Much at Stake: Could Trump, Netanyahu, and MBS Win a Nobel Peace Prize?

Tuesday's Trump-Netanyahu meeting may actually not be useless. Down the road lies a real chance to rethink the Middle East, a region that cries out for disruption.

Donald Trump loves being a disruptor, but his wrecking ball is mostly misdirected: tariff wars with Canada and Mexico, withdrawing from the World Health Organization, sneers at allies and cancelling USAID—these and similar actions are bad for Americans and terrible for the world. The Middle East is the exception: it’s practically begging for a bashing of heads. Trump seems just the man, and it begins Tuesday.

Trump’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—the first foreign leader at the White House since the inauguration—is one of those rare summits that actually cannot be replaced with a phone call, and as such is not a waste of taxpayer dollars. There is a puzzle of statesmanship that must be solved very quickly, with carrots and sticks that are best presented in person, and behind closed doors.

I discussed part of the vision yesterday, focusing on the hitherto-useless Arab League — and now here is the rest. The pieces of the puzzle include (but are not limited to) the following: ensuring the ceasefire deal in Gaza is carried out to the end, despite Netanyahu’s probable desire to scuttle it halfway through in order to preserve his far-right coalition government; a plan for governing Gaza after Hamas; a roadmap of hope for the Palestinians that preserves security for Israelis; peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia; and a strategic plan for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program.

The prize for getting all this right just might be a Nobel Peace Prize for Trump—as absurd as that may seem to anyone who has followed his gauche, ignorant, bullying, legally dubious path from 1970s Manhattan real estate conman to world record holder for impeachments in the House of Representatives. And it would be deserved.

At the core of this high-stakes maneuver is the war in Gaza. The current ceasefire deal, if fully implemented, will require Israel to end its military campaign while Hamas remains in power. It is simply a fact that while Israel has destroyed much of the jihadist group’s fighting force and killed its top leadership, it has failed to wipe it out entirely. Indeed, Hamas has recruited thousands of new fighters and engages in shows of force by hooded men brandishing automatic weapons at each of the recent hostage release extravaganzas.

In large part this is because Netanyahu himself has refused to discuss the day after Hamas, because his far-right allies oppose the only plausible alternative to Hamas—the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, run by the more moderate Fatah movement. So, once Israel leaves Gaza, Hamas takes over again and declares a twisted form of victory—giving joy and encouragement to terrorists the world over.

The far-right parties—who basically prefer a forever-war and an effort to expel the Gazans and resettle the strip with Jews—threaten credibly to bring down the government over this. That’s why Netanyahu is under suspicion of trying to scuttle the second stage of the ceasefire next month. Preventing this is Job One for Trump’s team.

The challenge is that Netanyahu—Israel’s longest-serving premier ever—is pathologically obsessed with staying in power. And the likeliest way Netanyahu can survive politically while ending the war is if he walks away with something bigger—something that allows him to shift from a messy war narrative to a glorious peace narrative ahead of Israel’s next election.