The UAE-Israel deal is a triumph for Trump's personal diplomacy

Alliances and rapprochements have been built on less, and so have. This one is built between personalities, not states, and common interests, not external orders. That is why it has a good chance of lasting. The politics of the Middle East are volcanic and tribal: the Hebrew Bible describes an exceptionally quiet interlude as ‘peace in the land for 40 years’. The strong survive by the exercise of power, and power must be personal, as it was when Trump sent Kushner as his emissary. Democracy, as Erdogan and Netanyahu have shown, is a means to the ends of power and survival. The alternative is Lebanon, or Syria, or Yemen.

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The Trump administration deserves praise for acknowledging these facts of life in the Middle East — facts which eluded bureaucratic experts and elected leaders, Democratic and Republican. But the Trump administration will receive mockery and venom instead of praise. The usual suspects will minimize this deal: Iran, Hamas, our more progressive professors, the Palestinian Authority, the career failures at the State Department, the think-tank apologists for Obama’s accommodation of Iran, the cheerleaders of anything anti-American at MSNBC and the New York Times. But really, can you imagine Joe Biden and Kamala Harris looking beyond the same old, tired Blob staffers, let alone pulling off this kind of breakthrough?

The dogs bark, the caravan moves on — and in the right direction, for once. I look forward to praying in the Abrahamic Family House and seeing pilgrims from the UAE in Jerusalem.

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