Peace in the Middle East! A slogan really more than a concept after decades of failed negotiations in a territory haunted by strife and war for as long as recited history.
Peace? How could peace finally come to such a land, between such nations?
It seemed unlikely, yet it has finally come about thanks to President Donald Trump and his uncanny ability to spot talented individuals qualified for often difficult tasks. The monumental achievement was determined to be a failure by many(if you bought what the mainstream media was selling).
Avi Berkowitz, Jared Kusner’s one-time assistant, was appointed to a top negotiating position on President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace team. Berkowitz was immediately met with near-universal derision by so-called experts and the mainstream press. The Brookings Institution’s Natan Sachs declared the then 29-year-old Berkowitz “young and inexperienced.” The media were less diplomatic: Politico derided Berkowitz as Kushner’s “mini-me”; Vanity Fair dubbed him a “coffee boy.”
How much more beautiful the victory now that the “coffee boy” has proven to do what so many had failed to accomplish before him.
On Tuesday, Trump oversaw the signing of the Kushner- and Berkowitz-orchestrated Abraham Accords that officially normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, as well as an agreement between Israel and Bahrain—the first such deals in over four decades. Pretty good for a coffee boy.
The fundamental mistake of the peace process, and of the cadres of experts who have made that process into lifetime appointments to a revolving door of government, think tank, and academic jobs, is the idea that the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. But such a peace remains as far out of reach as it ever was. In the meantime, the Trump administration has secured a great victory in the ongoing quest for peace between Israel and its neighbors—the lack of which was and remains the true threat to global security and the true threat to American interests in the region.
It was clearly Kushner’s and Berkowitz’s willingness to buck the conventional “experts” that brought derision from liberals but peace to the many.
Great work!
