Editorial: Is a Middle East turning point around the corner?

Baltimore Sun Editorial Board, The Baltimore Sun on Jul 11, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Donald Trump at the White House in a de facto Middle East summit on Monday. The two represent collectively the sole superpower in that turbulent region.

Israel sports nuclear weapons and a congressionally guaranteed “qualitative” military edge over its hostile neighbors. The United States boasts multiple military bases in Arab nations, including the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.

The prime minister and president recently collaborated to attack Iran and obliterate (at least provisionally) its nuclear infrastructure with impunity. Netanyahu nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for ostensibly ending the conflict in the Middle East, including Gaza.

Maybe history has reached a turning point. Maybe Iran’s mullahs will be overthrown in favor of a democracy, which the U.S. extinguished in 1953 by orchestrating a coup against secular Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh.

Maybe Palestinians will accept a rump state without a military in Gaza under Israeli suzerainty. Maybe Syria will renounce sectarian violence and its state of war with Israel since 1948. Maybe Lebanon will forget Israel’s periodic invasions and bombings, including its September 2024 exploding pagers operation. Maybe Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman will speak to the Knesset with an olive branch like Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat in 1977. Maybe nations will turn swords into plowshares and make war no more.

We doubt all these Panglossian dreams. The Middle East has been convulsed since Joshua entered the Promised Land to conquer the occupants by force and violence. The Sermon on the Mount was delivered on perhaps the most blood-stained territory on the planet.

The nation of Israel was born of warfare in 1948 after the British departed Palestine unable to maintain or enforce peace. The 1994 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres for negotiating the 1993 Oslo Accords, which soon teetered and collapsed.

Military might neither secures peace nor guarantees victory. The adage, “you can’t kill your way out of a war” has been verified repeatedly in the Middle East. Trump and Netanyahu talking to one another misses the elephants in the living room: Palestinians, Israel’s Arab neighbors and Iran.

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