So be it. The U.S. is out of the peace negotiating business in the Middle East. It's up to Israel and the Palestinians to make peace or not make peace. The U.S. no longer has any standing to mediate and never will again.
Well, afaik, we’ve offered $50 billion. Not sure if it’s all taxpayer money or if they’ve assembled a multi-national fund of public/private development.
One thing I’ve always found ironic is the overt anti-Israel hatred of ‘pro-Palestinians’, as if you can’t be in favor of both peoples having peace and prosperity? And yet, the Palestinian technocrats depend heavily on the Israeli government - they use the Israeli currency, they pay taxes to Israel, Israel manages their telecoms and much of their public utlities like water, electricity, waste management. On the surface the Palestinian spokespeople rail all day about how evil Israel is, but on a day to day basis they depend on and work with Israelis to keep their society well lubricated.
I guess it’s just politics. But it’s also an insanity, repeating the same mistakes. I agree to an extent - the US should more or less retreat from that mess. We should do what is best for us. Bill Clinton made the biggest effort ever. Arafat was the most frequent visitor to his white house of all foreigners. And his deal collapsed. Word is he told GW Bush simply to ignore Arafat and stay out of it, which is why the Bush Admin laid down a set of rules (which were never met) if they wanted US to help. Plus, Bush had a lot of other priorities after 9/11. 9/11 made the Pali cause 2nd hand news, especially after all the effort Clinton put in. Arafat rejected the “best and final offer” so there was nothing much more we could do. The current offer is considerably less generous to the Palis than the last offer when Clinton was in power and the Israelis had a leftist government.
I don’t know and haven’t analyzed Trump’s program in much detail, but frankly I think it’s just an opening gambit and in some part tied to his campaign - so he can say to the voters we’re making progress on XYZ and let’s not change horses mid-stream.