All the rhetorical groundwork the president has now laid — on Iran, Israel-Palestine, the Muslim world — will come to nothing if high principle is not matched by street-smart cunning and maneuver.
Trump had given Kushner the title "Middle East peace envoy", but more than a year after Trump bombastically promised the "greatest ever" peace deal to end the Israel-Palestine conflict, the world still awaits the magic moment.
For it served as a handrail for decisions about what to do with the displaced and ejected, and in all but one still vexed and inflamed part of the world – Israel-Palestine – and one recent locus of old bitterness – the former Yugoslavia – it has worked well enough for questions about borders, reparations and the right of return, not to have shed too much blood.
From Israel-Palestine and Iran to Afghanistan, China, Russia, world trade, climate change – pretty much everything – the presidency is very much a work in progress.
While Amman's concrete blocks might lack the glamour (and pollution) of Cairo, it is geographically closer to the real "heart of the Arab world", the Israel-Palestine conflict.
When Bin Laden lists the various locations around the world - Chechnya, Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, the Philippines - where Muslims have been the victims of violence that has been largely sanctioned or ignored by the international community, he makes a case that, as Anonymous says, is at the very least plausible.
This imagery genuinely informs our involvement on behalf of the oppressed everywhere in the world, and Israel-Palestine is no exception.
Fortunately, the resolution of other seemingly intractable conflicts elsewhere in the world offer Israel-Palestine important lessons, particularly in light of the changes currently taking place in the region.
The Palestine-Israel conflict is central to world peace, but Obama has taken such an outspoken pro-Israel stance that significant change on this issue is extremely unlikely.
"In the wake of the terrible violence unfolding in Israel-Palestine, we, citizens from around the world, are deeply concerned about your companies' continued investment in companies and projects that finance illegal settlements and the oppressive occupation of the Palestinian people," the mission statement on the petition reads.
