[Salon] Trump starts to wheel and deal - ArabDigest.org guest post

Trump starts to wheel and deal Summary: Donald Trump has wasted little time in moving forward on his promise to be the president who brings peace while MbS presides over a Riyadh summit that may prove useful to Trump’s deal-making efforts in the Middle East. With Arab and world Muslim nations meeting in Riyadh yesterday the question remains will Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the two dominant power brokers, finally take significant action in an effort to halt the genocide in Gaza and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon? Or will they once again preside over a virtue signalling exercise that enables Israel to continue its wars of aggression? If Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed opt for the latter they risk endangering the security of the states they rule over. Netanyahu emboldened by Donald Trump’s sweeping victory seems to be laying the ground for a direct war with Iran which would put Saudi Arabia and the UAE as well as the other GCC states in a perilous position. In a video statement the Israeli PM boasted that he had spoken with Trump three times since last Tuesday’s election. It was Netanyahu at his cocky best keen to pile humiliation on Joe Biden and a shattered Democratic Party by hyping his “good and very important” conversations with the president-elect which he described as: further (tightening) the strong alliance between Israel and the US. We see eye-to-eye on the Iranian threat in all its components and the danger posed by it. We also see the great opportunities before Israel, in the expansion of peace, and in other realms. Netanyahu defines expanding peace through a continuing and expanded war effort backed by a man whom in the past he has called “Israel’s greatest friend.” Where Joe Biden had compelled Israel to limit its response to Iran’s latest missile barrage, Netanyahu is eager to convey the idea that he has been given the green light to do whatever is necessary so that the IDF’s war aims are achieved by the time Trump assumes office on 20 January. That alone should have been enough to give the Riyadh gathering a greater sense of urgency. Mohammed bin Salman opened the summit with an unequivocal denunciation of Israel. The crown prince said Saudi Arabia was standing with the people of Palestine and Lebanon: “the kingdom renews its condemnation and categorical rejection to the collective genocide that Israel is committing against the Palestinians.” He decried the IDF’s “continued aggression” which he said was undermining efforts to give Palestinians their legitimate rights and enable peace in the region. He condemned “the Israeli military operations that targeted Lebanese territories, and we reject threatening Lebanon’s security and stability.” His tough language was intended as much for a domestic audience as it was for anyone else. That’s because the prince is at pains to lay to rest allegations published in The Atlantic in September that the “Palestinian issue” is not one he cares about. In a meeting in January with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken the magazine quoted the prince as saying: Seventy percent of my population is younger than me. For most of them, they never really knew much about the Palestinian issue. And so they’re being introduced to it for the first time through this conflict. It’s a huge problem. Do I care personally about the Palestinian issue? I don’t, but my people do, so I need to make sure this is meaningful. And while both MbS and Mohammed bin Zayed are happy to see Trump back they remain anxious about the lengths he may be prepared to go to enable Netanyahu’s vision of a greater Israel that uses as a modus operandi ethnic cleansing and genocide to enable its realisation. Massad Boulos, whose son Michael married Tiffany Trump two years ago, is Trump’s potential US Envoy to Lebanon Should the Riyadh summit take a stand it may give the self-proclaimed great negotiator a card to play. Trump has proclaimed himself as the president who will bring peace and in that regard it is useful to reflect on his phone calls after last week’s victory with Russia’s Putin and Ukraine’s Zelensky. As regards the latter the Ukrainian president was reportedly reassured by his conversation (and apparently not unnerved by the fact that Elon Musk joined in). Regarding the Russian leader a report in the Washington Post that Trump had told him not to escalate the war was swiftly and furiously denied by Putin’s press spokesperson Dimitry Peskov. The intensity of Peskov’s denial rather reinforces that the call did take place. Similarly though less reported on than his conversations with Netanyahu Donald Trump had a phone call with the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas. It was the first conversation the two had had since 2017. The call was described by a Palestinian official as “warm and general.” The warmth, apparently, had much to do with a letter that the Palestinian president had sent Trump after he was wounded in an assassination attempt in July. And so we begin to see the outline of ‘the art of the deal’: talk to both sides and use your clout as the incoming leader and commander in chief of what is still the world’s most powerful military to drive the bargain. Action from the Riyadh summit could be a useful card, certainly not the ace of spades but perhaps the jack in a straight run that will in the first instance - given that Netanyahu remains very keen for a normalisation deal with the Saudis – cause the Israelis to accept a ceasefire and halt the killing and with that in hand then to drive the Palestinians into accepting the Peace to Prosperity deal his son -in-law Jared Kushner cooked up (with no involvement from the Palestinians) and which was released in January 2020. As for Lebanon, Trump may use the Lebanese-American businessman Massad Boulus as his intermediary in a bid to end the war there. As it happens his youngest daughter Tiffany is married to Boulus’ son Michael. That too may be the art of the deal: keep it close and keep it in the family. Members can leave comments about this newsletter on the Arab Digest website