US President Donald Trump's so-called "Deal of the Century" isn't perfect. No peace plan is. Not everyone is going to get what they want. Israel will have to give up 70% of the Biblical Jewish territories of Judea and Samaria. Peace plans almost always involve painful compromises.
Unfortunately, many leaders of the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are not taking a pragmatic approach to the plan. They don't realize that it is the best plan that will ever be offered to Israel. Previous attempts at reaching a two-state solution would have seen the Jewish state give up more than 95% of Judea and Samaria, not to mention the fact that thousands of Israelis would have lost their homes.
The Trump plan will allow up to 100% of Israelis living in Judea and Samaria to keep living there. And even if some Israelis need to be relocated, they will probably number in the hundreds as opposed to the thousands that would have been evacuated under previous peace proposals.
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Nevertheless, the leaders of Israel's communities in Judea and Samaria do have legitimate concerns. One of these concerns is the prospect of several smaller communities being surrounded by territory that will be given to the Palestinians for a state. Their only access to the rest of Israel will be special access roads through Palestinian territory. For this reason, the continued maintenance of Israeli communities completely surrounded by Palestinian territory is likely unfeasible, and these communities will almost certainly have to be evacuated.
No evacuation should take place, however, so long as the Palestinians refuse to accept the Trump plan, or even talk about it, for that matter. There must be no unilateral disengagement like Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 or from the Gaza Strip in 2005. The policy of unilateral disengagement has proved to be an epic disaster that should never be repeated again.
Another legitimate concern that community leaders in Judea and Samaria have is the fact that under the Trump plan, people in some communities will have to make significant detours in order to reach major cities like Jerusalem and Tel Aviv without going through Palestinian territory.
For this reason, Israel should push for the building of access roads that would allow Israelis in these communities to travel without taking lengthy detours to avoid Palestinian territory. Such roads would be under Israeli sovereignty and would be elevated or placed underground so as not to split land under Palestinian control. It's only fair, because the Trump plan calls for the building of bridges and tunnels to allow for territorial contiguity in the future state of Palestine. Therefore, Israel should have the same right to their own access roads.
Israeli leaders in Judea and Samaria have to understand that the Deal of the Century gives the Jewish state an opportunity it will likely never have again, since no future American president will likely be as supportive as Trump is in regards to Israel's territorial aspirations.
A presidency under Joe Biden, for example, will certainly not acquiesce to Israeli annexation of territory without an agreement from the Palestinians, who will almost certainly reject any future peace plan that doesn't involve destroying the Jewish state by flooding it with Palestinian "refugees". Hence, accepting the Trump plan is the only logical way forward and the only way for Israel to realize sovereignty over the most important parts of Judea and Samaria.
In 1947, when the Zionist leaders of what would become Israel were presented with the UN Partition Plan, they were pragmatic and accepted the plan, despite its flaws. They didn't make the mistake of missing an opportunity, and neither should Israel's current leaders.
Missing opportunities is something the Palestinians do. Indeed, the Trump plan may be the Palestinians' last chance for statehood, and they have already rejected it, making the same mistake they made in 1947, and many times thereafter. Conversely, Israel must do what its founding fathers did in 1947 and accept the plan before them, despite whatever flaws it may have.
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