President Trump’s senior adviser Jared Kushner is traveling throughout the Middle East, seeking to build support for Trump’s upcoming Middle East peace plan. But unless Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu loses the April elections, Trump’s plan will die on arrival.
One word explains why: coalitions.
Netanyahu’s route to re-election is now dependent on the support of extremist parties that are opposed to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority. While Netanyahu’s own amenability to Trump’s peace plan was always reluctant and dependent on his hard-right coalition partner Naftali Bennett, Netanyahu’s agreement last week to form an electoral coalition with three far-right parties has changed everything.
One of those parties, Otzma Yehudit, isn’t just opposed to concessions — it despises anyone outside of a narrow, extremist notion of Jewish identity. One might realistically say it is Israel’s version of the Dixiecrat Party.
Assuming, as we must, that Trump’s peace plan will include some territorial and political authority concessions to the Palestinian Authority, Netanyahu’s post-election support for that plan would implode his government. Correspondingly, Netanyahu will reject the plan per se.
Yet, were the new centrist coalition led by Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid to win election in April, they would both be amenable to Trump’s deal. That’s because the deal will likely seek an Israeli withdrawal from most of the West Bank in return for Palestinian security guarantees to Israel, and protections for Israel’s long term Jewish identity.
This leaves us in an ironic position: Trump’s landmark policy interest is now mutually exclusive with the political survival of his closest ally in the Middle East.
