Alain Frachon
What's touching about Donald Trump is his loyalty to his original profession. It's true that real estate development solves many problems. After all, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a matter of land distribution: Two peoples for the same land, what can be done?
Since the late 1970s, his predecessors in the White House have worked on the issue. An Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat (1918-1981), and an Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin (1922-1995), lost their lives in the process. Nothing ever came of it, observed Trump in his astonishing press conference on Tuesday, February 4. Both sides – Americans, Israelis and Palestinians – have floated the idea of going back to the partition of Mandatory Palestine voted by the United Nations in November 1947: one state for the Jews, another for the Arabs. But it didn't work.
No doubt all those who tackled the issue lacked imagination. Or were they intimidated by the small-mindedness of international law experts, by the petty constraints of UN resolutions or by the difficulty people have in forgetting the history that haunts them? Or were Trump's predecessors unable or unwilling to twist the arms of the parties concerned and impose peace? Or perhaps the time was not right, the Arab environment not ready and public opinion hostile. To list the causes of the failure of half a century of peace would be long and tedious – and everyone would have to take the blame.
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