Donald Trump’s self-congratulatory claim that he “ended nine major wars” is a refrain of his post-presidential mythmaking. He speaks of peace like a stage magician speaks of miracles — with flourish, confidence, and an eye to applause. He boasts that he “ended eight wars” and that his deals are monuments of diplomacy. The Nobel Committee, he implies, should be grateful for the spectacle. This is not humility. It is hubris.

But as the Gaza truce — the crown jewel of his latest diplomatic initiative — disintegrates amid renewed Israeli airstrikes and contentious politics, the illusion of peace is devolving into the same familiar Middle Eastern quagmire. With it, Trump’s long-coveted Nobel Peace Prize nomination is at risk of turning into a joke.

There is a dark humor to the conjugal politics of Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. Two mythmakers and dealers in theatrical certainty have entered into a convenience marriage: Trump brings the stagecraft, Netanyahu brings the violence, dressed up as national security. They each need the other to exist politically. Trump needs the trophy of “peace” to burnish a contested legacy; Netanyahu needs the American umbrella to camouflage a fracturing coalition and his own fading credibility at home. When the ceasefire breaks down, they will accuse each other of betrayal — and those crushed by their egos will pay the cost.

The Trump-brokered peace, announced with fanfare and promoted as a historic breakthrough, has proven to be nothing of the sort. “The ceasefire was never real,” veteran State Department Middle East peace adviser Aaron David Miller told interviewers. “It was a political show for domestic optics, not regional stability.” Former US ambassador Daniel Kurtzer described such plans as “built for headlines, not for........

© Middle East Monitor