The defense establishment is at a crossroads reminiscent of the wave of lone terrorist attacks of 2015, but given the outline of the US peace plan and the backing the PA offers terrorists, the situation is far more volatile.
From international rebukes and potential action by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, to the political logjam – applying Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley is looking like an uphill battle.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is not preoccupied solely with his country's relations with Israel. In less than four years, he will complete his fourth term in office. But then what?
The writing was on the wall, but Ramallah and Gaza refused to see it. For decades, the Palestinians expected that the world would force a deal on Israel that would break it – but in the end, the world got weary and PA leader Abbas was left stuck with Hamas. The Arab response to the "deal of the century" has left the Palestinians in shock.
The traditional unwavering support for the Palestinian cause no longer seems to be the order of the day among Arab powers, whose leaders have more pressing issues to resolve.
The outright rejection of the entire Trump plan puts the PA president on the same footing as his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, as a peace obstructionist who would rather go down in history as refusing to give an inch over ending the bloody conflict through fair compromise.
Arab leaders have more pressing domestic and international issues to attend to than the obstinacy of the Palestinian leadership, which has consistently rejected every peace plan ever presented to it.
The political aspects of the American president's peace initiative have been kept under wraps. The $50 billion regional development plan already introduced as part of it has been spurned by the Palestinians.
“You simply can’t have a serious discussion about an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan and only invite one side to come talk about it," says Michael Koplow of the Israel Policy Forum. "This is more about the politics inside Israel and inside the US than it is about any real efforts to get these two sides to an agreement."
Israel's current regional status and its economic, diplomatic and military clout allow it to advance strategic and even historic initiatives it could only have dreamed of in the past. It seems such initiatives are fundamentally palatable to the US administration and even coincide with the general outlines of its peace plan.
