At a press conference Sept. 26 on the margins of the meeting of the UN General Assembly, President Donald Trump was asked a question that he may not have been prepared for. His response included the claim that in two, three or maybe four months, he would present his administration’s plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It was the first time he ever referred to his peace plan in terms of time. On the other hand, the world has long gotten used to hearing the leader of the free world say things that he doesn’t usually mean, so no one will be standing there with a stopwatch, counting the days until Jan. 26, which would mark exactly four months since his off-the-cuff remark. At the same time, it is also certainly possible that this statement was more serious than his other remarks, largely because of three changes that occurred since this past September.
The first took place in Israel. Conventional wisdom just two months ago was that once the Knesset’s summer recess ended, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would bring a proposal before the Knesset to hold early elections in the spring of 2019, just a few months before they are officially scheduled. Pundits believed that it would be in his interest to hold early elections before his coalition falls apart, and that he would take advantage of one contentious issue or another (such as the conscription of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, which has been on the government’s agenda for over 70 years) to announce that he prefers to hold early elections than to surrender to the ultra-Orthodox. This would be a particularly easy issue for him since the vast majority of Israelis are uncomfortable with the idea that young ultra-Orthodox men are exempted from three years of military service, while Israelis who are not ultra-Orthodox are required to serve.
