Considering the seminal agreement, formally concluded last Tuesday, in which both Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates normalized their relations with Israel, Douglas Feith writes:

This diplomatic double-play refutes notions that have powerfully influenced U.S. Middle East policy for more than half a century. The first is the assumption that the Palestinians are central to the larger Arab-Israeli conflict. The second is the belief that the Palestinian problem has to be solved before the United States or Israel can improve relations with the Arab states. Both belong on the trash heap of the peace process.

In light of this history, the Trump team rejects the view that the West Bank is the essence of the conflict. It sees the key to peace as Israeli strength and Palestinian resignation to Israel’s permanent existence. When Trump promised to recognize Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank important to Israeli security, he was warning the Palestinians that continued rejectionism would lose them ground. He was showing support for Israeli security and, in effect, minting currency that Israel and the United States could use with the Palestinians or the Arab states.

The message to the Palestinians from yesterday’s White House signing ceremony is that they need a political upheaval—new leaders, new institutions, new ideas—or they are going to become utterly irrelevant in the eyes of the world, including the broader Arab world. As they lose attention, they will lose diplomatic support and economic aid. If they cannot make war and they will not make peace, their hopes to shape their own future will diminish to nothing.

There is little doubt that if Hizballah had participated more intensively in Saturday’s attack, Israeli air defenses would have been pushed past their limits, and far more damage would have been done. Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack, trying to look at things from Tehran’s perspective, see this as an important sign of caution—but caution that shouldn’t be exaggerated:

Iran is well aware of the extent and capability of Israel’s air defenses. The scale of the strike was almost certainly designed to enable at least some of the attacking munitions to penetrate those defenses and cause some degree of damage. Their inability to do so was doubtless a disappointment to Tehran, but the Iranians can probably still console themselves that the attack was frightening for the Israeli people and alarming to their government. Iran probably hopes that it was unpleasant enough to give Israeli leaders pause the next time they consider an operation like the embassy strike.

Hizballah is Iran’s ace in the hole. With more than 150,000 rockets and missiles, the Lebanese militant group could overwhelm Israeli air defenses. . . . All of this reinforces the strategic assessment that Iran is not looking to escalate with Israel and is, in fact, working very hard to avoid escalation. . . . Still, Iran has crossed a Rubicon, although it may not recognize it. Iran had never struck Israel directly from its own territory before Saturday.

Byman and Pollack see here an important lesson for America:

What Saturday’s fireworks hopefully also illustrated is the danger of U.S. disengagement from the Middle East. . . . The latest round of violence shows why it is important for the United States to take the lead on pushing back on Iran and its proxies and bolstering U.S. allies.