Is peace in the Middle East at hand? While there have been announcements before about deals that would help provide stability to the region, none of them ever actually panned out. This frustrated Presidents of both parties as well as diplomats and other go-betweens.
The developments of the last month or so show a strong move toward acceptance of Israel as a legitimate country and as a partner on the world stage.
Thomas Lifson over at American Thinker notes,
Yet, improbable as it may seem to the smart set, Donald Trump, denounced as an imminent threat to world peace by almost all the academic, diplomatic, and journalistic elites, may have triggered the process of reconciling the Arab world to peaceful coexistence with Israel.
The list of countries “seeing” Israel is growing. The changes are substantive and increasing. The trigger to all of this was the announcement a month ago that the United Arab Emirates would normalize relations with Israel. This has created a domino effect in different areas of regional geopolitics.
- The Arab League refused to condemn the UAE’s normalization. This puts the Palestinian Authority on the outside looking in.
- Chad, an African republic with a majority Muslim population, has announced it will establish diplomatic relations with Israel.
- Saudi Arabia and Bahrain announced that they will allow Israeli airliners to fly over their airspace traveling east toward the Gulf and beyond to Asia. This makes clear that Saudi Arabia believes in and approves the path taken by the UAE. This will help in the development of economic ties as well as tourism.
- The Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca delivered a sermon emphasizing tolerance and cooperation between Muslims and non-Muslims.
- Sometimes it is the small things that shout louder than the big announcements. Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the UAE has instructed all hotels to offer kosher menus. The symbolic importance is huge, since guests will be reminded of normalization every time they see a menu.
- Greece, Cyprus and Israel just signed a historic military cooperation agreement.
- On Friday it was announced that Serbia and Kosovo would normalize economic ties. These actions would include Belgrade moving its embassy to Jerusalem.
- And, as a hint of much more to come, South Korea is nearing a free trade agreement with Israel. South Korea had been reluctant to get deeply involved with Israel because of its extensive trade alliances with the Arab world. This will undoubtedly trigger other enterprises in countries all over the world that they are free to invest and trade with Israel without giving up ties to the Arab economies.
- More Arab countries including Sudan and Oman appear headed to normalizing relations with Israel.
This is a result of the Trump Doctrine. The Trump Doctrine in a few words would be best described as “national self-interest.” PDJT has talked about each country putting its self interest front and center. He has also pointed the way to understanding that economic cooperation is in the self-interests of all people. All people benefit when countries cooperate on trade instead of trying to one up each other.
This is hard for some of the “experts” on foreign policy to accept. Too many career diplomats in our State Department are tied to using military might all the time to gain American objectives. PDJT has re-written that playbook. And the world is better for it.