The New Yorker:

Last May, over a working lunch with the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, at the White House, President Trump vowed to broker the final, elusive phase of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. “It’s something, frankly, maybe not as difficult as people have thought over the years,” the new President opined. Trump said that his Administration had a “very, very good chance” to get it done. “And I think you feel the same way,” he told Abbas. The Palestinian leader responded, “We have hope.” He praised Trump for his “courageous stewardship, wisdom [and] negotiating ability.”

As Trump marks a year in office, his ambitious foreign policy in the world’s most volatile region is in tatters. Vice-President Mike Pence arrives in the Middle East this weekend, with stops in Egypt, Jordan, and Israel, amid growing anger at the Trump Administration, little to show for its pledges, and almost no prospect of progress anytime soon, while getting sucked into longer-term military commitments to preserve its few gains. Abbas—who has staked his political career on making peace with Israel—has refused to even see Pence.

The Arab-Israeli peace process—the President’s most robust initiative—imploded last month, after Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and vowed to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv. “Today is the day that the Oslo Accords end,” Abbas raged in a two-hour speech, on January 14th. “We will not accept the U.S. to be a mediator, because after what they have done to us—a believer shall not be stung twice in the same place.” What had been promised as “the deal of the century,” he said, had turned into “the slap of the century.”

Trump had four goals in the Middle East when he came into office, beginning with energizing the peace process. The second was wrapping up the war against the Islamic State launched by his predecessor, in 2014. The third was checking Iran’s influence in the region and wringing out new concessions on its nuclear program. The fourth was deepening support for a certain type of Arab leader, notably Egypt’s President, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, and the Saudi royal family. “We must seek partners, not perfection,” Trump said, in a speech in Riyadh, the first leg of his first foreign trip as President.

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