The art of the deal or the rout of the real?
The love-in with Qatar by Trump's Middle East enforcer is a troubling omen
Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, has called the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal an “inflection point” for peace in the Middle East.
He told Fox News that he hopes to broaden the Abraham Accords by bringing in every state in the Middle East, including Qatar and Egypt, which he praised for their key roles in negotiating the Gaza ceasefire.
Qatar, he said, had been “enormously helpful in this,” and the communication skills of its prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, had been “indispensable”.
While the commitment of the new administration to expanding the Abraham Accords — signed in 2020 under the first Trump administration — is a welcome sign, Witkoff’s remarks should provoke no little unease among those who properly understand what Israel is facing.
Qatar can never be a solution in the Middle East because Qatar is the problem. Far from being instrumental in bringing peace and security to Israel, Qatar has been instrumental in bringing it mass slaughter.
For Qatar is behind Hamas. It created it, funds it and protects its leaders. Qatar promotes the Muslim Brotherhood — the jihadi parent of Hamas — and hosts the Islamist propaganda news outlet Al Jazeera.
It’s an enemy of the west because it is governed by an Islamist regime that allies itself with other Islamist enemies of the west including Al-Qaeda, ISIS —and Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who had until last month a $10 million US bounty on his head.
Qatar’s role as an “honest broker” in negotiations between Israel and Iran’s proxy Hamas was farcical. For these purposes, Qatar was Hamas.
The obstructive games Hamas continued to play meant that Israel managed to resist the appalling terms being pressed on it by the Biden administration — until Witkoff applied the thumbscrews to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who promptly crumbled, understanding that Trump was insisting implacably on a deal and that Israel couldn’t afford to make him an enemy.
True, there were some differences with the Biden package. However, a deal that traps Israel in a potentially exploitative, nightmarish and agonising prevarication over the release of all the hostages while Hamas re-empowers itself in Gaza and Israel is forced to withdraw remains a lousy deal.
Astonishingly, Witkoff boasted that the new administration had taken the Biden deal off the shelf — with the “mathematics” of the unconscionable, staggered release of the hostages having been set by the previous administration and which Witkoff had seen no reason to change.
To speak about the release of the hostages in terms of “mathematics” is nauseating. Didn’t Trump say previously that unless the hostages were released by his inauguration, all hell would break loose? He did not say that if a mere three of the 90-plus hostages were released by that date, with four more due this weekend but the remainder left dangling in the wind, that would be just peachy.
The terms of this deal were set by Qatar. If the Trump administration really wants to defang the Middle East as a threat to the west, then it should start by following the advice given by Yigal Carmon of MEMRI: the US should move the CENTCOM base out of Qatar and start treating the Gulf state as an international pariah.
Yet Witkoff’s admiration for Qatar appears to know no bounds. At its 2024 Economic Forum, he called the Gulf state “very, really impressive,” adding, “whoever they had who master-planned here did a really good job … this is solid government. The hotels here are magnificent”.
Witkoff and Trump, who are old chums, are tough-minded real-estate developers. Both frame every problem as a deal in which they’ll come out on top by bludgeoning the other side.
But this has its limits. Although Trump says Hamas must never rule Gaza again, he has declared himself against all foreign entanglements. He is the president who will end all wars, the peacemaker under whose alchemical “art of the deal” lions will lie down with lambs.
There is, however, another way to describe negotiated deals made with non-negotiable agendas. That word is surrender.
Israel’s genocidal enemies must be totally defeated so that they can never again attempt the extinction of Israel and the slaughter of Jews. That means there may be no alternative to war if Israel is to survive.
But Trump has made crystal clear that he won’t countenance America being dragged into any war. And this “America First” isolationism has led to some worrying appointments.
He’s appointed Michael DiMino as deputy assistant secretary of defence for the Middle East. DiMino is a former fellow at the isolationist think-tank Defence Priorities, which is funded by conservative donors Charles and David Koch.
DeMino has called for a significantly reduced American presence in the Middle East, spoken out against using military force against the Houthis in Yemen and even questioned American defensive support for Israel. He also argued against the Abraham Accords because it “left out the issue of Israel-Palestine”.
As Jewish Insider has reported, one of the key people hiring isolationist staffers to fill Pentagon roles is Dan Caldwell, a Koch-affiliated policy adviser who has often criticised America’s close relationship with Israel.
There can be no doubt that Trump and Witkoff genuinely wish Israel well. However, there’s a potentially lethal flaw in their view of the world.
On Fox, Witkoff was asked about the comment by Hamas official Abu Marzouk, who told The New York Times: “We’re prepared for a dialogue with America and achieving understandings on everything.” Witkoff replied: “I think it’s good if it’s accurate. We were able to demonstrate that President Trump’s policies, peace through strength, they work; everybody listens.”
Saying the release of the three hostages was the essential “hopeful moment,” he said that “we needed to show people we could stop the violence, and we could have conversation, dialogue. So this is the beginning of that, and hopefully, everything over there can be settled in that way. If it’s possible, everyone will become a believer.”
This is laughably naive and ill-informed. It ends up in the same place as liberals like the Bidenites, for whom everything can be negotiated because they assume that everyone is governed by reason.
The Witkoff view is that everything can be negotiated because when Trump brings his fist crashing down everyone jumps. It’s true that everyone jumps. But the Islamists play the longest game in town. Behind a series of feints, they will regroup, recalibrate and adapt to suddenly emerge stronger than ever, precisely because they have not been defeated.
Which is why Witkoff’s further reported comment, that he wants to solve tensions with Iran over nuclear weapons “diplomatically … if people are willing to adhere to their agreements,” is even more troubling, as are the rumors that Trump has already reached out to “negotiate” with Iran.
In the Islamists’ world, no agreement is anything other than a stratagem to defeat their enemy — with deceit divinely mandated as a means to advance the Islamic cause.
The Witkoff view of the world doesn’t appear to factor in that Islamists aren’t motivated by self-interest. The prospect of peace and prosperity for the region means little to people who believe that they are the warriors of God himself in purging the world of Israel, the Jews and the Christians, and conquering it for Islam.
For people who set their clock in the seventh century, waiting out four years of Trump is just another small delay that they will try to leverage to their advantage. This advantage may not become apparent until Trump has left office. But Israel can’t live with the threat of more October 7-style massacres after 2028.
Of course, it’s possible that Trump does indeed realise all this. After all, most of his major appointments are of people whose commitment to Israel is deeper and more uncompromising than among many diaspora Jews. It’s possible that he will come through strongly for Israel and help it see off its foes.
But it’s also possible that the art of the deal turns into the rout of the real.
*** My new book The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West – and Why Only They Can Save It, can be bought on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk .