Opinion: The Path to Peace in the Middle East (and a Nobel Prize for Trump)

I didn’t want Donald Trump to be president. But once he was elected, I wondered if his impulse to smash convention could actually do some good in the Middle East. In the Times Opinion video above, I lay out my proposal.

The status quo was a nightmare. President Joe Biden’s feckless response to Israel’s blood bath in Gaza epitomized decades of failed, immoral, self-defeating U.S. policy in the region. While tens of thousands of Palestinians died, the United States was lavishing cash and weapons on Israel even as Mr. Biden pretended there was no leverage or influence within his reach.

This has been America’s Mideast stance in a nutshell: Talk about peace, feed war. I’ve been watching it since I first reported from Israel and the occupied territories in 2002, in the bad old days of the second intifada. Cycles of unsustainable calm mask political disintegration, then erupt into unthinkable violence. And where have our policies gotten us? The International Court of Justice is deciding whether the killing in Gaza is, in fact, a genocide. We’ve been wading in the edges of war with Iran. The United States is running down its weapon stockpile for an Israeli war that has no discernible (or sensible) end game or a political solution for the Palestinians anywhere on the horizon.

This has got to stop — and it can.

With some deft diplomacy, Mr. Trump has a generational opportunity to change the dynamics in the Middle East. What might that look like? I gamed out the three major, interlocking deals the president can make if he’s serious about peace and willing to run a tough negotiation. Will he do any of it? Who knows? This is Donald Trump, after all. But he could, and he should.

Megan K. Stack is a contributing Opinion writer who has reported from the Middle East for years. Sam Ellis is a video journalist and creator of Search Party, a YouTube channel.

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