As usual for American presidents, Trump seems to be on the verge of recognizing a Palestinian state. As is also usual, the Israeli Right is up in arms against it.

US President Donald Trump, who until now has not spoken of the two-state solution, intends to recognize a Palestinian state, according to the report. -- JPost

 …and, countering, from the Israeli Right…

The Sovereignty Movement founded by Women in Green is publishing a protest following the publication of the principles of the Trump outline for a political settlement between Israel and the PA. -- Women in Green -- as translated by Israpundit

Here is the problem in full force. A substantial part of the Israeli populace is right-wing (or, if you prefer the term: conservative), and will never agree to any Palestinian state. So whatever President Trump suggests will probably be ignored. I am sure the Israelis will be just as competent at ignoring President Trump’s ideas on a two-state solution as they were at ignoring Obama's.

The Israelis are experts at stalling. When President Kennedy insisted that American inspectors be allowed to examine Dimona, Ben Gurion resigned rather than give in.

Finally, Kennedy had enough, and in a personal letter dated May 18, 1963, the president warned that unless American inspectors were allowed into Dimona (meaning the end of any military activities), Israel would find itself totally isolated. Rather than answering, Ben-Gurion abruptly resigned. -- JPost

Kennedy was no Obama. He was not hostile to a Jewish state. He just wanted a Mideast free of nuclear weapons.

What should be clear, by now, is that Israel wants all the land west of the Jordan River. Maybe that is Israel’s right, Israel’s patrimony, Israel’s just claim; but even if so, Israel refuses to properly address what she wants to do with the Arabs in the land.

And that is the issue.

If one adds in the number of Arabs inside Gaza plus the number of Arabs inside Judea and Samaria (what the world calls the West Bank), then there are anywhere from 3.5 - 4.5 million Arabs. The conservative Yoram Ettinger would use the lower number, but other demographers claim to have good reason to use the higher number. The discrepancy comes from differences in the estimates of Arabs inside Judea and Samaria.

Add in the 1.8+ million Arabs who are Israeli citizens and you have roughly 5.3 - 6.3 million Arabs total in the Holy Land. Like it or not, that number starts to approximate the number of Jews [6.5 million] in the land.

To a large extent, these Arabs -- even a lot of Israeli Arabs -- identify as Palestinian. I know that term aggravates a lot of readers here at AT, but a Palestinian national identity started to form before 1900. An Arab newspaper Falastin (Palestine) was opened in 1911 in Jaffa. Palestinian identity was not invented in 1964, as so many claim.

So Israel stalls; and the world gets upset with Israel. Maybe the world shouldn't get upset, but it does. However, Israel never tells us what she will do with the 3.5 - 4.5 million Arabs in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. It seems Israel is content to limit them to Palestinian reservations; but the “restless natives” are not so agreeable.

Israel is running what is a functional empire. This is not obvious because Israel is so small; but if one defines an empire as a polity which rules over a disenfranchised, disparate people, then Israel would qualify.

By means of comparison: the U.S. is not such an empire. Guamians, Puerto Ricans, and the Saipanese are U.S. citizens who can move to the mainland and start voting as soon as they establish residence. Had the U.S. kept a disenfranchised Philippines, it would have been an empire.

The British ran an empire. The French did for a while, but slowly started to enfranchise the outer territories they kept. South America’s French Guiana sends representatives to the Assemblée nationale and to the French Senate. The Arabs in Nablus, Ramallah, and Gaza City have no representatives in the Knesset, which controls most of their borders, their airspace, their coastline, their imports and exports.

I understand why Israel does this. The Arabs are hostile to the idea of a Jewish state. The Israelis rightly fear that an Arab electorate, combined with a crazy Jewish left, could conceivably vote in an Islamic Republic were the Arabs given the franchise.

However, empires are inherently unstable. They are a never-ending source of violence and trouble. People do not like to be ruled over by another power, with no representation. Just ask S. Adams, T. Jefferson, and G. Washington.

As long as this situation persists, Israel will have nonstop violence. This is an historical inevitability. Britain did not see peace in Southern Ireland until Britain left, after 700+ years of strife. The Basque and Catalans are an ever-present problem to Madrid. The Basque may be quiet at this moment; but if they decide to close ranks with Catalan separatism, Spain would collapse. And this is even though the Basque and Catalans have representation in the central government, unlike the Palestinians.

As the Zionist founder, Ze’ev Jabotinsky noted:

The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage.

And it made no difference whatever whether the colonists behaved decently or not. -- The Iron Wall, Jewish Virtual Library

I am not diminishing the horror of Islam, though there are a few nominally Christian Palestinians. And I do recognize that the Palestinians do not want a Jewish state at all. Their present mantra is that they want a secular state. Good luck with that! The only somewhat secular state in Araby was Syria; and we know how well that was run.

But Israel persists in saying it wants peace, when all it can safely offer the Arabs is very diminished status. No one would settle for that. The Jewish people did not settle for a minority status in a Palestinian state when offered such, even though enfranchised, under the 1939 MacDonald White Paper. Rather, some among the Yishuv (Jewish community) got violent: The Stern (Lehi) gang, the Irgun. If Jews would not accept such an enfranchised minority status, can we seriously expect the far more irascible Arabs would tolerate an even more diminished, disenfranchised status? Of course not! The Yishuv did not accept a less onerous offer in 1939. The Arabs will not accept a worse offer now.

Stop playing games! Israel should tell President Trump what it really wants, clearly, instead of vagaries about wanting peace. Change the paradigm, and make a real honest offer, not an offer no Palestinian would ever accept.

If Israel really wants a Jewish state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, then tell President Trump what Israel intends to do with the Arabs in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.

Will Israel enfranchise these Arabs? Will Israel ethnically cleanse them at the first available opportunity? Will Israel make their lives a bureaucratic hell, until they leave out of frustration, as seems to be the case?

I have communicated with Israelis, and the usual answer I get is: It will take time.

Time?! It has been 50 years since 1967. Time is not your friend. When I hear, “This will take time,” I know that the speaker really means, “Hopefully, we can build a few more Jewish settlements, and the world may forget about it.” The speaker is stalling, and does not want to admit it. I have nothing against new Jewish communities. Go ahead. Build them. But I have something against the stalling.

Will Israel pay the Palestinians to leave, as I have suggested, or as Dr. Martin Sherman has suggested? When I first posited the idea on American Thinker, I was called a loon. Over the intervening few years, others seem to have picked up the idea. There really is no other option, apart from ethnic cleansing.

And please do not say the Arabs should all go back to Jordan, when Jordan will no longer take them, and many of them were not from Jordan in the first place. A lot of them -- more than Israel cares to admit -- came from the coastal areas of what is now Israel.

I am not against Israel. I am against this duplicitous stalling which solves nothing; and which makes the rather insane Muslim side look good. Tell us what Israel really wants, and how Israel intends to go about it. Stop the stalling.

And if Israel will not oblige us with an honest proposal, then unlike Obama, we should do nothing to hurt Israel; but we should withdraw from the Mideast altogether. Let Israel do whatever Israel wants, but wash our hand of whatever happens as a result.

Now that the USA is getting free of Arab oil, it would be good to let the Muslim world know that they have no sympathy from us.

Mike Konrad is the pen name of an American who wishes he had availed himself more fully of the opportunity to learn Spanish better in high school, lo those many decades ago. He runs a website about the Arabs in South America at http://latinarabia.com, and a website about small computers at http://thetinydesktop.com