Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today proposed a new peace plan to U.S. President Donald Trump via two of his top advisers, Jason D. Greenblatt and Jared Kushner, who arrived in the region this week in an attempt to help calm the situation in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu’s plan involves Israel annexing Gush Etzion in exchange for transferring the heavily populated Arab towns in Wadi Ara – the area known as the “Northern Triangle” – to the Palestinian Authority, Israel’s Channel 2 TV investigative journalist Amit Segal reported Thursday night.
According to the proposal, only the Arab towns and its citizens in those Arab towns would be swapped, not the entire region itself.
The Triangle is a stronghold of the Islamic Movement in Israel and Raed Salah, the current leader of the movement’s northern faction is a former mayor of Umm al-Fahm.
This is the first time the prime minister has ever publicly suggested such a plan, and he reportedly said it after the massive public support the Arabs of Umm al-Fahm gave to the cop-killing Muslim terrorists.
It’s not the first time the idea has come up. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman made a similar proposal in 2015. “Welcome to the club,” Liberman tweeted in support on Thursday.
אדוני ראש הממשלה @netanyahu
Welcome to the club https://t.co/i5weRN8VR6— אביגדור ליברמן (@AvigdorLiberman) July 27, 2017
Sound familiar? That has been @AvigdorLiberman‘s plan for years https://t.co/WH384C3c9G
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) July 27, 2017
The plan would excise the current Israeli Arab city of Umm al-Fahm, home to the three terrorists who murdered the two Israeli police officers on the Temple Mount two weeks ago, and the many thousands of residents who celebrated at the funeral of the Temple Mount terrorists last night waving Palestinian Authority flags.
The Temple Mount terror attack prompted Israel to install metal detectors and security cameras outside the holy site, which the Jordanian Islamic Waqf, the Jerusalem Mufti and the Palestinian Authority used as the excuse to attempt to launch a third intifada.
It is unlikely the Supreme Court would allow Israel to strip Israeli-Arabs of their Israeli citizenship and turn them into Palestinian Authority citizens, but the threat and message from Netanyahu is clear… if they aren’t going to be good citizens of Israel, there are very unpleasant options on the table that can deal with them.
But to American ears, it probably sounds like a not-half-bad plan, and that’s certainly enough to scare MK Ahmed Tibi, whose own hometown of Taibe, a short distance away, could be next.