A Different Take on Mideast Peace

When Trump announced he and son-in-law Jared Kushner had a plan for peace in the Middle East, it was no surprise Benjamin Netanyahu was all in favor of it and that the Palestinians rejected it out of hand.  They were looking at the plan from a conventional geopolitical point of view and, of course, their national self-interests were of paramount importance. 

On February 5, 2020, Thomas Friedman wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times (Mother Nature Scoffs at Trump’s Mideast Peace Plan) that suggests Trump and the nations in the region are overlooking some very big, basic environmental issues that have to be addressed.  Those issues include chronic drought that have almost turned the Sea of Galilee into the Dead Sea; the almost total loss of the River Jordan; insufficient sewage treatment facilities that result in 100 million liters of raw sewage flowing from Gaza everyday into the Mediterranean; the Gaza sewage clogging the filters of Israel’s desalination plant; curtailment of municipal water services in Amman from 2 days a week to 8 hours a week; collapse of local aquifers; widespread dumping of raw sewage into unlined pits that contaminates ground water; etc.  Friedman suggests that it will require the cooperation of all the nations in that region to achieve energy and water security.

Could it be possible that cooperation out of necessity on issues like this could lead to peace?