THE NETANYAHU DILEMMA

SEATED IN THE OVAL OFFICE EARLIER this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu displayed a token that President Donald Trump told him was “a key to our country and to our hearts.” A year from now, could Netanyahu receive the most prestigious gift of all: a Nobel Peace Prize? Israel’s longest-serving leader was in Washington D.C. to sign two historic agreements that, with the Trump administration’s support, he has forged in the past weeks with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. By the time the Nobel Committee makes its choices next fall, it’s possible that Israel may have achieved a deal with Saudi Arabia as well.

The inconceivable may become the almost-inevitable. Such an achievement surely warrants the Prize—until you remember that Nethanyahu is widely loathed, and in critics’ eyes leads the controversial government of a country that remains a target of global opprobrium for colonialism, military occupation and alleged human-rights abuses. And that the agreements that Netanyahu has wrangled with Arab states of the Persian Gulf fail to resolve, or even address, the situation of Palestinians—a cause with passionate supporters in Europe, on U.S. college campuses and with many U.S. liberals.

A YEAR FROM NOW, NETANYAHU MAY HAVE LARGELY ENDED, OR SOLVED, THE HERETOFORE ENDLESS, INSOLUBLE PROBLEM OF THE MIDEAST.