Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein praised US President Donald Trump for his fresh approach to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, but said the American plan still contains one fatal flaw: a Palestinian state.

“The plan’s importance is that it changes the entire approach. No longer must Israel give everything for the chance of peace. No longer are we presumed guilty,” Edelstein said in an interview on Monday with the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Referring to Trump’s comprehensive “Peace to Prosperity” proposal, Edelstein went on to explain that the reason it won’t succeed in kickstarting the peace process is because it guarantees the Palestinians an independent state.

“This tells the Palestinians they don’t really need to negotiate, that they’ll still get a state, even as they call the President of the United States a ‘dog,'” the Knesset Speaker said.

More than that, Edelstein pointed out the absurdity of the fact that all peace plans of the past 20 years have had to deal with how to protect Israel from violence emanating from a future Palestinian state.

“Everyone knows that this state will be hostile from the very beginning. Will American marines have to protect us from terrorism?” he asked.

It’s a question many other Israelis have posited, as well.

If it’s readily assumed, even by Western peace brokers, that a future Palestinian state will be the source of continued terrorist violence against Israel, why facilitate its creation in the first place?

Has the world learned nothing from Israel’s full surrender of the Gaza Strip only to have it transform into a haven for jihadists?

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