Trump’s “New Middle East” Is a Utopian Fantasy

And there’s some chance it could work

What flag is missing? President Trump flew from Israel to Egypt for a “Peace in the Middle East” meeting that was missing at least one key player. Photo: Screengrab from White House “live” social media feed.

“This is the historic dawn of a new Middle East,” President Trump declared to Israel’s parliament today. He spoke of “peace for all eternity,” of a “golden age of the Middle East,” characterized by “hope, harmony, opportunity, and happiness.”

If the “new Middle East” phrase sounds familiar, it should: it was the title of a 1993 book by Shimon Peres, “The New Middle East.” As the jacket copy put it, it offered a vision of “a reconstructed Middle East, free of the conflicts that plagued it in the past, set to take its place in a new era.”

Since that book was published, world events—the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ISIS beheadings, countless missile attacks and suicide bombings against Israel, the wars in Syria and Yemen—made bloody clear that the old Middle East was not going to surrender so easily.

Many of the factors that torpedoed the 1993 dream of a new Middle East threaten to sink this one, too. Religious conflicts between Sunni and Shiite Islam, and between factions of Sunni Islam, fuel violence. So do newer ideologies—Khomeneism, Baathism, Arab nationalism—and family and tribal feuds. People have been fighting each other for reasons that have nothing to do with Israel—Barzani Kurds against Talabani Kurds in Northern Iraq, Sunnis against Druze in Syria, Turks against Kurds. The conditions that typically contribute to peace—freedom, democracy, rule of law, robust and well-functioning civil-society institutions—are scarce-to-nonexistent everywhere in the region except for Israel. The dominant governance model remains dictatorships, dependent for their survival on nursing or provoking external conflicts that distract their people from their own misery.

At the moment, Hamas, far from being entirely obliterated in the “total victory” that was Benjamin Netanyahu’s baseball-hat slogan, is reportedly consolidating power in Gaza by murdering its rivals.

Because it’s Hamas, not Israel, that is now directly killing Palestinians, the campus protesters and their friends in the press do not care. It suggests that what the campus protesters and their friends in the press really care about is not Palestinians but demonizing Israel and the Jews. As the Israeli opposition leader, Yair Lapid, put it in his own Knesset speech yesterday with Trump looking on, the Columbia protesters “were deceived”—”there was no genocide, no intentional starvation.”

Trump flew from Israel to an Israel-free “Peace in the Middle East” summit in Egypt, with a row of discredited and corrupt dictators, including Palestine Liberation organization leader Mahmoud Abbas. Netanyahu was not present, there was no Israeli flag on display, and some of those in attendance openly fantasized about removing from Israel the nuclear weapons that have helped to make it the regional superpower. (Netanyahu explained his absence from the Egypt meeting by attributing it to the impending Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah).

So what’s the reason for hope?

Most immediately and concretely, Trump and his team, along with military pressure by the Israeli government, have now stripped Hamas of its strongest tactical asset—the remaining living hostages. This is a joyous humanitarian event worth celebrating in its own right. Also, going forward, it now potentially gives Israel much more freedom to operate, as Israel has in Lebanon against Hezbollah notwithstanding a “ceasefire,” with continuing strikes against Hamas leaders to degrade their ability to threaten Israel.

Additionally, the ceasefire in Gaza offers an opportunity for Trump and his envoys Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner to proceed on the theory that what motivates them—money—is what also motivates other regional players. That’s not intended to be dismissive. I’m a capitalist and believe in incentives. Economic integration, regional technical cooperation, and shared prosperity may indeed help reduce conflict in the region.

Well-developed plans are already under way to expand the Abraham Accords—or the Ahh-brah-ham Accords, as Trump lately has preferred pronouncing them. Israeli press reports suggest Egypt will benefit economically from a relocation camp in the Sinai (“Egyptian Rafah”) that will hold 1 million Gazans and generate revenue for HALA, a company owned by associates of Egyptian ruler al-Sisi. There’s an EastMed gas and Internet pipeline already planned from Israel through Cyprus to Greece (and potentially onward to Italy). Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait are reportedly interested in connecting to that pipeline.

It all has potential. Trump said to the Knesset that he hoped the other countries would join the Abhraham Accords “quickly” with “no games” and “unleash incredible prosperity and opportunity.” Also in the speech, he clarified that he personally doesn’t plan to convert to Judaism (“Bibi, you do know this is not in the cards for me”). He also praised Miriam Adelson (“$60 billion in the bank and she loves Israel…wonderful woman”) while insinuating she may be more loyal to Israel than America. And he called on Israel’s president to pardon Netanyahu (“I have an idea, Mr. President. Why don’t you give him a pardon. Come on. It just seems to make so much sense. Cigars and champagne—who the hell cares about it?”). And he called for Iran to make its own deal by renouncing terror, stopping threatening neighbors, stopping funding regional proxy militias, and recognizing Israel’s right to exist.

Trump and Witkoff and Kushner are good dealmakers, and as Prime Minister Netnyahu said in his own Knesset speech Monday, “no one wants peace more than the people of Israel.”

Yet Israel, too, has repeatedly withdrawn from Gaza in the past only to see Hamas rearm. And the history since the 1990s of U.S.-China trade relations demonstrates that close economic relations alone are an insufficient basis for true peace. Qatar and Turkey and Egypt are not Communist China but they aren’t free countries, either, and they may in their own ways find Hamas useful in countering Israeli regional dominance and advancing Sunni Muslim Brotherhood ideology.

So—will Trump’s “new Middle East” turn out any better than Shimon Peres’s plan did? Trump, at the Knesset, hailed the release of the hostages and called it “a day to give our deepest thanks to the Almighty God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” It may take a divine intervention—or, at least, some Islamic version of a religious reformation—to make this “peace” more than a piecemeal ceasefire. But for all the grim dystopian realities of the old Middle East, it has seen miracles too. Trump described Israel itself as one. Looking at the pictures of hostages being reunited joyfully with their families after two years in captivity, it’s hard to avoid seeing hope in the hugs.

Thank you: This is a reader-supported publication that relies on paying customers. If you know someone who would enjoy or benefit from reading The Editors, please help us grow, and help your friends, family members, and associates understand the world around them, by forwarding this email along with a suggestion that they subscribe today. Or send a gift subscription. If it doesn’t work on mobile, try desktop. Or vice versa. Or ask a tech-savvy youngster to help. Thank you to those of who who have done this recently and thanks in advance to the rest of you.