President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” will probably not produce peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The plan unfreezes the West Bank real estate on which Israel has been building settlements for decades, allowing it to annex some 30% of West Bank territory, and perpetuates the reality of two peoples crowded together on a single piece of land, one of them the ruler, the other the ruled.
There is, however, another way of looking at the Jan. 28 unveiling of Trump’s plan: The Israeli political right under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a resounding “yes” to an American plan that includes the eventual establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, the division of Jerusalem and territorial exchange. Trump’s blueprint is almost identical to the one Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin charted out as the basis for negotiations with the Palestinians on the Oslo Accords (1993).