Mahmoud Abbas is reportedly interested in resuming multilateral negotiations toward a two-state solution. This suggests that Trump’s “Gaza Riviera” proposal isn’t the death knell for Palestinian statehood that critics and commentators have portrayed it as.

In fact, Gaza itself has long been a key obstacle to a final-status agreement. It has become clear that Gaza cannot be simply be tacked on to a Palestinian state as if it were a satellite territory. Nor can negotiators continue to apply the status quo approach to Gaza: first strike a two-state deal, then try to get Gaza to comply with it. Gaza has to be “solved” before the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be solved. The value in Trump’s proposal is not its plausibility but merely the way it has forced regional leaders to stop putting the cart before the horse.

On that note, King Abdullah of Jordan was in Washington today, on the heels of Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit last week. The Wall Street Journal reports:

“With Jordan’s King Abdullah II next to him Tuesday in the Oval Office, Trump vowed once again to ‘take’ Gaza, prompting Abdullah to shift uncomfortably in his chair and to emphasize that Jordan, Egypt and other Arab governments would counter with their own plan for postwar Gaza later this month…

“As he sought to mollify Trump, the Jordanian monarch said that his country would accept 2,000 sick children from Gaza, an announcement that Trump applauded.”

What will Egypt come up with to counter Trump’s demand that Arab countries take in Gazan refugees? According to the Journal, absolutely nothing: “While Egypt hasn’t publicly spelled out the terms of a potential plan, it is expected to call for keeping the population in place without outlining arrangements to secure and administer the enclave.”

Egypt’s commitment to playing no constructive role whatsoever in the Gaza conflict is truly awe-inspiring.

The Palestinian Authority also sees Trump’s Gaza gambit as an opening bid. Abbas reportedly wants to base a new round of negotiations on the peace plan that Trump proposed in 2020.

It’s worth taking a brief walk down memory lane here. In the last year of his first term, Trump proposed a demilitarized Palestinian state without requiring Israel to disband its settlements in the West Bank. Instead, land swaps inside Israel would make up for the lost territory. The plan included massive investment in the Palestinian economy and “transportation links” connecting Gaza to the West Bank.

It was the first time an offer to the Palestinians was worse than previous offers. Abbas’s decision to walk away from a 2008 offer from Israel that gave the Palestinians everything they wanted came at a cost. Until Trump came into office, the Palestinian Authority had been rewarded for turning down statehood in 2000 and 2008. Now, Abbas was horrified by both the plan and the concept of his actions having consequences. “We say a thousand times over: no, no, no,” was his response.

It is now five years later and Abbas seems to realize that if he doesn’t do something soon, the next Trump statehood offer is going to make the 2020 plan look like—well, look like the generous 2008 plan he walked away from. So he wants to go back in time.

It is hard to overstate just how much Trump has shaken up the Mideast status quo. The old process went something like this: The U.S. and Saudi Arabia and Egypt would ask the Palestinians’ permission to do something that shouldn’t have required the Palestinians’ permission. The Palestinians would say no, and so no one would do anything.

Trump had no patience for it. He moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem because it was American property on Israeli territory and therefore had nothing to do with the Palestinians.

In the past, no regional deals could move forward unless the Palestinians were at the center of negotiations. But this time, when the Palestinians told Trump they weren’t interested, he moved on. The Abraham Accords with Israel, Bahrain, and the UAE were signed eight months after Abbas declared his “thousand” no’s.

Egypt and Jordan ought to think about how this history might be a precedent for their current stalemate with the president. Mahmoud Abbas rejected deals without offering a counter-proposal, and he paid dearly for it.

Trump wants the Arab countries in the Middle East to play a constructive role in figuring out what to do with Gaza. Egypt is the recipient of billions in U.S. aid and a poor relationship with high-ranking Democrats in Congress, especially the Senate. Jordan is unlikely to elicit much sympathy from Trump. These countries may not like Trump’s opening bid here, but as Mahmoud Abbas can tell them, the alternative is to wake up one day five years later wishing you’d at least engaged with it.