In recognizing that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, President Trump was simply following the longstanding verdict of Congress, which has more than once called upon the executive branch to acknowledge reality. But, write the editors of the New York Sun, Congress would never have come to this conclusion without the efforts of the late Daniel P. Moynihan during his time in the U.S. Senate. They cite an incident that occurred in the early 1990s at the offices of the Forward:

[Moynihan] pulled out of his pocket a State Department telephone directory, which had Jerusalem listed as, in effect, its own country. The Democratic senator, formerly America’s envoy at the United Nations and ambassador to India, ranted at our foreign service. He was eager to move forward with some kind of legislative action.

At the same time, Moynihan quoted a warning that he attributed to Israel’s sixth prime minister, Menachem Begin. It was that the Jerusalem question can’t be solved in the United States Congress. Moynihan’s point was that only Israel itself can decide where its capital is. Of course, Israel had long since done that, and Moynihan’s view was that it was up to us to acknowledge, to recognize it. Had he lived, the Democrats might have had a leading role in winning recognition.

In the years after Moynihan, the Democratic party started to put distance between itself and Israel’s democratically elected government. This became painfully obvious in 2012, when the Jerusalem issue was temporarily stripped from the Democratic platform and the party’s pro-Israel faction was left humiliated.

In a momentous meeting with the Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa in Riyadh, President Trump announced that he is lifting sanctions on the beleaguered and war-torn country. On the one hand, Sharaa is an alumnus of Islamic State and al-Qaeda, who came to power as commander of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which itself began life as al-Qaeda’s Syrian offshoot; he also seems to enjoy the support of Qatar. On the other hand, he overthrew the Assad regime—a feat made possible by the battering Israel delivered to Hizballah—greatly improving Jerusalem’s strategic position, and ending one of the world’s most atrocious and brutal tyrannies. President Trump also announced that he hopes Syria will join the Abraham Accords.

This analysis by Eran Lerman was published a few days ago, and in some respects is already out of date, but more than anything else I’ve read it helps to make sense of Israel’s strategic position vis-à-vis Syria.

Israel’s primary security interest lies in defending against worst-case scenarios, particularly the potential collapse of the Syrian state or its transformation into an actively hostile force backed by a significant Turkish presence (considering that the Turkish military is the second largest in NATO) with all that this would imply. Hence the need to bolster the new buffer zone—not for territorial gain, but as a vital shield and guarantee against dangerous developments. Continued airstrikes aimed at diminishing the residual components of strategic military capabilities inherited from the Assad regime are essential.

At the same time, there is a need to create conditions that would enable those in Damascus who wish to reject the reduction of their once-proud country into a Turkish satrapy. Sharaa’s efforts to establish his legitimacy, including his visit to Paris and outreach to the U.S., other European nations, and key Gulf countries, may generate positive leverage in this regard. Israel’s role is to demonstrate through daily actions the severe costs of acceding to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions and accepting Turkish hegemony.

Israel should also assist those in Syria (and beyond: this may have an effect in Lebanon as well) who look to it as a strategic anchor in the region. The Druze in Syria—backed by their brethren in Israel—have openly expressed this expectation, breaking decades of loyalty to the central power in Damascus over their obligation to their kith and kin.