‘Why Donald Trump’s peace deal won’t last’

As Donald Trump undertakes a victory parade and Israeli hostages are freed, Fleet Street Fox says we’re still a long way from a lasting peace deal in the Middle East

View 3 Images

Donald Trump, they’re saying, has succeeded where everyone else failed.

The problem is it’s mostly him saying that, while waving his tiny hands on a victory lap around the Middle East. An the really big problem is that if there were no glory in it for him, there would be no peace deal.^[1]

It may yet be that today’s successful transfer of the first 20 hostages, and Israel’s first incremental withdrawal of troops in Gaza, will be the beginning steps of a glorious peace that will last 1,000 years. And it is also theoretically possible that David Beckham will see the error of his ways and woo me with free range eggs and a purple supercar. We must all admit, however, that it is not bloody likely.

That has not stopped the Tango Tyrant declaring “war is over” like John Lennon in a too-long tie,^[2] being gifted the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor, and generally twerking for all he’s worth. The question is not whether the deal is proof that bullying works, but whether it continues to work after the bully’s gone home.

View 3 Images

Let’s be clear about one thing: Trump did not secure peace because he is a dealmaker extraordinaire. That’s just his brand. Firstly there is no peace yet, just a ceasefire, and secondly he achieved it because he scares the Palestinians and the Israelis more than they scare each other.^[3]

He’s predictably unpredictable, has no moral compass, and treats internationally-accepted norms of behaviour in the same way as a toddler in need of Ritalin. He instinctively backed the wingnuts of the Israeli government until they dropped bombs on the very people they were supposed to be negotiating with, at which point he seems to have realised that all sides were feeling so vulnerable they could be forced to sign on the dotted line in a way that he could benefit from.

The next steps are a phased withdrawal and release of hostages, which will be as bumpy as riding an office chair down Ben Nevis. And then people who despise each other on an existential level will try to rebuild a rubble-covered strip of land and a deeply-scarred people with next to no help from Trump.^[4]

The carrot is financial. Arab states across the Middle East will provide the billions to rebuild Gaza, and becoming a functioning and thriving economy will turn civilians away from revenge and towards capitalist realpolitik. That Trump thinks that way is unsurprising, but everyone seems to have forgotten this has been tried once already.

READ MORE: Keir Starmer says Gaza peace summit ‘crucial phase in ending war’ as he jets to Egypt^[5]

View 3 Images

When Tony Blair was made a special envoy to the Middle East in 2007, the aim was not to make peace but to make money, the assumption being that after billionaires had made it rain, peace would naturally break out as the protagonists realised how much nicer it was to have a fridge freezer than an Uzi.^[6]

In 2009 Blair declared peace would come easier than it had in Northern Ireland, which just shows you how much of a prat clever people be. He left the role without having managed it. Trump came to office and upset the Palestinians. Then the Russians who had been part of the process became pariahs, and the whole set-up fell apart for lack of American support.

What’s being planned now is a political reanimation of that failed economic body – a zombie policy dreamt up by a desperate president who has brought no new ideas, or even personnel, to the table.^[7] He will take the plaudits which are all he really wanted, and skip home hoping he’ll have done enough to stop voters noticing his own looming economic slump. But the trouble with claiming responsibility for something is that you will always be responsible for it.

Peace, when it comes, often stumbles. And in a place where war has raged for millennia there’s plenty of rubble to trip over. When there is a hiccup – when a promised hostage doesn’t appear, or a bulldozer goes rogue – Trump will be asked to fix it. And with his ego and peace prize on the line, he’ll probably try. But even he will be aghast at the corruption and bribery which is endemic and blatant in the region, and without which nothing ever gets done. He’ll need to keep selling weapons, for the sake of his own arms industry. And at some point he will be asked to put US troops in the line of fire.

The one thing Trump is allergic to is whatever is difficult. It is problematic to find a way to pay off people who are terrorists. It is hard to sell arms to a government while asking that they not be fired. It is particularly tricky to put your own soldiers in harm’s way, especially when that harm is murderous, bloody, and involves hostage-taking, and even more so if just one of them is a trigger-happy jarhead likely to shoot someone they shouldn’t.

That is not to say a president cannot enforce and propagate a peace if he wants to. It’s just that Trump doesn’t want that. He wants the praise, the short-term I’ve-fixed-it win, and when it gets tough his vanity will drag him further into the mire. When that just gets worse he’ll simply get the hell out, while blaming everyone else for not sticking at it.

It would be nice if peace were as infectious as war. It certainly spreads the wealth a little more evenly. But a short-tempered buffoon with an even shorter attention span won’t be what makes it work. Unless someone who hasn’t already failed at this comes along to take charge, Trump is all set to make another holy mess out of the Holy Land. Which is perhaps why other world leaders, and the Nobel committee, are not shouting about it quite as much as he is.