we will not put forth a plan or endorse a plan that doesn’t meet all of Israel’s security issues because they are of extreme importance to us – Jason Greenblatt, Assistant to the President & special representative for international negotiations, JNS, September 12, 2018.
…To defend itself Israel must retain control over the Jordan valley…[A]ny future arrangement must include Israeli control of the mountain ridge and a demilitarized Palestinian state…[T]o defend itself Israel must control the airspace over the West Bank - Israel's Critical Security Needs for a Viable Peace, The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, May 25, 2010.
…Arab officials say, Mr. Kushner is pushing the idea of a confederation between Jordan and the Palestinian rump of the West Bank. Far from new thinking, this recycles one of the oldest mantras of Israeli irredentism: that the Palestinians already have a state — Jordan. - David Gardner, “Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ offers nothing good to Palestinians”, Financial Times, September 5, 2018.
In recent weeks, there has been a spate of media speculation that the White House is soon to release details of the Trump administration’s ultimate peace deal to end the century-long conflict between Jew and Arab over control of the Holy Land.
Although almost no details have been revealed by official sources, rumors abound as to some of its more important components—and others have been inferred on the basis of some already implemented elements of Trump’s Mid-East policy.
Some transformative measures
Since the start of his presidency, Donald Trump has undertaken some bold, far reaching measures that have, in some significant ways, potentially transformed the discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian impasse. These have all been unequivocally favorable to Israel and considerably undermine long-held Palestinians positions.
Thus, Trump has largely preempted the question of the status of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital—albeit not its precise geographical extent. Likewise, he exposed the enduring and egregious anomaly of the Palestinian “refugee” ruse, terminating all US funding to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency(, the UN body charged with dealing with the Palestinian-Arab refugees and their multi-generational descendants. This burgeoning population has been held in political limbo for decades as stateless refugees until such day as they can exercise their illusionary “Right of Return” and reoccupy their now non-existent homes inside Israel, abandoned in 1948 and 1967.
As a direct derivative of the decision to defund UNRWA and to dispute the refugee status of millions of Arabs of Palestinian descent—resident in Arab countries for decades—there has been a flurry of reports suggesting another ground-breaking US initiative. According to these reports, the Trump administration is seriously considering engaging Arab countries over the permanent resettlement of the Palestinian-Arabs living as “refugees” within their borders, and their absorption as citizens of their host nations.
If implemented, such an initiative—which this writer has been promoting for almost a decade-and-a-half—would clearly take the “Right of Return” off the table and remove one of the most intractable—arguably the most intractable—issue from the agenda.
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