(Washington Institute for Near East Policy) Dore Gold - The Abraham Accords create possible new security structures for the Middle East. Israel is currently in a position similar to that of Europe at the end of World War II, when the U.S. was planning to pull out and Russia would fill the vacuum. In response, the U.S. created NATO. In terms of the Palestinians, the key is whether they are ready to consider reasonable proposals. President Mahmoud Abbas was not ripe for a deal toward the end of the Obama years, and the same situation holds today. When Israel accepted the Trump peace plan, it accepted the territorial divisions in the proposal as being relevant for the future. Israel has the opportunity to work with Arab state partners on how to use normalization to impact the territorial configuration in a peace settlement with the Palestinians. The writer, former Director-General of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Israeli Ambassador to the UN, is president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
2020-09-17 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive