Douglas Feith: The Trump administration sends clear message to Palestinian leadership with peace plan

The Trump administration is sending a clear message to the Palestinian leadership with the peace plan, says Douglas Feith, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for National Security Strategies at the Hudson Institute.

Douglas Feith addresses the largely misunderstood purpose of the administration in putting the peace plan forward on Secure Freedom Radio.

“I gather from reading the plan that the people who put it together were not measuring success necessarily by whether it leads to an agreement. I think what runs through the plan is a recognition that consensual resolution of the conflict at this point may not be possible because the Palestinian leadership that is in place right now has shown itself completely uninterested in terminating the conflict. The question is, if you don’t believe a plan is going to produce an agreement why put it forward?

There are a number of reasons I think why the administration had an interest in putting it forward. One of the things they wanted to do was tell a number of truths about the nature of the conflict that previous administrations generally didn’t give voice to.

First of all, they told a whole lot of truths in a sense that they laid out realistic points about the history of rejectionism by the Palestinian leadership, the lack of reality of the Palestinian claim for a right of return that would basically end Israel as a Jewish majority state, and the recognition that the Israelis after such a long period of time of having to defend itself against efforts to destroy Israel are not going to take enormous security risks in relinquishing territory that’s highly strategically valuable.

The other thing they were doing is that they were saying to the Palestinian leadership that there is a price to be paid for your rejectionism. You cannot expect that if you refuse to make peace with Israel and terminate the conflict that we are going to freeze positions in place so that you don’t lose anything by your rejectionism. This plan in a very bold way says: life goes on, realities change and you are going to be worse off if you don’t take this agreement than if you do.”

Listen to the full show here