Photo illustration: Annelise Capossela. Photo: Alex Edelman/Bloomberg via Getty Images
This story comes from the new season of the “How it Happened” podcast. Subscribe to listen to the whole story, including audio recordings of a never before-heard interview with Donald Trump.
Former President Donald Trump contends that one big reason his "ultimate deal" between the Israelis and Palestinians collapsed is that then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu never wanted to make peace.
The big picture: Trump went from a failed Middle East peace plan to four normalization deals between Israel and Arab states within the span of one chaotic, tension-filled year. This behind-the-scenes account of how that happened is based on interviews with Trump and nearly all of the other key players.
What he's saying: "I don't think Bibi ever wanted to make peace," Trump told me in April, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname in a 90-minute, face-to-face interview for my new book, “Trump’s Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East."
Why it matters: Trump presented a peace plan in January 2020 that was the most favorable proposal for Israel that any U.S. president had made since the Madrid peace conference in 1991.
Flashback: During the 2016 presidential election campaign, Trump spoke several times about his eagerness to make “the mother of all deals” to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Nevertheless, Trump appointed his son-in-law Jared Kushner to lead the White House “peace team." Kushner wasn't even aware that he'd been tapped for the job until Trump told the New York Times during the presidential transition.
Behind the scenes: Trump said that at an early stage of his presidency, he realized that Netanyahu would be a bigger obstacle to peace than Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Yes, but: Trump undermined his own efforts toward a peace deal in December 2017 when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and said the U.S. Embassy would move there.
Between the lines: Trump's decision was mainly political, to fulfill a campaign promise and prove to his evangelical base that he'd take steps no other president would.
Much of Abbas’ inflammatory rhetoric came after Trump’s Jerusalem decision. In a speech in January 2018, Abbas cursed Trump and said in Arabic, “May your house be destroyed."
Flash forward: When Trump finally revealed his Middle East peace plan in January 2020, after more than a year of delays due to a long-running political crisis in Israel, the Palestinians rejected it outright and boycotted the ceremony.
Instead, Netanyahu decided to use Trump's plan as cover to annex parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank ahead of the elections — an explosive proposal that would violate international law, but potentially provide Netanyahu an electoral landslide.
But Trump was irritated by Netanyahu's speech at the ceremony.
Kushner called Friedman into his office and gave him a dressing down, saying this plan was not what the president wanted.
The bottom line: Former U.S. and Israeli officials with direct involvement told me that when Netanyahu left Washington that week, relations between the Trump and Netanyahu administrations were at their lowest point ever.
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