How Trump Can Earn a Place in History That He Did Not Expect

Does Donald Trump’s return to the presidency herald the end of U.S. pressure on Israelis and Palestinians for a two-state solution? Not necessarily: It depends on which Donald Trump occupies the White House.

Will it be the Trump who just appointed Mike Huckabee, a supporter of Israeli annexation of the West Bank, as his new ambassador in Jerusalem? Or will it be the Trump who, with his son-in-law Jared Kushner, crafted and released the most detailed plan for a two-state solution since Bill Clinton’s administration?

You read that right: Trump was the rare American president who actually put out a detailed plan for coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. If that Trump revives that initiative in 2025, he could be remembered as the president who preserved Israel as a Jewish democracy and helped to securely birth a Palestinian state alongside it. But if he continues along the path signaled by the Huckabee nomination, he will most likely be remembered as the president who oversaw the end of Israel as a Jewish democracy and buried any hope of a Palestinian state. Either way, Trump may not be interested in Jewish or Palestinian history, but Jewish and Palestinian history will be interested in him.

The last time I spoke with Trump, four years ago, he called to thank me for endorsing the Abraham Accords, which paved the way for a historic peace between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Say what you will about Trump (and there is a lot to say), but he’s drawn to striking big deals that can have profound and even history-shaping consequences. I’ve just spent a week in Israel and the U.A.E. talking to political, military and business leaders, Jews and Palestinians and Arabs about what Trump might do in their region this time around. There is enormous opportunity and appetite for a game-changing deal — if Trump wants to reach for it and only if he does it right.

Trump has a starting point: the plan for a two-state solution that he put out in January 2020, titled “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People.” Neither side will embrace it as it is currently written, and the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing war in Gaza will complicate any deal enormously. But the “vision” in the title of Trump’s plan is a kick-starter for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations post-Gaza. It’s still the only detailed peace map that any president has publicly presented to create two states since the Clinton parameters, set out by Clinton 24 years ago.

The plan offered Israel the right to annex roughly 30 percent of the West Bank where a majority of Jewish settlers reside, with the remainder going for a demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Trump proposed that Gaza would be expanded with land from Israel’s Negev Desert to compensate Palestinians for part of the territory they would relinquish from the West Bank. It was not a one-to-one land swap, as the Palestinians have demanded — more like one to two. It’s not the plan I would’ve put out, and it involved zero Palestinian input, but it was a starting point.