Published: 3 March 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, I WROTE a piece for The Washington Post titled Israel’s Lawyer. The conceit was pretty simple, though in some quarters it was seen as highly provocative.
For too long, too many senior US officials working on the Arab-Israeli peace process, including myself, had effectively been serving as attorneys for one side instead of working to achieve a peace agreement that was in the best interests of the United States, Israel and the Palestinians.
A decade and a half later, I have come to realise that I was clueless as to how far an administration might actually go in furthering Israel’s narrative at the expense of Palestinians — and how much they could undermine US interests in the process.
While negotiation teams I have served on may have acted as a partial broker, the bias of Trump’s peace team makes our missteps seem trivial in comparison.
It’s no coincidence that the US has succeeded in the peace process only three times — Kissinger’s three disengagement agreements with Israel, Syria and Egypt, 1973-75; Jimmy Carter’s Camp David Accords and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty 1978-79; and Baker’s Madrid Conference. In each case, the US lawyered for both sides.
Watching the past three years of the Trump administration’s handling of the peace process, it has become clear that the team that put the “Deal of the Century” together (many of whom were real lawyers) had an additional client far more important than Israel — Donald Trump.
FULL STORY I’m a veteran Middle East peace negotiator. Trump’s plan is the most dangerous I’ve ever seen (JTA)
