Former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said that when he and his wife were at dinner at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on March 18, President Trump showed up. “He pulled me aside. He wanted to talk to me privately about the Middle East.”
Annie Linskey reports in the Boston Globe that Dershowitz wouldn’t repeat what Trump told him privately, but recounted parts of their conversation that occurred in front of other dinner guests. Trump “told me he thought in the Middle East, they are ready for a deal,” Dershowitz said.
Trump explained that he’d spoken to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and sensed that he was ready for a peace deal.
Dershowitz said, “I responded by saying, ‘The Palestinians say that to every new president.’ He said, ‘Now I think they’re really ready.’ I said, ‘You have to test them, it’s not enough to just hear ‘they’re ready.’ He shook his head in apparent agreement.”
{CB Frommer-Matzav.com}
Most US presidents seem to fantasize about getting their names in the history books by mediating the big Israel-Palestinian peace deal. If Mrs. Clinton got elected, I was going to write a letter to Bill telling him to make sure she learns from his bitter lesson that the Palestinian leadership (I don’t know about the Palestinian people) is nowhere near a peace mindset.
Trump could be more problematic. On one hand, we’re not going to get the “tough love” crap we got from his predecessor, and instead he’s going to play tough with the Palestinian leadership. On the other hand, he considers himself a master mediator, so could easily be tempted to pursue a shady deal.