For generations, U.S. presidents from both parties have pursued peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Every effort, however earnest, has failed. But that doesn’t mean that U.S. leadership should not be brought to bear to meet this noble goal.
President Trump deserves credit for prioritizing this issue early in his tenure. But he made his job much more difficult by wavering on the long-lasting, bipartisan policy of a separate state for Israel and Palestine.
Trump, at a joint news conference on Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said, “I’m looking at two states and one state. I like the one that both parties like. I can live with either one.”
Palestinians, however, most likely cannot, and will resist any direction that doesn’t result in their own state alongside Israel. That goal will take considerable compromise from both sides — the kind that neither Israeli nor Palestinian leaders have been willing to embrace.
Trump’s comments may only embolden some right-wing members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition who are pushing for a one-state solution that might mean that Israel could not remain both a Jewish and democratic state.
For their part, Palestinians are even further away from reckoning with the choices they must make to procure peace. And indeed they may need a peace process themselves to bring together Gaza, ruled by Hamas — which the U.S. and European Union consider a terrorist organization — and Fatah, the political movement that holds sway in the West Bank.
The Trump administration’s reported “outside-in” approach, which would rely on Arab states sharing Israel’s antipathy to Iran to help get to a settlement, is an uncertain strategy. But it would certainly be more difficult to achieve because Arab leaders may balk at being perceived by their citizens as selling out Palestinian statehood.
On at least two key issues — relocating the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and Israeli settlement policy — Trump has showed some narrow movement in the right direction by delaying a hasty embassy move and at least publicly nudging Netanyahu by asking him to “hold back” on West Bank settlement construction and telling an Israeli newspaper that more settlements “don’t help the process.”
Much more on this issue needs to be said, and much more consistency from the administration is required: A day after Trump’s summit with Netanyahu, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said, “We absolutely support a two-state solution,” but later added that the administration was looking for an “out of the box” approach. For his part, reflecting international consensus, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, “There is no Plan B to the situation between Palestinians and Israelis but a two-state solution.”
Plan A is hard enough. Trump should not increase the degree of difficulty by not upholding the two-state policy that’s had bipartisan backing in the U.S. as well as official support in Israel.
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