A clause somewhat buried in President Donald Trump’s deal of the century for Israeli-Palestinian peace, “lifted” from an obscure peace plan presented 15 years ago by Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Liberman, has morphed into a time bomb or land mine waiting patiently for someone to step on it. Senior officials in the opposition Blue and White party tell Al-Monitor that this clause was deliberately inserted into the plan to drive a wedge within the center-left political camp, sabotage a possible political alliance between Blue and White and the Arab Joint List, and perhaps confront political hawk Liberman, the originator of the idea, with a dilemma.

Section four of the “Peace to Prosperity” plan, titled “Borders,” stipulates that “Land swaps provided by the State of Israel could include both populated and unpopulated areas.” It includes a list of Arab Israeli communities in Wadi Ara and the so-called “triangle” region, areas abutting the West Bank and inhabited by hundreds of thousands of Israel’s Arab citizens, as potential lands for a swap between Israel and a future Palestinian state. Trump’s plan further states that these areas were supposed to be handed over to the Kingdom of Jordan under terms of the 1949 Armistice Agreement following Israel’s War of Independence. They ended up under Israeli control due to security considerations that, according to the Trump blueprint, are no longer relevant. The presidential “vision contemplates the possibility, subject to agreement of the parties that the borders of Israel will be redrawn such that the Triangle Communities become part of the State of Palestine,” adding that “these communities … largely self-identify as Palestinian.”

Liberman holds the copyright for the populated land swap idea, which, as previously mentioned, he came up with in November 2004. The idea, laid out in a peace plan he presented, called for swapping territory with the Palestinians so that Israel would annex the major settlement blocs in the West Bank, and in exchange, the Palestinian state would get Israeli lands largely inhabited by Israeli Arab citizens who supposedly identify themselves as “Palestinians.” The point was also to reduce the proportion of the Palestinian minority in Israel’s population and remove most Israeli Jewish settlers from the future Palestinian state. Liberman never received any international credit for this combustible idea. On the contrary, he faced sweeping opposition wherever he turned. Still, the idea became the worst nightmare of Israel’s Arab citizens, who currently constitute 21% of the population and feel the Jewish State is plotting to somehow get rid of them, whether by transferring them from their homes (as per the ideology of the late minister Rehavam Ze’evi) or exchanging lands densely populated by Israeli Arab citizens.

A Blue and White source told Al-Monitor this week on condition of anonymity that “US Ambassador David Friedman was the one who planted this explosive section in the deal of the century at Benjamin Netanyahu’s bidding.” According to this source, the idea was simple: Drive a wedge between Blue and White leader Benny Gantz and the Arab Joint List. It worked. Gantz was caught in a bind. On the one hand, he had expressed support for the Trump plan in order not to be sidelined and risk losing moderate right-wing voters. On the other hand, in doing so he risked the secret, fragile and problematic alliance he has forged with the Joint List, the predominantly Arab unified list that represents most Israeli Arab voters and 10 of whose 13 Knesset members recommended to President Reuven Rivlin after the September 2019 elections that he task Gantz with forming Israel’s next government.