New York Times: How can Donald Trump make history?

Thomas Friedman wrote on the New York Times wondering: Does the return of Donald Trump to the US presidency herald the end of US pressure on Israelis and Palestinians to reach a two-state solution?

Although Friedman is famous for being harsh critic of US President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican Party as a whole, that didn’t prevent him from describing Trump as the “unique” US president who.

According to him, formulated a real, detailed plan for peaceful coexistence between the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.

If Trump, in his new term, is able to revive that initiative/plan in 2025, Friedman believes history will remember him as the president who preserved Israel as a Jewish democracy and helped birth a secure Palestinian state alongside it.

Friedman warns that if Trump follows the path of Mike Huckabee, his nominee for ambassador to Israel, history will write him as the president who oversaw the end of Israel as a Jewish democracy and buried any hope for a Palestinian state.

Either way, Friedman believes that the president-elect may not be interested in Jewish or Palestinian history, but rather the opposite.

In an interview on Friday with Israel’s Channel 7, which is affiliated with Jewish settlers, Huckabee expressed his opposition to the two-state solution and to the use of the terms West Bank and occupation, in a clear denial of international legitimacy regarding the Palestinian issue.

Friedman pointed out that Trump had called him four years ago to thank him for his support for the “Abraham Accords,” which he claimed paved the way for a historic peace between Israel and Arab countries.

“Say what you will about Trump, but the man is prone to making big deals that can have profound effects in shaping history,” Friedman emphasized.

Friedman noted that he had just spent a week in Israel and the United Arab Emirates, speaking to political, military, and business leaders, Jews, Palestinians, and Arabs, about what Trump might do to their region this time around.

According to him, there is a huge opportunity and appetite for a game-changing deal, and if the US president-elect wants to make it, he just has to do it right.

Friedman touched on the two-state solution plan that Trump presented in January 2020 at the beginning of his previous presidency, entitled “Peace to Prosperity”.

He expressed his belief that neither party would adopt this plan in its current form, especially after the October 7 and the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, which would obstruct reaching any agreement.

Friedman sees the vision in the plan as a starting point for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in the post-war period on Gaza.

It remains the only detailed peace map that any president has publicly presented for the creation of two states since the “Clinton Parameters,” the former US president’s guiding principles for a permanent status agreement to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Friedman stressed the need to change Trump’s plan due to the repercussions of October 7 attack, adding that he doesn’t see any possibility of it being accepted as is by either side.

However, he doesn’t believe that is the point; the important point, in his view, is that it contains all the key ingredients to start talks.

The plan tells the parties that the only stable solution must include two states for two indigenous peoples, with land swaps and mutually agreed security arrangements that they negotiate.

He explained that he realized that taking the initiative would signal to both sides (Israelis and Palestinians) that Trump wouldn’t wait until they had a chance to discuss their policy, “because it’s a vital interest of the United States to stop this conflict before it drags us into a war in the Middle East even more than we are now, and we know that Trump doesn’t like Middle East wars”.

Friedman claims that Trump is setting and driving policy, not the right-wing pro-Israel settlement figures he has so far appointed to Middle East posts.

According to Friedman, “how could I make that claim?”

Friedman answers, “if my choice of these right-wingers—and not Trump’s peace plan—reflects what the incoming Trump administration intends to move forward, it would mean farewell to the Abraham Accords alone, as well as their expansion to include other countries”.

Friedman warns that Trump will isolate America in the Middle East and the world.

Friedman also criticized current President Joe Biden for acquiescing to Netanyahu in not moving forward with the peace plan, as the Israeli prime minister knew that accepting it would mean the downfall of his hardline right-wing ruling coalition.

As he has done since the beginning of this war, Netanyahu has been stalling and prioritizing his political survival over Israel’s interests, which Friedman said Biden has helped him do by keeping such a deal out of public view.