Many supporters of the settlement movement rushed to cheer Tuesday’s unveiling of US President Donald Trump’s “Deal of the Century” as the most pro-Israel peace proposal in history.
There were some misgivings about the plan’s vision for a future Palestinian state, even if it was conditioned on a list of demands many of which the Palestinians will never accept.
But concerns over Trump’s endorsement of a “realistic two-state solution” were drowned out by jubilation over the green light the proposal gave to Israel to immediately annex the Jordan Valley and all settlements in the West Bank.
But merely 24 hours after the plan was unrolled at the White House, celebration turned into frustration.
“I’m very disappointed,” right-wing pundit Shimon Riklin, usually a die-hard supporter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told The Times of Israel on Wednesday, a day after he literally danced with joy on the streets of Washington. “I expect him to keep his promise, and to implement what he said he would — before the elections.”
Riklin’s heart was aching, he tweeted a short while later. “I really hoped that there would be an application of sovereignty,” he told his 100,000 Twitter followers.
The dispiritedness of Riklin and many others on the Israeli right appeared to be the product of either a tactical error by Netanyahu, or extremely poor coordination between the Israeli government and the White House’s peace team. Or both. READ MORE
