The basic contours of President Donald Trump's Mideast plan now are revealed.
In pertinent part:
1. Israel would get to annex all Jewish communities presently established in Judea and Samaria.
2. Approximately 30 percent of Judea and Samaria formally would be integrated into Israel, reunifying those lands.
3. The Arabs in Judea and Samaria, who denominate themselves as Palestinians, would get their own independent country in what is left of Judea and Samaria after Israel annexes its 30 percent.
4. Hamas would have to be disarmed.
5. The new country denominated as "Palestine" would have to be demilitarized.
6. Jerusalem would remain united. The city would remain Israel's capital, even as the Arabs of "Palestine" could deem it as their capital, too, with a US Embassy to be built for them in a section of the city populated primarily by Arabs.
7. No new Jewish building in Judea and Samaria would be permitted for the next four years in areas designated for Palestinians.
8. "Palestine" would be barred from having a military and would be protected instead by Israel, with "Palestine" paying for the protection.
9. A tunnel will be constructed to connect the Judea and Samaria region of "Palestine" with its Gaza region.
10. Other things, too, dealing primarily with which countries pay for what.
And on the other side of the negotiating table, no Palestinian representative will accept any compromise on one inch of Jewish land that the Arab population claims for themselves in Judea and Samaria.
When Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman previously proposed the novel idea that the Arabs should allow Israel to annex the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria in return for Israel ceding to the Arabs equivalent land masses in the "Triangle" where Arabs predominate demographically, the Palestinians immediately shot it down.
When Ehud Barak flew to Washington to meet with President Bill Clinton and then Palestinian Authority chief Yasser Arafat, and offered Arafat almost every inch of land that the "Palestinians" demand, Arafat responded by launching an Intifada rather than give up a claim to a single dunam. Hamas, whose very raison d'etre is to engage in armed conflict with Israel, will not agree to be disarmed. The notion defies reality.
Even if the Palestinians were to proceed with a charade of "accepting" the plan and "promising" to demilitarize, recent history teaches concretely that they never will honor their word. In Oslo, for example, they promised to stop educating their children to incitement. Theoretically, there would be peace today in the Mideast if Arafat and his successor Mahmoud Abbas had honored that pledge at Oslo to teach their children about peace and how to live alongside Israel in mutual harmony.
Instead, they emerged from Oslo and doubled-down on teaching hate – from school textbooks to children's television shows to kids' summer camps.
They actually intensified their hate training after getting what they wanted at Oslo. Israel was kept out of maps. Children's songs about jihad terrorism, idolizing shahid terrorists, dominated school curricula. Since Oslo, they have reared two new generations to hate Israel even more than before. Even though they promised.
The United States today enjoys warm relations with the Germany that we fought so bitterly during World War II because, once the Nazis were crushed, the Germans promised to reeducate their people to embrace freedom and democracy – and they honored their word.
Likewise with America and Japan. Despite Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor, the tortures that Americans faced from the Japanese in Corregidor and during the Bataan Death March, the deaths in the battles of Midway, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the banzai charges, the kamikaze air attacks, and the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, today America and Japan are very strong friends because the Japanese honored their pledge to educate their new generation to value freedom and the Western alliance.
Israel relied previously on dramatic peace gestures to end Arab hostilities, unilaterally leaving southern Lebanon under Prime Minister Ehud Barak and likewise departing from Gaza under Ariel Sharon. In both cases, the Prime Ministers assured their skeptics that, if the Palestinians returned to armed violence, Israeli simply would march back in and restore the lands to their status quo ante. However, time unfolded and revealed those assurances to be bluster.
Hezbollah's facts on the ground reveal the reality that awaits an Israeli concession of that sort in Judea and Samaria. On the other hand, no"Palestine" entity conceivably could be copacetic with an arrangement that cedes military control within its borders to Israel.
Nor will Donald Trump always be president. In time, there will be a new Obama, and that kind of Washington in time will press Israel to cede military control to the "Palestine" country. That is how history repeatedly has unfolded for Israel.
History further warns, even outside the Middle East, that demilitarization agreements are transitory as new governments arise. After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles barred Germany from having an air force, armored vehicles, and certain types of naval vessels. In addition, it established a demilitarized zone in the Rhineland. Similarly, the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, aimed to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction.
Twelve years later the Japanese government gave formal notice that it intended to terminate the treaty. Soon enough there were brutal WWII naval battles at Midway, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima.
President Trump has demonstrated himself a remarkably consistent friend of Israel. From recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital to moving the embassy there, to recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, to declaring the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria as not inherently illegal, to cutting off funding for UNRWA and throwing the PLO out of Washington and pulling America out of the anti-Jewish United Nations Human Rights Council, Trump repeatedly has proven his friendship towards Israel unequivocally.
One may well wonder whether the "Deal of the Century" has been formulated to induce the Palestinian leadership to manifest their intransigence, thereby justifying Israel moving ahead with annexation. Under that premise, once the Palestinian leadership from Gaza to Ramallah rejects the Trump Plan outright, there might remain no further obstacle with the Trump White House to reunifying the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria, for once and for all.
And that massive reunification of Judea and Samaria with the Israeli heartland will be a very big deal indeed. The deal of the century.
