U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration have already proven that they aren't afraid to implement what might be considered "avant-garde," out-of-the-box strategic policies that are diametrically opposed to the pluralist diplomacy of former U.S. President Barack Obama and his administration, who stroked and coddled Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the rest of the Palestinian leadership like a child deserving of special attention.
But Abbas and the leadership in Ramallah became enamored with the Obama administration's kid-glove treatment. When a new president was elected who decided to break the rigid diplomatic thinking that for decades had failed to lead to any solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the PA leader announced that he would be boycotting Trump and his envoys and that he would be the one to decide on preconditions for peace talks and choose the mediator.
It is clear that the leaders of the moderate Arab states, U.S. allies, have understood that there is a new sheriff in town and the old order no longer exists.
Saudi Arabia, Cairo, Amman and the United Arab Emirates are looking at Trump's approach to Tehran, Pyongyang, Brussels and they have realized that it behooves them to fall into line with Washington.
This realization does not stem from fear, but from an honest desire to try to bring about regional change that will mainly benefit the same moderate Arab countries that see what is happening in Damascus, Baghdad and Sanaa and want to throw off the threat posed by radical Islamism.
If Trump really intends to defuse the Gaza ticking bomb as a way of going over the heads of Abbas and the PA leadership in Ramallah and launching his peace plan, the idea is nothing less than brilliant.
Bringing order to the reality in the Gaza Strip, which is engulfed in a humanitarian crisis while significantly easing the economic sanctions on Gaza through measures such as a shipping port that would operate in Cyprus; more frequent openings of land crossings; and dozens of projects to rebuild Gaza could also prompt Hamas and the other armed groups there to rethink their approach.
True, it doesn't appear that Hamas intends to join the Zionist movement, and the group divesting itself of weapons isn't even an option at this point. But it appears that aside from Abbas and his friends in Ramallah, the leaders of influential Middle East nations have accepted that the old diplomacy that guided us for decades and always led to an impasse, is no longer relevant and that they need to adjust to a new reality.
And what is that reality? A reality in which unconventional thinking and clearing mines that block the way to the goal – a safer world – are something routine. A senior Palestinian official associated with Abbas put it best when he said "If the rais [president] doesn't accept that times have changed, he won't leave any Palestinian legacy behind him."
