The White House will come under unprecedented siege in the coming weeks, spearheaded by aircraft carrier “Ron Dermer” (Israel’s ambassador in Washington) and including the “David Friedman” (US ambassador in Jerusalem) task force along with many other units. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will throw everything he has into this fray: Sympathetic members of Congress, evangelical lobbyists, associates, rabbis, anyone who knows how to exert pressure on President Donald Trump. All will be mobilized for the campaign with the express goal of eliciting a green light from the president for some sort of territorial annexation in the West Bank prior to Israel’s March 2 elections.
The defensive ring around the White House and the commander-in-chief will be no less impressive, led by his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, with the flanks covered by former Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt, State Department officials and others. This group invested significant energy over the past two years in mobilizing the support of pragmatic Arab states for Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian “deal of the century,” despite its unprecendented pro-Israel bent. Kushner and Greenblatt know that a lightning settlement annexation move will sound the death knell for Trump’s plan and lead most of the Arab world to disavow it. They will not allow this to happen, but they are facing the most determined, focused, wily and desperate rival ever: Benjamin Netanyahu who is in the throes of the battle of his life.
