No sooner had the ink dried on Donald Trump’s signing of a peace plan for the Middle East than “concerns” were raised that he will move on to some other subject that he feels requires his attention — and the whole framework will collapse.
According to New York Times analyst Karen DeYoung, the president's plan has gaping holes which are already being singled out by experts in diplomacy, and worries are growing that the brain trust that pushed it through will be moving on to try and solve the Russia/Ukraine impasse.
According to DeYoung, Trump could have done himself a favor by sharing ownership and responsibility with Democrats, but instead shoved them to the side.
“Rather than pledging a renewal of the historic bipartisan U.S. support for Israel that has fractured over Netanyahu’s scorched-earth operations in Gaza, Trump rambled through his usual insults of his Democratic predecessors, saying they had a “hatred toward Israel” and could never have accomplished what he did,” she wrote, before adding that Aaron David Miller, a veteran Middle East negotiator under Republican and Democratic administrations, sees trouble ahead.
“If I was running this, I wouldn’t leave [the region] until the president had assurances of at least four working groups, all headed by a senior American official,” he explained. “If they don’t approach it this way, I don’t see how it’s going to work. I can’t tell you in 25 years, even though our efforts mostly failed, how many peace conferences and big gatherings I went to. It’s the day after the peace conference where serious people wake up and say … what do we do now?”
The Times’ DeYoung added, “One of the greatest fears, Miller and others said, is that as the immediacy of the shooting war and humanitarian disaster that have riveted the world for two years fades, so will the forward momentum.”
With DeYoung suggesting Trump believes he has “solved” the Gaza situation — with no firm framework in place to go forward — there is a belief he will move on and, “the administration may not have the bandwidth to stick with the day after.”
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