The opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem marks a peak emotional moment for anyone wanting a secure and prosperous Israel; in that spirit, Donald Trump has been hailed as “the best thing that has happened to Israel in a long time.”
Maybe. There’s also reason to see the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital not as an end in itself but as one act of a three-part drama that ends badly for the Jewish state. Allow me to sketch this theory:
Turning to the Middle East, Trump has two grand priorities: reducing the Iranian threat and accomplishing the “ultimate deal” of bringing an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The two goals are related because the only way to build a powerful alliance against Iran is by including Israel, and that in turn means resolving the Palestinian issue, so that the Saudi and other Arab governments will fully cooperate with Israel. Therefore:
Step One: Give the Saudi leadership what it most wants — lots of attention and armaments.
Daniel Pipes, a historian, has led the Middle East Forum since its founding in 1994. He taught at Chicago, Harvard, Pepperdine, and the U.S. Naval War College. He served in five U.S. administrations, received two presidential appointments, and testified before many congressional committees. The author of 16 books on the Middle East, Islam, and other topics, Mr. Pipes writes a column for the Washington Times and the Spectator; his work has been translated into 39 languages. DanielPipes.org contains an archive of his writings and media appearances; he tweets at @DanielPipes. He received both his A.B. and Ph.D. from Harvard. The Washington Post deems him “perhaps the most prominent U.S. scholar on radical Islam.” Al-Qaeda invited Mr. Pipes to convert and Edward Said called him an “Orientalist.”
I recently witnessed something I haven’t seen in a long time. On Friday, August 16, 2024, a group of pro-Hamas activists packed up their signs and went home in the face of spirited and non-violent opposition from a coalition of pro-American Iranians and American Jews. The last time I saw anything like that happen was in 2006 or 2007, when I led a crowd of Israel supporters in chants in order to silence a heckler standing on the sidewalk near the town common in Amherst, Massachusetts. The ridicule was enough to prompt him and his fellow anti-Israel activists to walk away, as we cheered their departure. It was glorious.
