RUTHFULLY YOURS

There is a broad sense of relief among pro-Israel Americans and most Israelis that ‎the Obama years are over, and at least as far as U.S.-Israeli relations are concerned, things will be ‎on the mend with the new Trump administration. ‎

Barack Obama’s first call as president in 2009 was to Palestinian leader ‎Mahmoud Abbas, and one of his final meaningful actions as president was the ‎decision to abstain on the vote on U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334, ‎thereby allowing the broad condemnation of Israeli settlements beyond the 1949 ‎armistice line to be approved by the Security Council. The Obama’s team’s ‎machinations on the recent Security Council vote went beyond the abstention on the ‎actual vote. They included conversations with and visits (no doubt lobbying) with ‎nonpermanent members of the council, and discussions with the Palestinian ‎Authority to include some boilerplate on violence and incitement in the language ‎that would enable the administration to defend the resolution as “balanced” ‎enough not to require an American veto. ‎

Two years ago, Obama joked about his bucket list of things he wanted ‎to get done in his last years in office. He noted then that the list might be more ‎of something that rhymes with “bucket.” ‎

In the same spirit as singer Madonna’s comments at the Women’s ‎March in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, the president may well have been acting out ‎his bucket list rhyme with regard to Israel.‎

Obama’s belligerence toward Israel seemed obsessively focused on Israeli ‎settlements. From the start of his time in office, administration members regularly ‎and publicly condemned every Israeli decision at any step of an approval process ‎to build new apartments or homes anywhere beyond the Green Line, even within ‎the boundaries of settlements that President George W. Bush and many of the ‎peace processors in the Clinton, Bush and even some in the Obama administration, ‎have accepted would likely remain part of Israel if there were ever a final ‎resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Obama, however, refused to formally ‎accept as official U.S. policy the Bush letter of April 4, 2004 to then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, written in the preparation for the ‎Gaza disengagement. That letter included American recognition ‎that the 1949 armistice lines would not be the final borders if a peace deal were ‎reached, and that the large settlements blocs near the Green Line would remain part of Israel.

‎”As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized ‎borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in ‎accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ‎ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is ‎unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full ‎and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to ‎negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to ‎expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of ‎mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”‎

The American vote on the recent U.N. Security Council resolution means that ‎the Obama White House regarded even Jews living in the ‎Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem as interlopers and illegal settlers. ‎Both U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, and ‎later Secretary of State John Kerry in a never ending whine and complaint to a ‎cheering collection of Foggy Bottom hacks, attributed the failure to achieve a two-‎state solution largely to Israeli settlement activity. It was not an obstacle, but the ‎greatest obstacle to achieving the two-state solution. ‎

U.S. President Donald Trump has on more than one occasion described a resolution of the ‎Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the most difficult to achieve of all deals, but one ‎that would be worth the price of the negotiation effort, if successful. As ‎recently as January 19, Trump all but anointed his son-in-law, White House ‎adviser Jared Kushner, as the point person to handle those negotiations. Trump argued that if ‎Kushner could not achieve peace, nobody can, a line that might have startled former President ‎Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, among others.‎

Like his father-in-law, Kushner is an experienced real estate developer who has ‎negotiated his way through some difficult situations. Kushner is an Orthodox Jew and took on a major ‎role in the Trump campaign, helping prepare speeches to Jewish groups and ‎on foreign policy. ‎

Can Kushner have success when no one else has? In general, when Israeli ‎leaders have felt that America was in its corner, it has been willing to make more ‎generous offers to the Palestinians. These situations have never led to a peace ‎agreement. That feeling that America was in its corner, was never the case in ‎the Obama years. The new Trump administration openly declared its pro-Israel ‎enthusiasm during the campaign, was very critical of Obama’s self-declared ‎foreign policy legacy “achievement,” the Iran nuclear deal, and helped fight ‎the recent U.N. Security Council resolution (at the behest of Prime Minister Benjamin ‎Netanyahu).

Several Trump appointees to cabinet or ambassador jobs have ‎talked of moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. But just like previous ‎administrations before it, Trump seems intrigued by the possibility of being able ‎to go for the big deal. Whether this reflects merely self-confidence or some ‎secret sauce that has not yet been revealed, the odds are great that after a ‎certain period of time, Trump and Kushner, and anyone else involved, will walk ‎away in defeat. ‎

The reasons for this are not difficult to lay out. In essence, the Palestinians ‎have never accepted the permanence of a Jewish majority state on any part of ‎the former mandate territory. This position has not changed in 100 years. ‎Palestinian tactics have changed — alternating from focusing on terrorism to ‎lawfare and international diplomacy and U.N. resolutions in order to constantly ‎pressure the Jewish state — but the goal has remained the same. Palestinian ‎demands are constant. The most significant is that millions of people who were ‎not born in, nor ever lived in Israel, nor even been in the country, have a right of “‎return” to Israel. This gives new meaning to the concept of return.

The Palestinians ‎must have both a Judenrein state (the Jews in the territories must all ‎leave), as well as a right of return to Israel for many millions of Arabs, thereby ‎potentially creating a second Arab-majority state. Then, if they wish, the Palestinians ‎could combine the two for a single Arab-majority state, and millions of Israeli ‎Jews will realize their future is better protected elsewhere. No Israeli ‎government, regardless of how foolishly, peace-lovingly leftist it is, will assist in its ‎own destruction by accepting any of this. The two-state solution for the PA ‎means two Arab-majority states, or one. Settlements, or a few of them anyway, ‎might be an issue if there really were a deal to be had, but there is not.‎

The difference between the Trump administration and the Obama administration ‎is what happens when it becomes obvious that no deal will be achieved. Clinton ‎blamed Arafat for the failure at Camp David. Obama blamed Israel. This ‎was inevitable for Obama. A man of the Left, he saw every struggle as a battle ‎between haves and have-nots, and believed that the aves always need to pay ‎up. The Trump team does not come into power, nor begin struggling with this ‎conflict, with such ideological blindness in its worldview. There are positive feelings and sympathy for Israel, an American ally. And it will be obvious soon ‎enough which party has no interest in concluding a deal of any kind.‎

Trump has had much business success, and also some well-publicized ‎failures. In the cases of the failures, he knew enough to walk away at some ‎point rather than double down. The two-state solution and the latest version of ‎the peace process will soon enough look like a bankrupt Atlantic City casino ‎and Trump will be smart enough to walk away and stand with America’s ally, Israel, ‎rather than Obama’s reservoir of rogue regimes — Iran, Cuba, and the PA.

Richard Baehr is the co-founder and chief political correspondent for the American Thinker and a fellow at the Jewish Policy Center.