Hussein Ibish, Columnist

How Trump Could Restart Middle East Peace Talks

North Korea isn't his only diplomatic longshot.

Facts on the ground.

Photographer: Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images

President Donald Trump's plan for face-to-face nuclear weapons talks with North Korea’s dictator isn’t his only bid for a historic diplomatic breakthrough. His administration has also been signaling recently that it’s about to unveil a plan to revive peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

It’s certainly a worthy goal. But don’t get your hopes up. The barriers to success are so high, and the chance that Trump would be willing to surmount them so low, that it’s probably better not to even try. Decades of bitter history have demonstrated that a failed Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative is almost always worse than nothing at all.