The Oslo Accords, signed 25 years ago in Washington, held out the promise of an historic breakthrough to Israeli-Palestinian peace. For the first time, the two primary rivals in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the bitterest, who had declared that they would never talk to each other, began intensive negotiations that lasted until 2000, started again in earnest in 2007-08 and sputtered anew in 2013-14. A breakthrough failed to emerge, but the two sides exchanged formal recognition and significantly narrowed the differences between them. They continue to cooperate more or less effectively in security concerns and Oslo helped unlock the door to a formal treaty of peace with Jordan. The many critics of Oslo protest too much.¹ Nevertheless, the remaining gaps between Israelis and Palestinians have proven significant and, so far, insurmountable.

Today, the entire “Oslo peace process” appears to be on life support, hanging by a thread, with prospects for a “two states for two peoples” solution as remote as ever. Some believe that it is actually more of a “rest in peace process” at this point, killed by a lethal combination of the Palestinians’ relentless rejection of every possible proposal for peace, Palestinian terrorism, Israel’s ongoing settlement policy, and the hardline policies adopted by its recent governments. Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu no longer expresses explicit support for a two-state solution, and it took President Trump nearly two years to do so grudgingly. The ongoing split between the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank—the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinians—and Hamas-controlled Gaza means that Palestinian President Abbas could not sign a final peace agreement even if he were so inclined.

The Oslo Accords were a framework agreement that set out the parameters of a negotiating process, not a peace agreement. They were thus intentionally silent regarding the nature of a final agreement, a reflection of the fundamental divides that existed between the sides from the beginning. For the Palestinians, an independent state was the preordained outcome of the Oslo process, something that did not require negotiation; at most some details of implementation remained to be worked out. The decades-long failure to reach a deal to establish a state, accompanied by ongoing occupation and expanded settlements, all undermined Palestinian faith in the possibility of an acceptable negotiated outcome.

For Israel, an independent Palestinian state was one possible outcome of Oslo, maybe even a likely one; but it was one that could only emerge as a result of negotiations involving significant Palestinian concessions on several important issues. More generally, from Israel’s perspective this possible outcome was predicated on the Palestinians’ ability to meet two crucial conditions outside of any negotiating table: the establishment of an effective government in both the West Bank and Gaza; and a proven ability to prevent terrorism against Israel. The Palestinians have failed royally on both accounts. Indeed, the horrific terrorism of the second intifada, closely following PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat’s rejection of dramatic Israeli peace proposals, decimated Israel’s peace camp. It has yet to recover.

With the negotiations stymied for years by the sides’ contending claims, the Trump Administration is seeking a way out of the impasse—as it is wont to do in a variety of areas—by breaking things. As an overall approach to foreign policy, breaking things is fundamentally misguided and usually untenable. It also tends to reflect a lack of professional sophistication and an inability to identify and process complex realities. Sometimes, however, when frozen orthodoxies become obstacles to any possibility of progress, it may be necessary to break things. But they have to be broken properly, and the problem with the Administration’s actions to date is that they do not appear to be part of a coherent strategic approach to Israeli-Palestinian peace.

The breakage so far is best described as a series of isolated steps designed to undermine fundamental Palestinian positions. Each of the Administration’s actions may have been appropriate in its own right, but they were taken without having established an appropriate diplomatic context or any indication of an impending need for countervailing concessions by Israel. It still remains unclear if any pressures on Israel to produce concessions in due course will be forthcoming, leading some to speculate that the Administration thinks that only a thorough crushing of the Palestinian position will produce peace. If that is the Administration’s view, it is highly unlikely to produce an outcome it desires.

The recent breakage began with Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the transfer of the U.S. embassy there. This was little more than a much belated recognition of a decades-long reality; Jerusalem has been Israel’s capital for 70 years, and everyone knows it. But the diplomatic symbolism is nevertheless of enormous importance. Had the Administration been pursuing a coherent strategy for promoting peace, it would have granted Israel this victory as part of a negotiating process in exchange for significant concessions. Conversely, some would argue—correctly in my view—that the necessary progress in the peace process would probably not have been forthcoming, as had been the case in the more than two decades since Congress first passed the legislation mandating the embassy move, thus aborting the move. Even in the absence of a balancing concession from Israel, the recognition move was simply the right thing to do. Moreover, balance in an ongoing negotiation need not be achieved in lockstep.

The Administration’s actions did not, however, end there. Trump claimed that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital took the issue off the negotiating table, a patently specious statement, but one which, if true, would have constituted a further severe blow to the Palestinian claim to a capital in East Jerusalem. But then Trump himself, along with other senior Administration officials, gave the lie to the President’s own claim, repeatedly stating that U.S. recognition did not prejudge the final status of Jerusalem. Palestinian concerns about what appeared to be a totally one-sided dismissal of their position on one of the core issues were not allayed, however. The result was that the Administration’s conflicting messages demonstrated once again the lack of a coherent strategy, letting each side nurse grudges or engage in wishful thinking, as the case may have been.

The Administration then began trying to break two other deeply entrenched Palestinian positions: their unique definition of refugee status; and the related claim that the refugees enjoy a “right of return” to all of Israel, including areas that the Palestinians themselves acknowledge will remain on Israel’s side of the border in a final agreement.

By way of background, the Palestinians and the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) define refugees not just as original persons displaced, the internationally accepted standard, but all of their descendants ad infinitum. Only a few tens of thousands of the original refugees from the conflict in 1948-49 remain alive today, but this novel definition serves to increase their numbers to over five million and to strengthen the Palestinian claim to a “right of return.” Diplomatically, this “right” is based on a creative interpretation of UN Resolution 194 from December 11, 1948, which merely states that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors, should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return.”

UNRWA is the only UN agency ever created to deal with a specific refugee issue, marking a huge Arab and Palestinian diplomatic success. All other refugee issues worldwide are dealt with by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. At a time when there are many millions of recent refugees around the world, including Syria, where over half of its pre-civil war population of some 23 million people has been displaced, UNRWA is a corrupt and ossified organization whose very existence perpetuates the refugee problem it was designed to resolve seventy years ago.

To upend these Palestinian orthodoxies, the Administration announced an end to American financial support for UNRWA, its primary source of funding, as well as of all direct assistance to the Palestinians. The problem, yet again, was that the Administration did not appear to have a comprehensive policy in place that included proposing alternative mechanisms for providing assistance to the Palestinians. For all of its myriad faults, UNRWA does provide vitally important services, including education, healthcare, and food, and the cutoff in aid is likely to result both in a humanitarian crisis and heightened hostilities. Large numbers of young Palestinians, who may no longer have schools to attend and ever grimmer prospects of meaningful employment, and whose families are increasingly impoverished and hungry, will have even less to lose. It remains to be seen whether the European Union and some Arab states fulfill their pledges to make up for lost American aid. Their record to date is not encouraging.

The Administration then decided to challenge the ultimate Palestinian orthodoxy: the inevitability of a fully independent state as the sole possible outcome of negotiations. To this end, it raised the long dormant idea of a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation: two essentially, but not quite, independent states. Jordan is an established state, with a citizenry that is approximately 70 percent Palestinian by origin. A Jordanian-Palestinian confederation is therefore not beyond imagination, but few experts believe that it has any prospects of happening until after an independent Palestinian state has emerged and the two countries then decide to form a confederation out of enlightened self-interest. Be that as it may, the very fact that the Administration raised an alternative to a fully independent state constituted a severe blow to the Palestinians, setting them back decades in terms of U.S. policy.

The final blow to the Palestinian position, at the time of this writing, was the Administration’s decision to enforce longstanding Congressional legislation and close the Washington office of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The ostensible reason was the Palestinians’ refusal to engage in meaningful peace talks and their stated intention to turn to the International Criminal Court to charge Israel with alleged war crimes. The closure has few practical consequences for the Palestinians, whose relations with the U.S. government are conducted through a variety of more important channels. It does, however, symbolize the dramatic downturn in Palestinian fortunes in the United States following the Oslo breakthrough. It may be hard to recall today, but the Palestinians had struggled for decades to achieve any American recognition of their cause, even a willingness to talk with the PLO, long considered a heinous terrorist organization. The opening of the office was part of an historic breakthrough in U.S.-Palestinian relations, as successive Administrations increasingly came to recognize the legitimacy of at least some Palestinian positions. U.S. recognition turned the PLO, and subsequently the PA, into legitimate actors both in the international arena and the negotiating process.

Taken together, the Trump Administration’s actions constitute a rout for the Palestinians, the near complete collapse of a decades-long strategy designed to promote relations with the United States, which they have viewed as a prerequisite for achieving the greater goal of an independent state. In effect, the Administration has decided to play power politics, coercing them into returning to the negotiating table on more realistic terms. In so doing, it should be pressing the Palestinians to face up to the biggest question of all, which few have been willing to confront honestly since the Oslo process began: Are the Palestinians willing to accept any solution whatsoever that requires dividing the land and living in peace alongside a Jewish Israel? In other words, are the Palestinians determined to achieve territorial redress based on 1967, or are they still fighting the war over Israel’s very existence that began in 1948?

So far so good, actually. If a two-state solution is to be achieved, breaking rejectionist and self-defeating Palestinian positions is essential and long overdue. Two critical questions remain unanswered, however. First, is the Trump Administration congenitally capable of successfully waging a coherent policy of diplomatic coercion? And second, as already mooted, does Trump wish only to break Palestinian things, or does he intend to upend some long existing Israeli orthodoxies as well? We still don’t know.

Diplomatic coercion is a legitimate approach. To be successful, however, it must be part of a coherent and concerted strategy, based on a sustained, determined, and intensive effort, attributes not normally considered to be the Trump Administration’s primary forte. It must also include positive inducements for the other side, “carrots” as well as “sticks.” It is not possible in the real world to just beat people over the head and hope thereby to achieve one’s ends. It is far more likely to generate rage, resistance, violence and counter-violence, and so be on balance counterproductive.

Furthermore, although the overall U.S.-Palestinian power equation is, of course, very lopsided, this is not necessarily the case in terms of their relative resolve. Very often in international politics, the balance of resolve outweighs the balance of power. For the Palestinians, the issues in dispute engage their most fundamental interests and beliefs, ones they have pursued with uncompromising zeal for decades. For Trump, they are just one more set of foreign policy issues competing for his very short attention span. A relentlessly determined Lilliputian may only have to outwait a distracted giant, in this case for maybe just over two years.

The Palestinians claim that Administration actions reflect an absence of American evenhandedness. They are correct, of course, if ingenuous. Israel is a close ally; they are not. But that is precisely why establishing and maintaining a constructive and ongoing dialogue with the U.S. government has been so important for the Palestinians. As was the case in earlier negotiations between Israel and Egypt and even Israel and Jordan, the Arab side knew that the road to Jerusalem lay through Washington. Only if the U.S. government credibly promised to insure Israel against the risks it faced would Israel in the end agree to take the risks required to seal a deal. The Palestinians well understood the dynamic and, following Oslo, achieved changes in Israeli positions through the framework of U.S. mediation. That remains the case today: Without a good working relationship with the U.S. government, not despite but because of close U.S.-Israeli ties, Palestinians’ chances of achieving their objectives are nil.

It might thus might have behooved the Palestinians to rethink at least some of their orthodoxies and negotiating positions, consider where they may have erred and what changes they might make. In typical form, however, the Palestinians responded with wounded fury by digging in even further, denouncing the Administration’s actions, besmirching its motives, and even seeking to delegitimize it. They also announced a cessation of all contact with the Administration, seemingly forgetting who the superpower is and who is a small and increasingly isolated actor, even in the Arab world.

Despite the cessation of contact, for the first time the Palestinians recently heard prospective good news out of Washington. Trump stated that it is now the Palestinians’ turn to “get something very good,” presumably from Israel—the seemingly logical next step in his transactional approach to foreign policy. To sweeten the intimation, Trump even expressed some support for a two-state solution. He has, however, elaborated no further and Administration spokespeople have since “walked back” both statements—leaving all of us still in doubt about what the strategy is, or even if there is one worthy of the term.

Whatever its thinking, if it can be called that, one thing remains clear: If the Administration truly wishes to achieve progress, not just break things, it must shake things up on the Israeli side as well. There need not be complete symmetry in the Administration’s actions toward the two sides, but much as its recent actions addressed frozen Palestinian orthodoxies regarding Jerusalem and refugees, so it might now wish to address some of Israel’s frozen orthodoxies, both in regard to these and other issues.

The following are three possible options for doing so. What they have in common is that they all upend the longstanding presumption that the issues addressed can only be resolved following a final peace agreement; these options, by contrast, provide partial solutions today. Still, all three would have a dramatic impact on Israeli public opinion, especially coming from a U.S. Administration perceived to be unusually pro-Israel. In offering the Palestinians the prospects of immediate and concrete achievements—less than they seek, but important nonetheless—the proposal seeks to create solid Palestinian buy-in to the negotiating process.

Option I: The first such option, already highly controversial but less so than the next two, has to do with the establishment of a Palestinian state. Past Administrations have stated U.S. government support for this outcome, but have deliberately refrained from committing to specific borders so as not to prejudge negotiations between the parties. If the Trump Administration wishes to stir things up on the Israeli side, it could partly change this long-standing approach and state that it does not recognize Israeli sovereignty—and call upon Israel to renounce any such claims—over the approximately 90 percent of the West Bank that lies east of the separation barrier, with possible reservations regarding specific locations (all sides accept that Gaza would be part of a Palestinian state).

Although such an American declaration would not meet Palestinian demands, it would constitute an important indication of the seriousness of the U.S. commitment to a viable two-state solution. At the same time it would still leave Israel sufficient room for negotiations on final borders, necessary both for substantive and tactical purposes. No less importantly, it would constitute a moment of reckoning for Israel’s right-wing, forcing it to begin thinking about actual borders and lines of separation from the Palestinians.

Option II: A second, more controversial, option would be an explicit statement by the Administration that it supports the establishment of a Palestinian capital in at least parts of East Jerusalem. The Administration could also call upon Israel to make a similar statement.

Jerusalem is a uniquely complicated and sensitive issue for the entire Jewish and Muslim worlds, and much of the Christian one as well. A declaration such as this would shock Israel’s right-wing. Indeed, it would shock Israelis of nearly all stripes, and would force them to confront a bitter truth: that the Muslim world cannot live with sole Israeli control over Jerusalem and that some division of the city—to address Palestinian political demands, as well as accommodations regarding Muslim holy sites—will be necessary. Prime Ministers Barak and Olmert already recognized the need for such wrenching concessions and made dramatic proposals to that end. The Muslim world, similarly, will have to recognize that Israel and the Jewish people, having regained sovereignty over all of Jerusalem for the first time since Second Temple times, must retain control over much of the city. Various press reports indicate that some Arab leaders, including the current Saudi Crown Prince, are ready to accept this reality.

Option III: A third possibility, arguably the most controversial, would upend the existing orthodoxy regarding the timing and sequencing of the refugees issue and “right of return.” Instead of having to await implementation of the final agreement, the Trump Administration could propose that Israel begin allowing a small and controlled return of refugees to those areas of the West Bank that it already does not control today, and will not control in any permanent agreement: areas “A” and “B” (some 40 percent of the territory), mutually agreed parts of “area C,” and an unlimited return to Gaza.

An American proposal along these lines would have a dramatic impact on Israeli public discourse, forcing it for the first time to come to grips with the refugee issue. If there is one issue in Israel on which there is a wall-to-wall consensus, it is opposition to the “right of return,” which the public considers a formula for Israel’s national demise. In practice, both Barak and Olmert were willing to accept a limited return as part of a final agreement, reportedly up to 10,000 a year for ten years. Getting the Israeli public to accept even such limited numbers today, following the second intifada and ongoing violence over the years, would be extraordinarily difficult.

To make this proposal minimally palatable for Israel, it would have to be made contingent on three major Palestinian concessions: renunciation of the principle of unlimited “right of return,” restoration of PA rule in Gaza, and an end to violence. As a first step, returnees could be limited to refugees currently residing in Jordan, and might then be expanded to additional countries over time should the process prove successful. Jordan has a particular stake in resolving the refugee issue, and its effective security services could vet the returnees and help ensure their peaceful intentions. Any returnee found in areas of the West Bank other than those designated would be in violation of the plan and could be deported.

Israel’s consensus in opposition to the “right of return” is matched only by the Palestinian consensus in favor of it. To date, no Palestinian leader has been willing to publicly forgo this “right” defined in unlimited terms, even while Palestinian negotiators have quietly recognized that a complete return is unrealistic. This proposal would thus force the Palestinians to confront a long overdue and truly agonizing dilemma, whether to accept a concrete proposal for a limited return of refugees today, or continue adhering, probably forever, to the impossible demand for an unlimited return. It would provide the PA with an immediate and tangible achievement, which it could “sell” to its public and which would show, contrary to the popular image, that the PA can achieve Palestinian objectives.

All three of the proposals would be electrifying for both sides and would likely be rejected today outright. In Israel, however, an overwhelming majority, in excess of 90 percent, staunchly opposes a bi-national “one-state solution,” even though this is precisely what the policies of Israel’s right-wing governments are leading to. A small majority still supports various versions of the classic two-state solution, despite a nearly all-pervasive despair over the prospects of it ever happening; its numbers would swell rapidly, probably reaching the approximately two-thirds level it has enjoyed in the past, if the public believed once again that prospects for peace were realistic.

Much of Israel’s public already lives in a psychological state of de facto separation from the Palestinians, has never visited the West Bank (and certainly not Gaza), and has rarely, if ever, even had a significant personal exchange with a Palestinian. A declaration that Israel does not claim sovereignty over the parts of the West Bank that lie east of the security barrier is therefore something that large majorities of Israelis could support.

Jerusalem and especially the refugee issue are far more sensitive. Although a large majority of Israelis oppose a division of Jerusalem, the taboo was broken in the negotiations in 2000 and 2008; most Israelis today rarely visit East Jerusalem. But the proposal regarding the refugee issue would only grow legs if it were tied tightly to the tough Palestinian counter-concessions mentioned above.

The Palestinians’ self-defeating fear of interim measures turning into permanent ones has left them paralyzed, incapable of moving forward, so they will undoubtedly find reasons to oppose these proposals, too, even though they clearly serve their interests. With Mahmoud Abbas, the last of the founding PLO fathers, now well into his 80s and with no clear heir apparent, the Palestinians are rapidly approaching the end of an era. A power struggle, which may be violent and prolonged, is likely. The more than decade-long split between the West Bank and Gaza is a Palestinian nightmare that has resisted numerous attempts at reconciliation and reunification, but a leadership transition may hold the key to resolving it. Projecting bold initiatives into a time of leadership transition among the Palestinians may well be more than the traffic can bear, but if done properly it would shape the outcome of that process in such a way as to make genuine progress more likely.

That would be extremely useful, for after decades of inconclusive diplomacy, many despair of the two-state solution ever becoming a reality. There is, however, no other known solution to the conflict that realistically achieves the two sides’ primary national objectives: for Israel a predominantly Jewish and democratic state, for the Palestinians an independent state of their own.

Nevertheless, supporters of the two-state solution must acknowledge a difficult reality, one that some would argue challenges the two-state solution paradigm altogether: namely, the likelihood that a Palestinian state will prove no more successful, moderate, democratic, or peaceful than any of the some two-dozen other Arab states already in existence. To the contrary, decades of experience with the corrupt and feckless Palestinian dictatorship in the West Bank, the PA, and the extremist, murderous Hamas theocracy in Gaza, give reason to believe that a Palestinian state is far more likely to be an impoverished, radical, and irredentist one, engaged in some degree of ongoing conflict with Israel long after peace is formally contracted. A Palestinian state is vital not because it is a panacea, but because every other alternative to the two-state paradigm is even worse.

Critics typically make the argument that a two-state solution is essential for Israel because demography would otherwise present it with an unacceptable binary choice. Israel, according to this mantra, can accept a binational “one-state solution” in which an almost immediate Arab majority ensures that it loses its Jewish character; or it can continue to deny Palestinians the right to vote for Israeli institutions and lose its democratic character.

Reality, as usual, is more complex. In real life, gradations of democracy and discrimination characterize all democratic polities. Millions of Americans, residents of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam, for example, territories that have been part of the United States for over a century, cannot vote in Federal elections, yet few would seriously charge that the United States is not a democracy on that account. Nine European countries are officially Christian, including the United Kingdom, in which only a Protestant can inherit the British throne. In all Western countries, Sunday is the official day off, and Christmas is a national holiday. Even if a two-state solution is not achieved, Palestinians would continue to vote for their own institutions, as they already can today—when their leaders are so good as to actually hold elections—and to enjoy far greater freedom of expression than their brethren anywhere else in the Arab world. The quality of Israeli democracy would suffer in the long run, as it already has, but the binary choice is simplistic.

Israel cannot, however, win the demographic race, no matter how the figures are stacked. Already today, some 40 percent of the combined populations of Israel and the West Bank are not Jewish, a ratio that holds nearly constant projected out to 2060. If one includes Gaza, there either already has been a Palestinian majority for some years, or depending on the data, there will be by 2025. The Zionist movement never identified the percentage of Israel’s population that must be Jewish for it to constitute the “nation-state of the Jewish people,” but no imaginable definition meets this objective if 40 percent of Israel’s population is not Jewish.

Israel is now entering an electoral year. For the Israeli public, in many ways, things have never been so good. The economy is humming and the overall security situation is satisfactory, at least for the immediate future. Israel is a global center of high-tech innovation and, impressions to the contrary notwithstanding, has relations today with more countries than ever before. In the absence of what the public perceives to be any realistic prospects for peace with the Palestinians, regardless of Israel’s government or its positions, it is focused on domestic quality of life issues. Moreover, the opposition parties lack a charismatic leader with any realistic prospects of victory, as well as a practical peace-related platform on which to campaign.

The foregoing proposals would have a dramatic impact on Israel’s electorate and turn the upcoming elections into what they may be anyway: one of the last opportunities to elect a government committed to a two-state solution before the current reality truly becomes irreversible. If the Trump Administration adds a concerted effort to break Israeli orthodoxies to its efforts to do so regarding the Palestinians, progress may be possible. Sometimes you just have to break things; but always you must have a knack for putting them back together again.