The US administration is examining the possibility of issuing a document that would commit future governments to President Donald Trump's peace plan, Israel Hayom has learned.
The idea has been presented to senior White House officials and is under discussion.
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At this stage, it is still unclear how understandings between Israel and the US about the Trump plan would be made binding. One possibility would be to issue a memorandum of understanding that would state that would state that the Trump plan is the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Another option would be to issue a binding document in the style of the Bush Letter, which promised that settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria would never be evacuated.
The administration puts great importance on ensuring that the Trump peace plan remains active and implementable, even if a new administration is elected in November. Talks about the wording of the announcement about Israel and the United Arab Emirates normalizing relations included considerable efforts to persuade all sides to adopt the Trump plan as binding.
Israel also has a strong interest in keeping the plan on the table. Many in Israel consider the Trump plan the best option ever presented by any American administration. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition partners Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, as well as Opposition leader Yair Lapid, have all expressed support for it.
Thus far, the support has been verbal. The US and Israeli interest in making the plan binding for the future prompted the suggestion that both sides put their positions down in writing.
This would not be the first time that the US has taken such a step. In 1975, President Gerald Ford wrote to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and told him that the US would give serious consideration to Israel remaining on the Golan Heights. President George W. Bush said in a letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that the US recognized demographic changes in Judea and Samaria, and that the settlement blocs would remain in place. Despite the importance of such documents, they cannot obligate future administrations.
Both Jerusalem and Washington agree that there are no binding commitments in place for the Middle East other than the joint declaration by leaders of Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the US about Israeli-Emirati ties. Netanyahu advisor Aaron Klein told Israel Hayom that "there is no other commitment and no other documents. Not about sovereignty or any other issue."
In an exclusive interview, Klein rejected the claim that there was any "deal" to cancel Israel's plans to apply sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and settlements in the West Bank in exchange for peace with the Emiratis.
"The administration asked Israel twice to postpone sovereignty. The first time was right after the ceremony in January, and the second time was recently. Considering that dynamic, the prime minister decided to agree to the request, and that is what led to the [normalization] deal. But there was no deal to give up sovereignty in exchange for a peace deal. They were two separate things," he said.
Klein, 40, has been working with Netanyahu for under a year and is known as a "shadow" advisor, meaning he has little contact with other members of the government. According to some reports, he is very close with Netanyahu. Speaking to Israel Hayom, Klein said that the agreement with the Emirates "puts Israel into a new era. Netanyahu has proven the Left wrong. While other Israeli politicians supported the Iran nuclear deal, Netanyahu was sometimes the only one in the world to take a stance against it and against Iran. That is one of the things that helped the deal [with the Emirates] move forward."
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Klein says that many people thought that the only way Israel would make peace with Arab countries would be if it reached an agreement with the Palestinians.
"Since 2002, people have been saying that only the Arab peace plan, which included an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders and attracted a lot of attention, is the only formula for peace. In contrast, Netanyahu argued that we could normalize with Arab countries and they would push the Palestinians to drop their goal of destroying Israel. That's what happened. Now Israel and the UAE are making peace, and that is a change to the paradigm. It will take a few weeks, maybe months, for people to understand that change in thinking in the Middle East. That is the Netanyahu Doctrine," Klein says.
Q: Will Israel apply sovereignty, or is that just talk?
"Sovereignty is currently off the table, because the US administration asked that it be postponed temporarily. To anyone who is attacking Netanyahu for not going ahead with sovereignty, I say that it would be irresponsible of him to make a move like that without American support. I remind you that Netanyahu is the one who brought up the idea of applying sovereignty. He has changed the paradigm on that, as well, because before it, there was talk of a withdrawal, and now people are talking about sovereignty and settlement."
Q: If Trump wins the election, will Israel declare sovereignty?
"We need to look at it from a broad perspective. We've been waiting since 1967 and everyone understands that the postponement is temporary. The prime minister will keep working on it, and President Trump has already proven that he is the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House. So Israel will work with the US, and it will be brought up at the right time."
Q: What countries are next?
"I hope that the Emirates are just the beginning, and we'll see more Arab countries follow suit. That is the plan that the prime minister has talked about many times. After years of the Palestinians turning down everything they are offered, he talked about his belief that the Arab world would come to the table to make peace in exchange for peace, peace based on mutual interest and not a peace of retreat."
