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Source: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/01/donald-trump-mideast-peace-gaza-215089
Can Trump Make Mideast Peace without Gaza?
(Politico) Grant Rumley - President Trump's efforts to resume Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations are ultimately doomed to the same failure of his predecessors if he does not address the biggest obstacle to an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement: Gaza. The Bush and Obama administrations chose to support negotiations strictly between Israel and Abbas' West Bank-based Palestinian leadership. Yet no Palestinian leader sitting in the West Bank can compromise on the most sensitive issues in Palestinian politics while a rival party controls half the territory of a future Palestinian state. Hamas is not going anywhere, and neither force nor wishful thinking will diminish their ability to spoil the chances for a peace agreement. The writer is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.