As an observant Jew, US President Donald Trump’s envoy, Jason Greenblatt, undoubtedly knows the term “Days of Awe” used in Jewish tradition to describe the 10 days between the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashana and the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Greenblatt will likely remember his visit to Israel with his family Sept. 27 for these holidays as especially awful. The Sept. 26 terror attack in the Israeli border settlement of Har Adar, in which three Israelis were killed, along with the Sept. 27 celebrations marking half a century of Israeli occupation of the West Bank, mark awful times for all peace lovers. Few — if any Israelis or Palestinians — seriously believe the promise made Sept. 20 by Trump to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in New York that he is about to unveil a deal that provides the Palestinians with an independent state.

If Greenblatt does not know the Talmudic phrase "If you have seized a lot, you have not seized" (Yoma, Chapter 8), which loosely translated means “Biting off more than you can chew," he would do well to talk to Dennis Ross, who spent much of his professional life in futile efforts to bring about an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ross led Middle East negotiations for both the Bush and Clinton administrations, and bears significant responsibility for bungling the peace overture offered by the Israeli-Palestinian 1993 Oslo Accord. As a service to Greenblatt and his team, following are words I heard from Ross at a Sept. 14 conference  p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Tahoma; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} span.s2 {text-decoration: underline ; font-kerning: none} in the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at the Negev Desert kibbutz of Ketura.

“My biggest mistake,” Ross told participants, “was in imposing the approach that said that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. For example, if the sides reached agreement on construction in certain settlement blocs in return for alternative land within Israel proper but negotiations were suspended due to a dispute over Palestinian refugees, then whatever was agreed concerning the settlements was null and void." Ross said, by the way, that such an understanding on land swaps was reached in a clandestine channel between the sides conducted in Sweden.

“Each time we tried to resolve core issues, we got nowhere,” Ross recounted. “The vacuum was quickly filled with the most negative elements. If you don’t peddle, you fall off the bike; when you don’t talk, terror talks.” In hindsight, he said, they should have agreed that each issue would be implemented once it was agreed by both sides, regardless of agreements on other issues. “That would have changed the reality on the ground and created positive momentum in the relationships between the sides,” he added.