Trump Delivered Peace. Israel Must Not Throw It Away. | The American Spectator

Here’s what happened last week in Jerusalem: As Vice President JD Vance stepped off Air Force Two to celebrate the ceasefire Donald Trump had just negotiated, the Knesset was voting to advance West Bank annexation. The timing was so outrageous that it felt intentional.

It was worse: It was oblivious.

The ceasefire itself is remarkable. President Trump achieved what two years of military operations couldn’t: Hamas agreed to release every hostage while the IDF maintains control of half of Gaza. He did this by leveraging Arab pressure on Hamas, threatening expanded Israeli operations, and applying the kind of focused presidential attention that actually moves negotiations forward. This is President Trump at his most effective: seeing past diplomatic pieties to the actual mechanics of power.

Yet some in Israel’s political and activist class seem determined to undermine the very framework that made this victory possible.

Start with Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich’s contribution to international diplomacy. When asked about Saudi normalization, Smotrich suggested the Saudis could “keep riding camels in the Saudi desert” if they insist on Palestinian statehood.

Saudi Arabia controls $800 billion in sovereign wealth funds and Mecca’s spiritual authority over 1.8 billion Muslims. They’re offering Israel something invaluable: regional integration backed by Islamic legitimacy.

Smotrich’s response? A camel joke.

The annexation bills are equally self-defeating. Trump stated clearly in September: “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank.” This wasn’t ambiguous. Yet the Knesset pushed forward anyway, passing preliminary votes on bills that would apply Israeli sovereignty to West Bank settlements. The message to Trump is unmistakable: Thanks for the peace deal, but we’ll take it from here.

This fundamentally misreads Trump’s project. Unlike Obama’s naive hope for daylight between America and Israel, or Biden’s focus on Palestinian grievances, Trump offered Israel something real: peace through strength, integration through shared interests. He didn’t ask Israel to apologize for existing. He asked it to be smart about securing its future.

Israel risks squandering an extraordinary opportunity.

The Abraham Accords survived a two-year war that everyone predicted would destroy them. The UAE complained about Palestinian suffering but kept its ambassador in Tel Aviv. Bahrain maintained relations. Morocco continued  relations and security cooperation. Trump built something durable because he understood that Arab states care more about Iranian threats and economic development than Palestinian politics.

Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and Oman are watching. They see Israel’s military dominance: the decimation of Hamas’s leadership, Hezbollah’s degradation, successful strikes on Iran itself. They also see Israel’s technological advantages in water management, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence, capabilities the Gulf states need as they diversify away from oil. The economic logic of partnership is overwhelming.

What these states need is political cover. Their populations remain sympathetic to Palestinians. They need to sell normalization as something more than capitulation. This doesn’t require Israel to accept a Palestinian state tomorrow. It requires Israel to avoid gratuitous insults and unilateral moves that make Arab leaders look like fools for considering partnership.

Smotrich apparently believes Israel can have security through military dominance alone. This misunderstands how modern power works. Israel’s qualitative military edge is real but fragile. It depends on American weapons, American diplomatic protection, and American intelligence sharing.

Trump has been extraordinarily generous on all three fronts: moving the embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Golan Heights annexation, eliminating Soleimani. But generosity creates obligations. Netanyahu seems to understand this. Reports indicate he urged Likud members to abstain from the annexation votes. But Netanyahu’s cautious realism is being drowned out by ministers who mistake social media applause for strategic victory.

The pattern is familiar and depressing. Israel wins a military victory. Its politics shift rightward. It overreaches. International isolation follows. Eventually, a crisis forces compromise under worse conditions than were originally available. This cycle has repeated for decades.

Trump is offering Israel a way out of this pattern: a regional architecture where Israeli security comes through integration rather than isolation, where its technological advantages serve regional prosperity, and where former enemies become stakeholders in stability. This isn’t naive optimism. It’s the framework that transformed Europe after World War II and East Asia after the Cold War.

The next moves are critical. Israel can embrace Trump’s vision — apologize for Smotrich’s insult, table the annexation bills, and work within Trump’s framework. Or it can continue treating the president’s peace plan as a suggestion rather than the lifeline it actually is.

The president who delivered peace deserves partners who understand its value. Israel needs to decide whether it wants to be that partner or whether it prefers isolation, punctuated by periodic violence and permanent dependence on American goodwill that may not always be there.

Trump is offering Israel a future. The least it could do is accept it.

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