Exactly forty-five years after Egypt launched the 1973 War, Hamas leader Yahia Sinwar opened a Sadat-like direct conversation with the Israeli public that painted a dire picture of the conditions in the Gaza Strip and presented Israel with a stark choice.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the Arab world today is how relatively uncontroversial Israel has become. During 11 days of travel through Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, we heard the Israeli-Palestinian conflict mentioned only once. This is a dramatic shift from decades during which hostility to Israel served as perhaps the most important unifier of often fractious Arab governments.

A series of circumstances currently present Israelis and Palestinians with a unique opportunity to resolve their historic conflict. The first of these was the election of President Donald Trump, who seems genuinely motivated by the challenge of succeeding where all his predecessors have failed: to bring peace to Israel-Palestine. Indeed, the president’s many naysayers, veterans of all previous failed efforts to resolve the conflict, seem to only increase Trump’s motivation to attempt the impossible. “We’re working very hard on it,” he recently said in New York, “Historically, people say it can’t happen. I say it can happen.”

"The Israelis, who anticipated dealing with the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, a senior member of the royal family, now found themselves probed by an unknown New York City lawyer. Even more shocking was the discovery that Greenblatt is highly intelligent, open-minded, a listener who does not claim to know everything, a person who seems to believe that there are two sides to every story (even more alarming) and who has, at the very least, some sensitivity and empathy toward the plights and fears of both sides."

"President Trump does not do 'small stuff'—he is not energized by sophisticated and detailed suggestions for incremental steps. Instead, it is the prospect of concluding a 'Big Deal' against all odds that seems to excite the president and ignite his imagination."

President Trump might consider the importance of involving Secretary of Defense James Mattis if the history of the failed efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to be defied.

Addressing the delegates to the AIPAC National Conference on March 21, 2016, then candidate for president Donald Trump asserted that President Barack Obama “may be the worst thing to ever happen to Israel, believe me, believe me. And you know it and you know it better than anybody." This view is still shared by many right-wing Israelis as well as by many members of the American Jewish community. Yet nothing can be farther than the truth.

He was one of the two most influential people in Israel’s short modern history.

The recent attacks in Paris have spurred a flood of demands to escalate the fight against ISIS. Now that the initial shock is over, it is time to explore in greater detail what such efforts should look like if their results are not to prove worse than the threat that ISIS currently poses. The following is an attempt to sketch a number of questions that should be pondered before a decision to further escalate the war is taken.

The other night we had a dream. We dreamed that the negotiations with Iran had produced a comprehensive agreement that not only credibly contained the country’s pursuit of nuclear weapons forever but also effectively checked its regional ambitions.