Which of the candidates for Israeli prime minister is truly going to build, and who is going to bury the building in years more of sterile peace processing and doomed attempts to achieve international consensus?

How far can Abbas go in opposing negotiation and compromise, encouraging violence, venerating terrorists, spewing hatred, and pushing the criminalization of Israel – while still being considered a paragon of peace by the Israeli Left (ref. Ehud Olmert), the American Jewish Left (ref. Jeremy Ben-Ami), and the global community?

What “everybody” used to “know” about the parameters for Israeli-Palestinian peace has been jolted by the Trump plan.

Israel should act to implement the Trump Plan and reap its early rewards, because it usefully transforms the Mideast peace paradigm. The plan reflects, and can serve as a platform for, Israeli consensus on the Palestinian issue.

The Trump plan’s reported parameters closely hew to the broadest political consensus in Israel. It is a peace paradigm that makes eminent sense to at least 75 percent of Israelis, in my estimation. Therefore, Israel should act swiftly to lock-in the concrete diplomatic gains that can be derived from this outline for regional accommodation. Hopefully the Palestinians will come to see the plan’s advantages too.

By changing the discourse about settlements, the Trump administration is laying the groundwork for realistic negotiation. Even if you think that Israeli settlement should be rolled-back in the context of a sensible peace arrangement, applying the demonizing epithet “illegal” makes for a destructive narrative that distances, not advances, peace.

The organization’s new knavery: cutting US military aid to coerce Israel into withdrawals. J Street is now less protective of Israeli security than Obama was.

At the core of the Trump peace initiatives is creative chaos; replacing hoary assumptions with new bridges and highways – literally and figuratively

Keep the settlement issue in proportion. Settlements are not the bane of local or world peace nor necessarily an obstacle to peace. They neither explain Palestinian unwillingness to make peace with Israel nor are they the cause of traffic jams in Tel Aviv.

He has cornered himself into a situation where he has zero credibility and zero leverage on Israel, the US, the international community, and even the Sunni Arab world. He and the so-called Palestinian “Authority” in the West Bank are obstructionist and kleptocratic in every way.