President Trump announces another peace deal — this time between Israel and Morocco



President Donald Trump has announced another breakthrough peace deal between Israel and an Arab nation, making it the fourth time his administration has brokered such an agreement in the past four months.

What are the details?

Trump said Thursday that Israel and Morocco have agreed to normalize relations, which includes the immediate reopening of liaison offices in Tel Aviv and Rabat, the forthcoming opening of embassies, and the allowance of joint overflight rights for airlines, the Associated Press reported.

The White House noted that Morocco's King Mohammed VI promised to "resume diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel and expand economic and cultural cooperation to advance regional stability."

Reuters reported that Trump sealed the agreement in a phone call Thursday with the Moroccan king. As a part of the deal, Trump revised longstanding U.S. policy and recognized Morocco's sovereignty over the Western Sahara.

Trump celebrated the achievement on Twitter, calling the deal an "historic breakthrough."

Another HISTORIC breakthrough today! Our two GREAT friends Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have agreed to full di… https://t.co/LJcGF6u7uW
— Donald J. Trump (@Donald J. Trump)1607616606.0

In a pair of separate tweets, Trump noted that Morocco had been the first country to recognize the United States' sovereignty, just one year after it declared independence in 1776.

"It is thus fitting we recognize their sovereignty over the Western Sahara," he said.

For decades, Morocco has been involved in a territorial dispute in the Western Sahara with the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, which Reuters describes as "a breakaway movement that seeks to establish an independent state in the territory."

"The president reaffirmed his support for Morocco's serious, credible, and realistic autonomy proposal as the only basis for a just and lasting solution to the dispute over the Western Sahara territory and as such the president recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the entire Western Sahara territory," the White House said.

Before Israel was established in 1948, Morocco was home to a large Jewish population, many of whose ancestors migrated to North Africa from Spain and Portugal during the Spanish Inquisition. Today, hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews trace their lineage to Morocco, the Associated Press reported.

What else?

The agreement comes on the heels of three other separate peace deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan.

More agreements could be coming, as well. During a September meeting with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump signaled that "five or six" more countries were eager to end hostilities with the Jewish nation.

"We'll have at least five or six countries coming along very quickly and we're already talking to them," Trump said.

"They want to see peace," he added. "They've been fighting for a long time. They're tired. They're warring countries but they're tired, they're tired of fighting. So you're going to be seeing further announcements."

Also in September, Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to establish peace deals in the Middle East by a member of Norway's Parliament.

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Video flashback: Obama alum John Kerry proved dead wrong by President Trump's Israel peace deals



Former Secretary of State John Kerry once declared, "There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world."

That emphatic statement — which the former Obama administration official and now Joe Biden surrogate called a "hard reality" at the time — appears to have been dead wrong.

The proof: Over the course of about a month, President Trump brokered two separate peace deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Israel and Bahrain. On Tuesday, the president even added that "five or six" more Arab countries were ready to follow suit.

Kerry's backward comments came in 2016 while he was speaking at the Brookings Institution's annual Saban Forum.

In a resurfaced clip of the comments, first shared by Institute for Policy & Strategy senior fellow Udi Evental, Kerry can be heard amazingly prophesying the exact opposite of what would come to pass four years later.

John Kerry with a 2016 Middle East take that aged like milk in a sauna. https://t.co/2Vae6yDJFt
— Noam Blum (@Noam Blum)1600299754.0

"There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world. I want to make that very clear to all of you," Kerry said. "I've heard several prominent politicians in Israel sometimes saying, 'Well, the Arab world's in a different place now. We just have to reach out to them and we can work some things with the Arab world, and we'll deal with the Palestinians.' No, no, no, and no."

"I can tell you that, reaffirmed even in the last week, as I have talked to leaders of the Arab community. There will be no advance and separate peace with the Arab world without the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace," he continued. "Everybody needs to understand that. That is a hard reality."

Kerry, who also once wrongly predicted that Trump's decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem would be an unmitigated disaster, was widely panned for the cold take.

"John Kerry with a 2016 Middle East take that aged like milk in a sauna," Tablet Magazine associate editor Noam Blum said in the tweet above.

"Has anyone been more abjectly wrong about something?" National Review contributor Pradheep Shanker asked.

Hudson Institute senior fellow Rebeccah Heinrich wrote: "Exactly backwards. Remarkable."

Ed Morrissey, covering the news at Hot Air, wrote:

It's tough to choose what is the most embarrassing quality of this Kerry declaration from four years ago on the impossibility of what Trump has achieved. Is it his dead certainty of his own position? The way Kerry uses his cheaters to look down on the audience in his faux-professorial manner? The way he condescendingly dismisses politicians in Israel who actually turned out to be right, and to whom Kerry should have listened? It's an abundance of riches, my friends, an abundance of riches in 44 seconds.

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President Trump says '5 or 6' more countries are ready to make peace with Israel



President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that "five or six" more countries — in addition to Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates — are ready to make peace with Israel.

The comments followed historic agreements brokered by the president that normalized relations between the lone Jewish state in the Middle East and two of its Arab neighbors.

While speaking with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House ahead of the signing ceremony for the Abraham Accords, Trump said, "We're very far down the road with about five additional countries ... frankly, I think we could have had them here today.

"We'll have at least five or six countries coming along very quickly and we're already talking to them," Trump continued.

"They want to see peace," he said. "They've been fighting for a long time. They're tired. They're warring countries but they're tired, they're tired of fighting. So you're going to be seeing further announcements."

WATCH: Trump meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu youtu.be

"You're going to see a lot of great activity. There's going to be peace in the Middle East," Trump said later in the meeting.

The president noted that only two Arab nations, Egypt and Jordan, had made peace with Israel over the past 72 years. But now that number has doubled in the span of one month.

Trump has been lauded by many for his role in brokering the peace agreements between Israel and its Middle East neighbors. He was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his actions to secure the deal between Israel and the UAE.

If it is true that several other nations are prepared to follow suit with the UAE and Bahrain, it would become increasingly difficult for critics of the president to deny his peace-making success, though they almost certainly will try.

As for Netanyahu, he seemed elated with the developments.

"Israel doesn't feel isolated at all," he said, responding to a question from reporters. "It's enjoying the greatest diplomatic triumph of its history.

"I think the people who feel isolated," Netanyahu said, "are the tyrants of Tehran."

Juan Williams: Israel peace deals are ‘accelerating’ the ‘chance of war’ in the Middle East



Fox News contributor Juan Williams made the case Tuesday that recent peace deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain brokered by President Donald Trump are actually "accelerating" the "chance of war" in the Middle East.

President Trump has been lauded by many for his role in brokering the deals, which officially normalized relations between Israel and the two Middle Eastern countries. The president was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for securing the deal between Israel and the UAE.

But Williams, a Trump critic, interpreted the news of peace much differently.

Williams presented his argument on Fox News' "The Five" while the panelists were discussing recent remarks made by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), in which she called the deals a "distraction."

"It is [a distraction]," Williams said. "The real trouble here is between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and that situation has not been helped. What we're doing here in this situation is we have the Bahrainians and the United Arab Emirates, they already had diplomatic, security and trade ties with Israel ... and it opens the door to some possibilities."

"The real action here is the United States giving arms, giving serious arms to UAE potentially to go after the Iranians," he argued. "And so what we're doing is stirring up a proxy war, and that doesn't diminish the chance of war or disruption in the Middle East — it accelerates it."

You can watch his comments in the video below starting at the 5:10 mark:

'The Five' blast Pelosi for calling Middle East peace deal a 'distraction' youtu.be

"So I think we have to just look honestly at this," he continued. "We have to note that it's taking place in the midst of an intense American election and that what's going on at the White House. I don't think anybody is fooled by it. There certainly is reason for hope, but let's not fool ourselves."

It is true that some conflict has already arisen as a result of the peace deals. On Tuesday, as the deal was being signed at the White House, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip launched a rocket attack on Israel, injuring two people.

But it is particularly difficult to make the case that peace agreements should be to blame for violence. Violent offenders should be blamed for violence, which, in this case, would be the Palestinian militants.

After Williams finished, fellow Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich, chided his comments, saying, "Well you would hope the normalization of Arab countries against the Israeli state that they wanted to annihilate previously would be a good thing, but we'll move on."

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Trump also signaled that brokering more peace deals in the Middle East is a priority for him, claiming that Saudi Arabia might be next.

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The peace deals will allow Israel, Bahrain, and the UAE to engage in trade, security, and tourism. Muslims will also be permitted to visit Islamic holy sites in Israel.