Agreed. But I’d put the caveat in that it won’t make any progress because neither side’s government - as opposed to the citizenry - actually wants a solution. Both have significant political motivation to maintain the status quo.
It’s here! Do we have peace in the Middle East yet? 
So what’s in the plan?
What say y’all? How likely is this to be approved by the Knesset? And how likely is this to be embraced by the Palestinians, after they’ve already publicly rejected it sight unseen?
And of course, the bottom line: will this plan bring peace to the Middle East?
It makes me long for the reasonableness and comparative success of Trump’s infrastructure week(s).
The Knesset is facing it’s third election in a year. Right now, it couldn’t approve a turkey sandwich.
Kushner already formed, acted upon, and nearly completed his Middle East Peace plan.
Then Trump announced that he was declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel and destroyed it.
That plan involved such moves as having Saudi Arabia kidnap (if I recall correctly) the President of Yemen and apply pressure to the Palestinians to suck it up and accept something. It looked like it was working, if I’m honest, even if it wasn’t done in a nice and friendly manner.
While I haven’t been following Middle Eastern news as deeply now as I was then, I strongly suspect that we effectively spent our load in that whole effort and, with Congress’ actions against Saudi Arabia for Kashoggi and whatnot, they’re unlikely to provide the same support as before.
And, similarly, Netanyahu is looking likely to go away, so any sort of arrangement with them is going to be hypothetical until he’s back on firm ground or someone else has replaced him.
So, basically, this is just something to wave as evidence of work, heading into the election. But it doesn’t have any more value than that.
Well, it didn’t take long to answer this question: “a thousand no’s”
Without digging into any archives, my first reaction is that this “new” plan sounds a heck of a lot like the two-state solutions that have been floating around since the Clinton administration. I never expected this administration to come up with anything workable, but at the very least I thought it would be radically bad. This is just rehashed meh.
As likely for the Palestinians to approve a ham sandwich as Jared’s plan.
Well, that’s some common ground at least. Maybe they can build something from that…
OB
Well the NY Times opines that this is not a peace plan; it is reelect Bibi and reelect the orange monster plan. I could write a fair peace plan in 5 minutes, but both sides would reject it instantly. It would involve recognizing Israel’s right to exist and withdrawal of all the settlements.
I spent a month in Israel in 1976 and there were demonstrations in favor of new settlements and I knew at the time that they would be fatal for any hopes of peace in the near future. I was right.
I bet it has a really slick cover showing a guy wearing a keffiyeh smiling and shaking hands with a guy wearing a kippah.
Does the kippah guy look like he just threw up a little in his mouth?
I wouldn’t underestimate Kushner. He’s actually a pretty artful diplomat. Speaking yesterday to a CNN reporter who asked whether he thought the Palestinians would accept the plan he said:
“If they don’t, they’re going to screw up another opportunity, like they’ve screwed up every other opportunity that they’ve ever had in their existence.”
“It’s a big opportunity for the Palestinians,” Kushner said. “They have a perfect track record of blowing every opportunity they’ve had in their past.”
It also includes the ridiculous ideas that Israel gets to annex all of the settlements it’s been building in violation of international law for these past few decades as well as the Jordan River Valley, geographically isolating any future Palestinian State. It also prevents the Palestinians from having any military or intelligence force. Not a chance any plan with that gets approved by any Palestinian group.
Understood by every single person remotely familiar with the history of the ME peace process and widely attributed to Abba Eban in 1973.
So Kushner is not saying anything new. I doubt very much he’s ever had an original thought on the subject in his entire privileged, useless life.
Oh, so maybe it is radically bad after all. Disappointment dissipated!
I was making a joke. What he said is hardly artful diplomacy.
Even ignoring any detail of the plan, don’t these comments by Kushner reek of pretense, bias and disdain?
For me the elevation of this snotty and dim-witted twerp symbolizes the ignominy of this shameful Administration.
I thought you were making this up. I googled it and learned to my dismay that you weren’t. I’m profoundly ignorant of the issues and complexities of Israel-Palestine peace negotiations, but I’m fairly confident in my assessment that you don’t say shit like that when you’re ostensibly trying to get people to sit down together. This assumes, of course, that the plan is an honest attempt to get people to sit down together, which I tend to doubt.
It hasn’t been getting a lot of attention, but the plan also envisions a tunnel between the West Bank and Gaza. I believe this is meant to be a railway tunnel. The tunnel would need to be over 20 miles long (per my quick check on Google Maps). It wouldn’t be the absolute longest tunnel in the world, but that’s still a helluva long tunnel. I imagine it could be done, but it just seems like a peace plan that requires a massive engineering project might not be that realistic.
This does seem like a very Trump-ian plan because of his belief that in any given deal one party comes out ahead and the other party gets screwed.
How is this being received in Israel? The Israeli adoration of Trump is a disconcerting thing to me, considering Bible passages regarding false prophets.