A week before Trump’s inauguration, Jerusalem already sees a change in the rules of the game that has broken the deadlock in the hostage negotiations. Unusually, the outgoing Biden administration has let Witkoff lead the process, on the grounds that any obligations the United States undertakes will be incumbent on Trump, not on Biden.
Witkoff is a Jewish real estate investor and developer who is close to Trump. He doesn’t have the background of the kind of people who usually fill diplomatic roles. “Witkoff isn’t a diplomat. He doesn’t talk like a diplomat, he has no interest in diplomatic manners and diplomatic protocols,” says a senior Israeli diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He’s a businessman who wants to reach a deal quickly and charges ahead unusually aggressively.”
In fact, Witkoff has forced Israel to accept a plan that Netanyahu had repeatedly rejected over the past half year. Hamas has not budged from its position that the hostages’ freedom must be conditioned on the release of Palestinian prisoners (the easy part) and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza (the hard one). Netanyahu rejected this condition and thus was born the partial deal proposed by Egypt.
Funniest possible turn of events
Yep. Trump was always expected to deescalate. That’s why Biden immediately ramped up on every war front after Harris lost. They had to cram as much planned war in as quickly as they could.
I have an old college friend who’s a foreign service officer at the state dept. Right after the Harris loss, the state dept cancelled all leave, and called everyone in for this 3 month blitz. Gonna try to get some more info out of my friend, when he’s brought back in February.
This has been a Democrat crime spree. Wish there was any hope of the incoming admin holding them accountable, but I doubt they want to set a precedent for punishing war crimes before they start on their own.
Trump lesser evil confirmed?
I didn’t expect Trump to be worse than Biden on Palestine, but I also did not expect him to be better. Wow
Same. I hope to be pleasantly surprised.
Biden admin was Netanyahu in practice. It would be virtually impossible to be worse than Biden on Palestine except by starting a full blown war in the Middle-East. But that would badly hurt the American economy when all the oil gets blown up.
Didn’t he call netenyahoo before the election and say something like “no negotiating before the election” when this originally came up?
Biden could have stopped the weapons supply, or at least made it conditional. Biden wasn’t even trying to stop Israel.
Biden not only could have, but was also required by law to do so. Biden committed multiple domestic & international crimes to continue arming Israel, against the advisement of White House counsel.
And trump could have done this… Before the election. Not promised Naziyahoo whatever he wanted, just wait till he’s elected, and spared them months of this. Or he could have done this the months ago. It’s fair to think he would have been worse, he promised he would be. It’s the fault of trusting him. I’m glad he lied in this case though.
If biden admin had any intention of forcing a ceasefire they would’ve done it long before that point. This ceasefire agreement shows how easy it is.
We all know joe Biden wanted to hit the “I’m going to lose the election button” by not doing the easy thing and having trump remove his permission to reject the ceasefire.
If trump manages to end the genocide I will be gloating to all of my liberal friends about their lesser evil bullshit. I can’t fucking wait. I can’t stand trump but I had a feeling his anti war stance in general is maybe the only genuine thing about him as he’s been fairly consistent on that throughout his fame well before entering politics.
Short of glassing the Middle East I can’t imagine trump would be worse than biden. The bar would have to be in the deepest depths of Dante’s inferno of hell.
Short of glassing the Middle East I can’t imagine trump would be worse than biden. The bar would have to be in the deepest depths of Dante’s inferno of hell.
If there’s anything, he can just continue onto a country like Algeria and start a new Iraq-American-style war there
Problem is I expect the same if the dems won instead. More new wars under biden, why would one expect any different under Harris?
Right wing factions in the Israeli govt were blocking the deal. Now with Trump in they’ve got the green light to move on to West Bank.
Thanks for that wild speculation
Paywalled.
Adelson paid $20 million in exchange for moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem last cycle. His window, a megadonor for settlement development in the West Bank just donated 100m with her stated goals being Israeli annexation of the West Bank and a U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty in all the regions of the land. Trumps #1 donor above Musk.
Jewish settlers believe that the incoming administration represents a unique opportunity to extend Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria. The president-elect’s appointments of avowedly pro-Israel figures to key positions in his upcoming administration have only raised expectations.
During his first term as president, Trump adopted policies largely favorable to Netanyahu. He broke with longstanding US policy to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem over Palestinian objections; he recognized Israel’s claim to the Golan Heights, which the international community considers occupied Syrian territory; and he turned a blind eye to settlement construction in the West Bank.
The Abraham Accords, brokered by the Trump administration, ended Israel’s diplomatic isolation in much of the Arab world, allowing Israel to forge links with the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Bahrain, and Sudan without concessions on the Palestinian question.
Eagerly anticipating the return of Donald Trump to the White House, Israeli settler leaders have drawn up an ambitious master plan to cement their rule over the disputed biblical land.
The action plan includes building four new cities, a massive expansion of energy and transportation infrastructure, and the de facto dismantling of the Palestinian Authority, blurring the border between Israel proper and the land that was captured in the 1967 Six Day War.
Settlers were delighted with the appointment of Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as the next US ambassador to Israel. The evangelical preacher stated unequivocally that “there is no such thing” as the West Bank and that Israelis have “a rightful deed” to the land.
“Trump’s victory brings an important opportunity for Israel,” said Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, head of the far-right Religious Zionist Party, who also controls West Bank civilian affairs. “During Trump’s first term, we were on the verge of applying sovereignty over the settlements. Now the time has come to make it a reality,” he said.
The action plan drawn up by the Yesha settlers’ council and Avichai Buaron, a lawmaker from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party, calls for expanding the jurisdiction of West Bank settler councils to take control of all the land in areas B and C – land that is under full or partial Israeli control, including Palestinian villages.
“If we use this window of opportunity wisely, we will create conditions for turning Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley into an inseparable part of Israel,” Buaron said, using the biblical name for the West Bank. “The two-state solution needs to be taken off the table permanently.
So that article does confirm your speculation.
I also don’t know how to tell you this; but Israel is already settling the West Bank. Turns out they don’t need some green light from Trump that Biden was withholding.
The only thing that formally annexing West Bank would do is force Israel to actually address the question of the Palestinians living there.
If only Adelson had hired you she could have saved a lot of money.
