Like the equivalent resolution passed by the British House of Commons, the French National Assembly’s recognition of a fictive Palestinian state is a purely symbolic gesture. Although passed by the currently dominant left-wing coalition, the law will no doubt be ignored by the reigning left-wing government, which has shown uncharacteristic sympathy for Israel. Above all, writes Michel Gurfinkiel, the vote is a sign of the French left’s pending electoral collapse:

The unraveling of the French left may be the key to an intriguing paradox: why in the world did the parliamentary left insist upon a foreign-policy resolution that the governing left had no intention of implementing? Dogmatism may be at stake: supporting the state of Palestine, whatever that means and even if it might turn into an Islamic State of Palestine, is part of left and far-left mantras worldwide. A further explanation may be that the left’s last hope to survive in the coming election is to garner as much support as possible from the immigrant Muslim community, which will provide an average of 5 to 10 percent of the vote.

Finally, [President François] Hollande and [Prime Minister Manuel] Valls are so unpopular among their own constituency that the entire socialist and left-wing political class needs to distance itself from them on almost all issues, either domestic or international.

[Nicolas] Sarkozy, who was elected on November 30 as the new chairman of the conservative UMP party—an important step for being reelected as president in 2017—campaigned against the Palestine resolution. This point will not be lost on pro-Israel voters in the future, nor on a growing number of voters, both on the right and the left, that are concerned with the rise of jihadism in Europe as well as in the Middle East.

Yesterday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israeli representatives have been involved in secret talks, brokered by the United Arab Emirates, with their Syrian counterparts about the potential establishment of diplomatic relations between their countries. Even more surprisingly, on Wednesday an Israeli reporter spoke with a senior official from Syria’s information ministry, Ali al-Rifai. The prospect of a member of the Syrian government, or even a private citizen, giving an on-the-record interview to an Israeli journalist was simply unthinkable under the old regime. What’s more, his message was that Damascus seeks peace with other countries in the region, Israel included.

These developments alone should make Israelis sanguine about Donald Trump’s overtures to Syria’s new rulers. Yet the interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s jihadist resumé, his connections with Turkey and Qatar, and brutal attacks on minorities by forces aligned with, or part of, his regime remain reasons for skepticism. While recognizing these concerns, Noah Rothman nonetheless makes the case for optimism:

The old Syrian regime was an incubator and exporter of terrorism, as well as an Iranian vassal state. The Assad regime trained, funded, and introduced terrorists into Iraq intent on killing American soldiers. It hosted Iranian terrorist proxies as well as the Russian military and its mercenary cutouts. It was contemptuous of U.S.-backed proscriptions on the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, necessitating American military intervention—an unavoidable outcome, clearly, given Barack Obama’s desperate efforts to avoid it. It incubated Islamic State as a counterweight against the Western-oriented rebel groups vying to tear that regime down, going so far as to purchase its own oil from the nascent Islamist group.

The Assad regime was an enemy of the United States. The Sharaa regime could yet be a friend to America. . . . Insofar as geopolitics is a zero-sum game, taking Syria off the board for Russia and Iran and adding it to the collection of Western assets would be a triumph. At the very least, it’s worth a shot. Trump deserves credit for taking it.