Achieving peace in the Middle East will be challenging for anyone familiar with the region.
However, it will come at a price worth paying. However, the Donald Trump administration isn't interested in paying the price, as stated by writer Jo-Ann Mort in her story "Trump has Abandoned the Idea of Peace in the Middle East". Trump's policies are guiding the region in a dangerous direction when it comes to Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan, and Egypt. Saudi Arabia, which could play a role in resolving the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, isn't involved in the diplomatic game as it should be.
The Trump team has proposed no realistic diplomatic settlement to the Israel-Palestine question, meaning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fills a void. While some progressives were frustrated with former President Joe Biden's diplomatic efforts, he and his experienced team were trying to create change on the ground that could benefit both Israelis and Palestinians and work toward a two-state solution.
To abandon the idea of diplomacy will lead to more violence in the Middle East. Countries and groups of people like Israel, the Palestinians, Egypt, and Jordan are recipients of US soft aid. This aid, now wholly disappeared overnight, helped to promote partnerships among people, frayed though they were in the last years. Jo-Ann Mort addressed the defunding of USAID: "USAID's dissolution cancelled decades of American financial support to create more equality between Jewish and Arab citizens inside Israel, to support Palestinian women and grassroots efforts within the occupied Palestinian territories, to enhance democracy-building apparatuses within the occupied Palestinian territories and inside of Israel itself, and so much more."
The Trump administration doesn't value the experience of veteran federal employees, including those in the State Department. This administration is emptying our government of its experienced foreign service officers and diplomats. The career diplomat Hans Wechsel, the head of the State Department's office of Palestinian affairs in Jerusalem, announced his early retirement because he reportedly "didn't like the direction the ship was heading," Jo-Ann Mort stated. This loss of career diplomats leaves an opening. Look at the politics of the incoming US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a fanatical believer in the right of Israeli Jewish settlers to take over the West Bank because God gave the land to the Jewish people - despite the millions of Palestinians who live there.
In the past, our State Department has worked to temper the right-wing extremism on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide. Trump has threatened to bomb Iran, and his tariff policy impacts the region. Treats against Iran could damage the safety of Israelis and Palestinians. To discount using diplomacy on our current problems in the Middle East is just silly. The Israeli people are exhausted. More reservists are not showing up for duty to fight the renewed war in Gaza.
Jo Ann-Mort painted a picture of what she saw in a recent trip to the Middle East: "I was recently in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority offices are located, feels like an isolated city-state, filled with politicians unable to govern, partly due to their being ignored by the Israeli government and the US government, and workers unable to get paid, due to massive financial shortfalls." Our absence on the diplomatic front in the Middle East is squandering the chance for peace. Could an Israeli-Palestinian confederation (which I've written on before) be a reality if there was a diplomatic offensive in the Middle East? Could we control Iran's nuclear arsenal with a diplomatic offensive?
Right now, diplomatic offensives aren't a part of the Trump recipe. We see authoritarianism, isolationism, and tariffs on our country's allies. The Trump administration's foreign policy isolates our country outside the Western hemisphere. China has been a geopolitical adversary for years, and Trump's foreign policy has alienated our country from China even more than before. Trump's tariffs have driven a wedge between the US and Canada, Japan, Australia, the European countries, and other traditional allies. So, the US, as a great power, is losing its ability to influence world affairs. The only way out of this conundrum is to defeat Trumpism in the US and other forms of right-wing populism worldwide.
Jason Sibert is the Lead Writer of the Peace Economy Project
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