A senior United States official told Fox News this week that the final draft of President Donald Trump’s “Middle East Peace Plan” has been completed.
Trump’s “Deal of the Century” has been crafted for over a year by the president’s special envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt, his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.
According to the report, the plan is finished and ready to be presented.
“The plan is done… [Trump] is happy with the parameters of the deal,” the senior White House official claimed, adding that the administration is not likely to publish the plan before Israel’s April elections.
Jason Greenblatt, however, denied the reports on Twitter, claiming that the Trump plan is “not there yet.”
According to a Channel 13 News report last month, the Trump administration’s Middle East plan will call for the partition of the Holy Land into two separate states and divide Jerusalem into three – Israeli, Palestinian and international zones.
The plan will aim to establish a Fatah-run Palestinian state on nearly 90% of the West Bank, the destruction of many small Jewish communities and an Israeli annexation of the largest Israeli towns and cities in the territories.
The plan would reportedly not call to demolish sizable Jewish communities deeper in the West Bank, but no further building would be permitted, in order to “dry them out.”
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein (Likud) responded to news of the Trump plan at the B’Sheva Jerusalem Conference on Tuesday, saying that Israel should consider applying full sovereignty over the West Bank.
Until now, many Jewish nationalists have unfortunately been quick to defend Trump and deny rumors that he plans to divide the Land of Israel.
But reports surrounding the Trump plan should have been regarded as test balloons from the administration to gauge reactions from Jewish communities both in Israel and the US.
The best strategy for resisting efforts to partition the country into two states would be for Jews to loudly protest the plan and make clear their opposition before the plan is officially announced. Reaction to the reports – whether accurate or not – could help determine how far Trump, Greenblatt, Kushner and Friedman feels they can push Israel’s government.
Rather than rushing to defend the American president and dismiss reports of his regional agenda as false, those troubled by the notion of the Trump administration forcing partition on Israel should be expressing their outrage as aggressively as possible.
The lack of such outrage could only serve to convinced Trump and his team that a plan based on America’s traditional two-state formula and the division of Jerusalem could somehow be acceptable to the Jewish people.
