Israeli Victories against Iran Can Pave the Way to Peace

Today, Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with Donald Trump in the White House. Robert Satloff argues that the two have an opportunity not merely to address the most urgent issues concerning the war with Hamas, but to craft a strategy that can reshape the region:

When President Trump welcomes the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House on Tuesday, their conversation will focus on a Middle East where Israel’s stunning military prowess—supported by its American patron—has tilted the balance of power more heavily in favor of the U.S. and its allies than at any point in decades. The challenge for Trump is how to take advantage of this moment.

Over the next four years, the potential is real for Trump to achieve, with our Israeli partners, peace agreements on five fronts: with Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, [other] Arab and Muslim states, and the Palestinians. . . . With Syria and Lebanon, the first task is to strengthen the nationalist foundations of their new governments so that outside powers, such as Iran or Turkey, are not able to hold power behind the scenes.

All of that would be made easier by progress with Saudi Arabia, where a three-way set of defense and normalization agreements with the U.S. and Israel, negotiated by the Biden administration, is waiting to be signed.

Read more at The Hill

More about: Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, Middle East, U.S.-Israel relationship

Donald Trump’s Plan for Gaza Is No Worse Than Anyone Else’s—and Could Be Better

Reacting to the White House’s proposal for Gaza, John Podhoretz asks the question on everyone’s mind:

Is this all a fantasy? Maybe. But are any of the other ludicrous and cockamamie ideas being floated for the future of the area any less fantastical?

A Palestinian state in the wake of October 7—and in the wake of the scenes of Gazans mobbing the Jewish hostages with bloodlust in their eyes as they were being led to the vehicles to take them back into the bosom of their people? Biden foreign-policy domos Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken were still talking about this in the wake of their defeat in ludicrous lunchtime discussions with the Financial Times, thus reminding the world of what it means when fundamentally silly, unserious, and embarrassingly incompetent people are given the levers of power for a while. For they should know what I know and what I suspect you know too: there will be no Palestinian state if these residents of Gaza are the people who will form the political nucleus of such a state.

Some form of UN management/leadership in the wake of the hostilities? Well, that might sound good to people who have been paying no attention to the fact that United Nations officials have been, at the very best, complicit in hostage-taking and torture in facilities run by UNRWA, the agency responsible for administering Gaza.

And blubber not to me about the displacement of Gazans from their home. We’ve been told not that Gaza is their home but that it is a prison. Trump is offering Gazans a way out of prison; do they really want to stay in prison? Or does this mean it never really was a prison in the first place?

Read more at Commentary

More about: Donald Trump, Gaza Strip, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict