The State Department has made it clear that the 460 rockets launched at Israel from Gaza this week won’t stop Team Trump from rolling out its plans for peace between the Jewish state and the Palestinians within the next two months.
In fact, the administration thinks the violence makes the case for another attempt at peace even more compelling.
President Trump shouldn’t get his hopes up. Nor anyone else for that matter.
Both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have made it clear they won’t negotiate with the Americans. Nor is there any sign they’re capable of making the kind of concessions necessary for a two-state solution — the framework of Trump’s plan and all those proposed by previous US administrations.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is willing to negotiate. But the ordeal Israelis have just undergone illustrates why the majority of his people have no appetite for a withdrawal from the West Bank under the current circumstances.
While most Israelis would be willing to accept a two-state solution, at least in theory, the latest rocket barrage suggests it would be folly for Trump to push for adoption of his plan anytime soon.
For starters, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is too frightened of Hamas, which seized Gaza in the wake of Israel’s withdrawal of every soldier, settler and settlement in 2005, to sign any peace deal with Israel — that is, assuming he actually wants peace at all.
The reason Abbas is serving in what is now the 14th year of the four-year presidential term to which he was elected after the death of Yasser Arafat is because he fears another election will empower his Hamas rivals.
As would a peace agreement with Israel. Fact is, if Trump’s attempt to create a Palestinian state on the West Bank did succeed, it would probably lead to Hamas operating there or even running it outright.
Netanyahu is often denounced as an opponent of peace. But if his approach to the Palestinians is supported by a majority of Israelis — and even his leading opponents are pledged to carry out similar policies — it is because most Israelis understand that if their army gives up security control of the West Bank, the terrible dilemma they are facing in Gaza will be replicated in the far larger and more strategic territory.
Netanyahu was bitterly criticized by both his coalition partners and his political opponents for agreeing to a ceasefire rather than launching a major offensive against Hamas — even though it could easily turn into a war like the one that raged in the summer of 2014.
His caution is justified, because Israel has no good options available to it. The casualties on both sides would be awful.
Even if Netanyahu were willing to wage war to oust Hamas and to weather the opposition to such a campaign from the rest of the world, Israel has no desire to rule Gaza. Nor does it have confidence in Abbas’ ability to do so in a manner that would prevent it from being a terrorist enclave.
True, the status quo, in which Hamas is able to send all of southern Israel running to bomb shelters any time it likes, is intolerable. But the alternative is a war the Jewish state doesn’t want.
At the same time, the Trump peace plan is predicated on a vision of the future that might be even more dangerous. Withdrawal from Gaza led to more terrorism. Giving up the West Bank, no matter what guarantees are offered, is likely to lead to a Palestinian state — whether run by Abbas or Hamas — capable of posing an even more dangerous threat.
Imagine a West Bank as armed and as dangerous as Gaza is now — and recognized by the rest of the world as a sovereign state that Israel wouldn’t be free to attack — and you see what most Israelis think would be the only logical outcome of a two-state solution.
Until both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas concede defeat in their century-long war on Zionism by recognizing the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders are drawn, the emergence of a legitimate Palestinian state is a recipe for more bloodshed, not peace.
Trump’s intentions may be good, but any effort to push Israel to give up more territory under the current circumstances is doomed.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS.org and a contributor to National Review.



