Mr. Trump, on the Middle East, Please Move Fast and Break Things

Opinion|Mr. Trump, on the Middle East, Please Move Fast and Break Things

“You create your own reality. Truth is a malleable thing.” — Roy Cohn to Donald Trump in the film “The Apprentice.”

Listening to President Trump telling Israelis and Arabs Monday that they were at “the historic dawn of a new Middle East” was like watching Trump selling his bankers on a plan to build the biggest, most beautiful, most amazing hotel in the world on a toxic waste dump. On the one hand, you tell yourself, this man must be crazy. Doesn’t he know the history of this place? You can’t build a hotel there! And on the other hand, a voice in the back of your head whispers: What if he can bring it off?

Trump’s ability to combine bullying, flattering and exaggerating is truly a sight to behold, and it was on full display Monday in his addresses to the Israeli Knesset and then to more than 20 world leaders at a gathering in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. I will give Trump this: no traditional diplomat or foreign policy professor would have advised the president to take such risks — to declare that we are on the road to Middle East peace and that he, Donald Trump, will chair the “Board of Peace” that will deliver it. But Trump went to business school, not the School of Foreign Service, and he clearly believes that he can cajole, muscle and bluster this conflict to a happy ending.

Since that same strategy brought Trump both multiple bankruptcies in real estate and two terms as president in politics, I am not going to bet against him or for him. I am just going to give him this free advice: Mr. President, to get this deal done you need to move fast and break things.

So far, I don’t see it. I realize it is early, but right now I don’t even see the baby steps to the next phase. I see no U.N. resolution on the table creating the Arab/international peacekeeping force to oversee Hamas’s disarmament and security in Gaza until a proper Palestinian security force can be created. I see no money on the table for the billions that will be needed for reconstruction, and I have no idea who is supposed to appoint and manage the cabinet of Palestinian technocrats who are supposed to run Gaza instead of Hamas, which is already using its interior ministry and police forces to reassert control in Gaza.

The Trump administration, which is notoriously thin in national security, does not even have a confirmed assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is already doing his job as well as that of national security adviser, and Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who carried the ball this far on the peace deal, both have their own businesses to run.