Just two weeks after its release, the Trump Administration’s plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace has already been so widely discredited for its one-sidedness and its political deviousness that there is a risk of ignoring its most immediate threat—which is not to the Palestinians but to Jordan. In Israel, the plan, or “Vision,” as the document unveiled at the White House calls it, has been received as an American warrant for the Israeli government to annex West Bank territory. This could precipitate a crisis in the Hashemite kingdom of Abdullah II, whose stability is critical to Israel’s security, and to that of America’s regional allies, particularly in any effort to thwart Iranian forces in Syria, Iraq, and the Gulf. On Tuesday, the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will meet with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in New York, where they are expected to emphasize the need for reciprocal negotiations, which would never have produced this plan. They will hold a joint press conference, Olmert told me, “to remind people of what we almost achieved in 2008, and signal a way forward.” But the plan has a collateral danger. “A one-sided annexation,” he added, “will risk a Jordanian reaction that is going to be very unfriendly, and seriously undermine our relations.”
