So long as Arabs and Muslims are taught by law, religion and social pressure that contact with Israelis is forbidden, the prospects for peace and coexistence will remain out of reach.

If [Lebanese President Joseph] Aoun... were to accept Trump's invitation to meet Netanyahu at the White House, he would effectively be violating Lebanon's own anti-normalization law, which prohibits all economic, professional, cultural, or social relations between Lebanese nationals and Israeli citizens and entities.

Countries such as Syria and Iraq have long maintained sweeping prohibitions on contact with Israelis, with penalties that have included life imprisonment and even death.

In Kuwait, similar laws – backed by parliamentary legislation and Islamic religious rulings – criminalize normalization with Israel and treat it as an act of treason.

Even Egypt, which signed a peace treaty with Israel more than four decades ago, has a law that authorizes the revocation of Egyptian citizenship if a national is "qualified as Zionist." The Egyptian government has used this law, passed in 1975, to revoke the citizenship of Egyptians who marry Israeli nationals.

Another prominent Islamic body, the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), has issued a fatwa (Islamic ruling) forbidding normalization with Israel. The ruling came in response to the normalization agreement signed between Israel and the United Arab Emirates more than five years ago. According to IUMS, normalization agreements are "not reconciliations or truces... rather, they are a concession of the holiest and most blessed of lands and a recognition of the legitimacy of the occupying enemy [Israel]."

The purpose of these laws and religious rulings is clear: to deter, punish, and stigmatize any form of coexistence with Israel. By criminalizing people-to-people engagement, Arab and Muslim leaders and institutions send a powerful message to their populations: peace with Israel is not merely undesirable, but a crime. This message is reinforced through media campaigns, professional blacklisting, and public accusations of "treason" against those who dare to engage with Israelis.

Where peace is illegal, peace is impossible.

Washington has diplomatic, economic, and political leverage with many of the countries that enforce these laws. The question is whether it is willing to use it.

Kushner recognized that a younger generation of Arab leadership was increasingly focused on investment, innovation, security cooperation, connectivity, logistics, and economic diversification. In such an environment, diplomacy could no longer be conducted solely through the vocabulary of grievance and procedural delay. It had to be tied to incentives, interests, and outcomes.

He was willing to challenge an entrenched orthodoxy... to produce a different outcome. And he delivered one.

Washington has always known how to absorb conventional failure more comfortably than unconventional success.

The American Dream — the dream of achievement — has always been renewed by generations of builders and innovators who widened the horizon of the possible.

[T]he deeper compass of the American idea... success measured not only by wealth, but by contribution.

In foreign policy, results matter. And so does the ability to recognize them when they appear.