JERUSALEM — The contrast is striking. President Trump, after threatening to obliterate North Korea, develops a “friendship” with Kim Jong Un, exchanges warm personal letters and makes history by stepping inside North Korea.

Meanwhile, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas refuses even to talk with the Trump administration and publicly curses the president, Jared Kushner and American Ambassador David Friedman.

Not surprisingly, the difference in consequences is also striking. While the United States and North Korea are moving closer to normalization and a possible deal on nuclear arms, the US is cutting aid to the Palestinians and taking major steps to strengthen Israel’s hand. The latest example is Trump’s decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights just months after he moved our embassy to Jerusalem.

The two situations are not exactly comparable but, unlike the shrewd North Korean dictator, Abbas is bungling any chance to gain advantages for the Palestinians and their own hoped-for sovereignty. In poker terms, he is playing a bad hand badly.

Interviews and conversations I had during nearly two weeks traveling in Israel and Jordan illustrate that the so-called peace process isn’t just stalled. It is dead and buried.

By refusing to talk to America and negotiate with Israel, Abbas has turned back the clock on any possibility for Palestinian statehood. Twenty years after the terrorist Yasser Arafat rejected a US-brokered offer at Camp David that would have created a fully separate nation, no such offer is even remotely being considered.

And so while Israel continues to expand its international alliances and pour concrete in disputed lands, Palestinians are reduced to throwing stones in protest. But their threats of greater violence, an all-purpose fallback for 75 years, have lost their power as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuse to be intimidated.

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For ordinary Palestinians, this is a tragedy that doesn’t end. Daily life, from grinding poverty to burdensome Israeli checkpoints, won’t change without leaders who achieve the possible instead of holding out for the impossible.

Yet Abbas, who once appeared ready to make the deal that Arafat wouldn’t, is now burned out and isolated. Efforts to mediate have included pressure on him simply to pick up the phone and call Trump in the hopes the relationship could be repaired. But Abbas has foolishly refused to do even that, despite the fact that Trump is eager to achieve a breakthrough and said he is willing to extract major concessions from Israel in a final settlement.

Abbas’ abdication of responsibility is riling some Arabs who are critics of Trump’s moves to bolster Israel. “I don’t like what Trump is doing, it’s a mistake,” one prominent Jordanian told me, “but we’re all sick to death of the Palestinians’ conduct.”

Still, the American economic plan, made public last week, is not gaining much traction as of now. Even those who recognize the importance of boosting the Palestinian economy argue that broad support for the plan will come only when there is also an American commitment to forging a viable proposal on the hot-button political issues.

“The financial plan could be terrific,” Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told me. “But even if it fails, the message must be that America is still trying to find political solutions. The worst thing would be a vacuum where people lose hope and radicals fill the void.”

He’s obviously right, but the hurdles to getting there are enormous. For one thing, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are more enemies than comrades, and neither side is a democracy.

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And while Israeli politics are muddled in their own way, with a new election set for September, the Palestinian issue is not a major topic, a reflection that most Israelis don’t see a two-state solution within reach. Past bouts of Palestinian terrorism, now thwarted by Israel’s security wall, and the growing threats from Iran and its proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, neutered the appeal of the land-for-peace formula.

And so Israel has moved on to alliances with other Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, and other issues. One example is the remarkable advance of the massive City of David archeological project.

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The tour I took with my family was inspirational and mind-boggling as we walked deep underground on the Pilgrims’ Road, built by King Herod more than 2,000 years ago. Jewish visitors to Jerusalem for Passover and other holidays would purify themselves in the Siloam Pool, which has also been discovered, and walk more than 600 yards uphill to the Temple Mount.

According to the Gospel of John, Jesus healed a blind man at the Siloam pool. And as our tour guide noted, it is possible Jesus himself walked on the Pilgrims’ Road.

But, this being Israel, even such breathtaking findings create controversy. Much of the digging is taking place under Silwan, a mostly Palestinian village outside the walls of the Old City.

Some residents complain of cracks in their houses, but the most telling complaints involve charges that biblical narratives about Jerusalem are false and are used as a pretext to expand Israel’s footprint.

Sadly, the claim is predictable. Arafat himself argued in the failed Camp David talks that there never were Jewish temples on the Temple Mount and that the glorious Western Wall is a Muslim creation.

Arafat is long gone, but his ghost lives on in Abbas. Now in the 15th year of a four-year term, the Palestinian president spews anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that echo his Ph.D. thesis that the Holocaust was overstated and that Jews have no historic claims to Jerusalem.

To be sure, Israel is not blameless in the poisoned relations, but there are two main reasons why Palestinians don’t have a state: Arafat and Abbas. Everything else is detail.

A key fact is ‘left’ out

Against the backdrop of the left’s blame-America-first chorus, it was refreshing to see the comments of the president of El Salvador. Mayib Bukele blamed his country’s crime and lack of jobs for the drowning deaths of a migrant father and his toddler daughter in the Rio Grande.

“Did they flee the United States?” Bukele said on the BBC. “They fled El Salvador. They fled our country. It’s our fault.”

Take that, AOC.

‘Fox’ news

Headline: Arctic fox astounds scientists by trekking 2,737 miles in 76 days — from Norway to Canada.

Hold on — Arctic foxes have it easy. Scientists count their steps for them.

Biden is history

Joe Biden’s massive lead always struck me as bizarre. He fizzled twice as a presidential candidate, and 2020 will not be a year when Democrats look backwards for leadership.

Primary voters suddenly agree. The Quinnipiac poll showing the former veep in a free-fall, with just a 2-point lead over Sen. Kamala Harris, suggests the Biden moment is ending. His national support, at 22%, has been cut nearly in half from polls taken weeks ago.

My prediction: Biden never regains momentum and will not be the nominee.