Many have long wished for a US plan to challenge Israel’s power and end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. They should watch what they wish for, because it just may come true. The findings of the US security team headed by Gen. John Allen, who has recently presented US ideas on how to address and solve Israel’s security concerns east of the 1967 line — the so-called Eastern Front — give the most recent example of the promise and the peril of US intervention.

There is still no public or authoritative detailing of the ideas Allen, and now Secretary of State John Kerry himself, have briefed to Israeli and Palestinian leaders. They reportedly include continuing US support for Palestinian security forces but no international monitoring or enforcement “boots on the ground,” an “invisible” but controlling Israeli presence at Palestine’s border crossings to Jordan, Israel’s long-term control of both the Jordan Valley and the Jordanian-Palestinian frontier including early warning stations and a continuing Israeli role in Palestine’s electromagnetic spectrum and sovereign airspace. We can only infer by the responses of Palestinians and Israelis — and here the news is entirely predictable, and not good.

The US effort can usefully be evaluated in terms of the substance of the ideas themselves and their place on the diplomatic playing field. Allen, it appears, has committed the United States to a security framework that leaves Israeli forces stationed in sovereign Palestinian territory for years if not decades beyond the secure and recognized borders Kerry hopes to establish. Or has he? The State Department insists that Allen’s effort was “never meant” to be a “proposal,” much less a conclusive US plan.

So what’s the problem? Everyone has ideas. The real question, the one that the Barack Obama administration has yet to answer, is to what extent Washington is committed to realizing the implementation of Allen’s far-from-perfect findings.