What was Trump doing in the Middle East?

Of course you knew that was coming, right?

Poor cold joint, he confuses disagreeing with argument.

Both of you hold the same opinions and state them in similar ways.

There is no difference between you and C J. Both of you hold the same opinions and state them in similar ways.

I sometime think you are the same poster under a different handle. Its easy to confuse your posts.

And it doesn't take a genius to mock someone's intilligence especially when they claim to be above the normal.

2) One of the most important mythologies and one of the revisionisms that has emerged is that in the end what was offered to the Palestinians was something that no Palestinian could have accepted. A mythology developed that the Palestinians were offered a state that couldn't have been viable, territories that were totally divided and surrounded, settlements interspersed throughout the Palestinian territories, no independent border with Jordan as an example in the West Bank, and something that by definition no Palestinian could accept.

For the first time, I present maps that compare what the Palestinians were offered with what Arafat says he was offered.

Arafat says he was offered cantons, small, isolated Palestinian islands, completely divided up by Israeli roads and settlements and surrounded by the Israelis -- completely untrue. He says he wasn't even offered 90 percent of the West Bank -- completely untrue.

In the Clinton ideas, which are also presented in the book, the Palestinians were offered the following: 100 percent of Gaza, roughly 97 percent of the West Bank. The principles that guided the way the borders should be drawn and determined by the two sides, based on the percentages were:

• Contiguity of territory for the Palestinians, non-absorption of Palestinians into Israel.
  
  
• All the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem would have become Palestinian, and it would have been the capital for the Palestinian state.
  
  
• An international presence to provide security for the Palestinians, and deterrence, and to oversee the implementation of the agreement.
  
  
• A right of return for Palestinian refugees to their state, not to Israel. In a two-state solution, it's a right of return to their state that makes perfect sense. If you want a two-state solution, a right of return to Israel means you want a one-state solution. There will not be a Jewish state of Israel if there is an unlimited right of return for Palestinians to Israel.
  
  
• We also offered a $30 billion fund for the Palestinian refugees for compensation, on the one hand; and for resettlement / relocation / rehabilitation purposes, on the other.

That's not the mythology that Arafat has presented about what he was offered. If what we offered was so obviously unacceptable, then why not just present it as we did? Why lie about it? Why say he was offered cantons when he wasn't? Why say he wasn't offered East Jerusalem when he was offered all of Arab East Jerusalem? Why say the security arrangements were unacceptable when there was an international presence, which has been the litmus test for Palestinians?

There's another myth, that had he accepted it, he would not have lived a day. If he really believed that, he could simply have presented what we offered instead of totally misrepresenting it. So it's important to expose that as well.

I'm impressed. Good source, good expert.

Just not responsive to the question.

What I really liked was was his report of the significance of Israeli efforts to force their agenda on Palestine.

The one that sticks out is how Israel didn't want a Palestinian majority in Jerusalem. A city that's was a Palestinian majority for more than a thousand years before Israelis drove them out.

...word salad.