Since the unveiling of the Trump administration’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan last month and the lukewarm response it has received in the region, Israeli reports suggest Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is trying to broker a summit in Cairo with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman before the March 2 Israeli elections. Never mind that the Palestinians and Jordanians would not be participating, or that both have already rejected the Trump plan. Such high-profile meetings, which in any case appear unlikely, could serve as a message that Israel is accepted in the region, and that those opposing the Trump plan are simply not adjusting to new realities.

The US administration often refers to the need for new thinking on this conflict and views the willingness of Gulf Arab states to engage Israel because of common concerns over Iran as a prime example of new regional realities. But in reality the plan recycles old ideas for new purposes, and its logic may be fundamentally flawed if the goal is peace.

The Trump plan trumpets integrating Israel into the region, promising economic windfalls with growth and prosperity for all. Yet such visions for a "new Middle East" are not new. Israel’s Shimon Peres, as foreign minister and then prime minister, promoted such ideas in the 1990s. The Madrid peace process launched by the George H.W. Bush administration created a multilateral peace process to foster cooperation between Israel and its Arab neighbors. In those days, the idea of creating a regional peace process — addressing common challenges such as water, the environment, economic development and the arms race — was to incentivize Israeli compromise by demonstrating the potential benefits from its acceptance in the region. The logic was obvious: If Israel would be accepted as a "normal" player in the region, it would gain the confidence to make the hard calls for peace with the Palestinians.

In contrast, Trump’s plan to encourage Arab engagement with Israel, actively promoted by Netanyahu and Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, has little to do with peace. The effort to reach out to the Arab Gulf States has much more to do with consolidating a pro-US alliance between Israel and what Israelis like to call their "moderate Sunni neighbors" to confront Iran. The plan explicitly acknowledges this, arguing that the “threats posed by Iran’s radical regime has led to a new reality where the State of Israel and its Arab neighbors now share increasingly similar perceptions of the threats to their security.” Building on these shared threat perceptions, the plan suggests that “integrating Israel into the region will allow it to assist across a wide range of economic challenges as well as counter the threats of Iran.”