The Dream Palace of the AmericansNovember/December 2019 29having conquered the staging areas its
enemies regularly used to attack it, will
never give all o them back. Observing
an emerging regional tripolarity, he has
pulled two o the poles, Israel and
Saudi Arabia, into a de facto alliance to
contain the menacing third pole, Iran.
In short, he seems to be embracing an
updated version o the “twin pillars”
Middle East policy that Washington
adopted in the 1970s, with Israel taking
Iran’s place as the second pillar.
This may advance U.S. interests
eectively in the long run, and it may
not. But the idea that the administration’s
approach is a travesty o professional
diplomacy by a bunch o bumbling
amateurs is just a story that veterans o
lost wars tell to comfort themselves.∂knew would not succeed. Is that the
benchmark against which Trump is to be
judged? I so, he will end up failing a lot
more cheaply.
The awkward truth that Washington
is only gradually beginning to admit to
itsel is that the Israeli-Palestinian
conÁict will not, in fact, be solved with
a two-state solution. It might once have
been, and phalanxes o negotiators over
hal a century tried everything they
could to bring it o. But the local
parties to the conÁict were never quite
ready. The moment never got seized,
and somewhere along the way the
opportunity passed.
During the Israeli election campaign
in September, Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu announced his intention “to
apply Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan
Valley and the area o the northern Dead
Sea upon the establishment o the next
government.” To the ears o a U.S.
diplomatic establishment raised on
dreams o Oslo, this sounded like the
ravings o a right-wing extremist. But
even Netanyahu’s centrist rivals call for
the retention o the Jordan Valley, a
united Jerusalem, and Israeli control o
major settlement blocs.
It is not obvious how the United
States should deal with this new reality,
and the Trump administration’s plans for
solving the problem are no more likely
to succeed than those o its predecessors.
But give the president his due. He looks
at the Middle East like any other region,
and respects power. Without the ideo-
logical blinders o the professional peace
processors, he has recognized that the
Palestinian issue is not a major U.S.
strategic concern and has essentially
delegated its handling to the local parties
directly involved. He can see that Israel,