries, we are taking a wonderful step towards a long road in which other people of all faiths and backgrounds live in combination in peace and prosperity,” Trump said, surrounded by the other 3 leaders on Truman’s iconic balcony.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the deal is the “greatest diplomatic triumph” in Israel’s 72-year history.
“This day is a turning point in history,” Netanyahu said. “Presagiates a new peace. This peace will eventually expand to reach other Arab states. And in the end, the Arab-Israeli clash can end once and for all.
UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan said of this development: “We are witnessing a replacement in the middle of the Middle East, a replacement that will bring hope to the world. “
Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani called the agreement “a historic step towards genuine and lasting peace,” but warned that much remains to be done.
“We now have a duty to work urgently and actively for lasting peace and security,” he said. “Our other people deserve a just, comprehensive and lasting two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is the basis, the basis. “of so much peace. “
Merissa Khurma, Middle East program manager at the Wilson Center in Washington, said the agreements marked “a new and a replacement in the region’s geopolitics. “
“Arab-Israeli peace is no longer conditional on solving the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation and solving the problem of the Palestinian state, which the region has explained for decades,” he said.
Khurma said that economic and military cooperation with Israel through the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which are war parties to Iran, will “replace the political and security dynamics in the region, vis-a-vis Iran. “
Jim Phillips, a Middle East expert at the Heritage Foundation, said the agreements may lead to a broader Arab-Israeli peace agreement that includes Saudi Arabia, Oman, Morocco and Sudan.
“It’s a justification for the negotiation strategy” from the outside “trump administration, which has focused on pragmatic Arab states on the outer edge as it seeks for the Palestinian Authority to return to negotiations with Israel,” Phillips said in the Washington Times. . ” For Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, this paves the way for trade, investment, technological cooperation, tourism and, above all, strategic cooperation opposed to Iran, identified through the 3 and the United States as the greatest risk to regional stability.
“Iran’s hostility has united Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, and Iran is the biggest loser due to strengthening Arab-Israeli relations. “
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking on a virtual occasion organized through the Atlantic Council, said the administration had reversed a decades-long situation in Washington that had given the Palestinians a “veto right” over any negotiation in the Middle East.
“We presented a vision of peace that included some other detail: it was the deep popularity that the main destabilizing force in the Middle East was not the confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians, but the risk posed by the extraterritorial ambitions of the religious regime. ” in Iran, “Pompeo said. We reversed what the previous administration was doing. “
The Interest of the United Arab Emirates in buying F-35 fighter jets in the United States is a flaw in the negotiations, a resolution that Israel opposed. Trump said he would “get there,” noting that the United Arab Emirates has fought across the United States in four wars.
“They are very loyal, ” said the president.
During his visit, Netanyahu also lobbied the White House for another $8 billion in army aid, more than the F-35s.
When Trump took over nearly four years later, Democrats predicted it would go to war. Last week, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize after the Agreements in the Middle East.
The president, who withdrew the United States from the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, said Tehran would get a more favorable remedy from Democratic candidate Joseph R. Biden, if the presidency wins.
“I’m going to make a smart deal with Iran,” he told reporters. “But I think they wait until after the election. Because a dream for those countries would be ‘Sleepy Joe’. “
The White House invited Congressional Democrats to the ceremony, and the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Eliot L. Engel of New York, was one of those who attended. House Armed Forces President Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat, called the agreements “diplomats. “This progress [which] represents a positive step that will give stability to the region. “But he said peace in the Middle East” will only be achievable if Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are seriously resumed, to maintain a two-state solution. “
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was a “distraction” organized by Trump to divert voters’ attention from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who has criticized the administration’s foreign policy, praised the president and his advisers for their “hard-earned efforts. “
“Forging new partnerships among our friends in the Middle East is countering harmful players in the region like Iran and is in america’s most productive national security interest,” Romney said.
Trump said: “No one has any idea what plan I have. It’s going around the back door, I call it going around the wise door, and it comes another way. “
“It’s anything my critics can think of. “
Prior to the signing, the president welcomed each of the leaders to the Oval Office. He gave the White House a symbolic key to the Netanyahu House, calling it “the big day. “
“Even Bibi has had the war, ” he joked.
Mr. Netanyahu told the president, “You hold the key to the center of the other people of Israel. “
Lauren Toms contributed to this report.