President Trump made an interesting proposal a few days ago to address the perpetual war in the Middle East. He observed, correctly, that the conflict between Israel and the Muslim states in the Middle East — and then leaking out to other Muslim states — has gone on for the best (or worst) part of a century. It heated up substantially when Hamas, the effective government of Gaza, put together something they thought was going to be the decisive "Pearl Harbor" strike against Israel, forcing them into major concessions.
Instead, as Admiral Yamamoto is reputed to have said after Pearl Harbor, it awakened a sleeping giant and filled it with terrible resolve. In the intervening 16 months, Israel has killed most of Hamas' senior leadership, killed or captured thousands of Hamas fighters, and pretty much destroyed Gaza's above-ground infrastructure along with more tunnels and bunkers than the London Metro or the New York Subway.
The response has been... mixed. Naturally, a whole bunch of people immediately fleered.
The libertarian/isolationist wing said, "NO BLOOD FOR WHATEVER THIS IS FOR!"
The Arab world said, "NO, WE DON'T WANT THEM!"
The Israelis said, "That's an Interesting idea," which, translated from the Government Hebrew, means, "What in hell is he up to?"
So, do you play chess?
I'm honestly not much of a chess player. Oh, I know the rules, and I've studied it, but I've never gotten particularly good at it.
Still, in hopes of getting better, I've studied it a fair bit, including books on chess openings.
Trump's proposal reminded me of an unusual opening move for chess called the Réti Opening, named after the Hungarian Grandmaster Réti Richárd. It's fairly simple: you just make your first move by moving the King's Knight to King's Bishop 3. (In the modern newfangled algebraic notion, that would be Nf3.)
This is called a hypermodern opening, which means it has to be cool, right? More to the point, it's unusual and has a number of advantages: it immediately puts White in a strong position to control the center of the board; it's flexible — White has a lot of possible next moves, and it's a little confounding to a conventional player. If you're playing someone who has memorized the usual chess openings, they're much less likely to know responses to Réti and will be thrown back on their own resources.
But Réti has some disadvantages. In particular, if White doesn't have a plan for what to do next, it can lead to complex and unanticipated situations in the middle of the game.
Trump's Gaza plan reminded me of the Réti opening. It's unconventional and unexpected — the other players are thrown off their normal responses. It may get complicated as the game plays out.
On the other hand, it forces the other players into a quandary. They have to think outside the box because suddenly, the responses of the last 80 years aren't adequate. And it means that Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, in particular, have new problems. This is based on evacuating the remaining inhabitants of Gaza — and now they need to explain why the Gazans must remain in a war zone.
Netanyahu made exactly this point, saying that it was really unprecedented to forbid people from leaving a war zone. "What's wrong with that?" he asked.
Most of all, it makes it into an Arab question. Trump has proposed something new. How will they respond? And if they respond by insisting on the same old "two-state solution" that has been at the center of a century-long war, how will Trump respond? He's already out of the box — why expect him to go back?
A therapist friend of mine once told me that the hardest thing for most people stuck in an unwinnable situation is to change.
Will the Arab states change?
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