As I strode past the US embassy on the Women’s March on London the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, a thought crystalised — that there might be a silver lining to the cloud of gloom that had descended on the demonstrators.
Counter-intuitively, it just might breathe new life into the moribund search for a two-state solution.
As long as Palestinians believe they can secure a state through international pressure on Israel rather than by direct negotiation, they will not come to the table.
Harsh? Well, to date they have rejected all offers made, most notably the 2000 Camp David proposals which would have given them more than 80 per cent of what they appeared to want.
At the time, then US president Bill Clinton quite rightly put the blame for the failure of the talks squarely on Yasser Arafat’s shoulders. And left-wing Israeli PM Ehud Barak described Arafat’s behaviour as a “performance geared to exact as many Israeli concessions as possible without ever seriously intending to reach a peace settlement or sign an end to the conflict”.
Put another way, it was difficult to ignore the cold and inconvenient truth that the Palestinians did not want Israel on the map.
Seventeen years on, I have little doubt that the Palestinian desire for the end of Israel remains a cold and inconvenient truth. But I think it matters less.
Now Mr Trump has come to power, bets are off all over the world, and in particular in the Middle East.
The new US president has pledged to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, has appointed a pro-settlement envoy, and he will veto any future anti-Israel UN resolutions. And, of course, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner and his Jewish family, are at the forefront of financing settlement activity.
So, with the prospect of — possibly — eight years of Mr Trump looming, more realistic Palestinians may come to realise there nothing to be gained from intransigence and negotiate before Israel further entrenches its — very wrong, in my opinion — position on the West Bank.
It hardly needs stating that there are many unknowns. Mr Trump could come to an agreement with Vladimir Putin that would change the entire dynamics of the Middle East. There might be a revolution in Iran, a consequence of which could be the end of Iran’s support for the Palestinians.
And, who knows, Mr Trump may be impeached before his first term is up.
As a feminist, I’d welcome the last outcome wholeheartedly.
As a Jew who supports the two-state solution, it might not be such good news.
