Donald J Trump

Assessments of Donald Trump’s presidency vary widely depending on who is doing the assessing. But if future generations of historians aren’t total social justice warriors — as is likely given the fact that the socialist bubble bursts almost immediately every time socialism is implemented — Trump will almost certainly be judged as one of America’s greatest presidents, barring economic or other disaster while he is in the White House. One key reason for this is his departure from what had been standard “Israeli/Palestinian peace process” procedure.

Ever since since the British incited riots against Jews in Palestine in 1920, the standard approach has been this: Western powers demand substantive concessions from the Israelis and promises from the Palestinian Arabs, and continue to do so even as Palestinians flout all agreements and promises they made, never holding Palestinians accountable for their actions or attaching any consequences to them.

After nearly a century of this, Trump began to reward the Israelis for their commitment to peace and penalize the Palestinians for their commitment to war. As the new book The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process details, Trump fulfilled a campaign promise and shocked the world on December 6, 2017 by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announcing that the U.S. embassy would move there.

“When I came into office,” Trump said, “I promised to look at the world’s challenges with open eyes and very fresh thinking. We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past. Old challenges demand new approaches.” If that were true of anything, it was true of the “peace process.” There is much more.