Palestinians: The Only Acceptable Peace Plan

by Bassam Tawil • June 25, 2018 at 5:00 am

The Palestinians want nothing to do with President Trump's plan: they know it will never satisfy their demands. The Palestinians are not opposed to the peace plan because of a dispute over a border or a settlement or a checkpoint or the status of Jerusalem. They are against Trump's plan -- and any other peace initiative -- because the Palestinians have something else in mind.
The two Palestinian parties, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, may disagree on everything -- except the elimination of Israel. The only peace plan acceptable to current Palestinian leaders would be one that facilitated their mission of pursuing jihad against Israel to obliterate it.
If Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt wish to learn more about the true ambitions of the Palestinians, they would do well to take in a sermon at a mosque on some Friday or stop into a school in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Perhaps then they would see for themselves that no peace plan in the world can, at the moment, counter the poison that is injected daily into the hearts and minds of the Palestinians and their children.

In the past six months, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his senior associates have not only refused to meet with any official from the US administration, they have also been waging a smear campaign of hate and incitement against President Trump and top US officials. Pictured: US presidential envoys Jason Greenblatt (left) and Jared Kushner (center) speak with Abbas (right) on June 22, 2017 in Ramallah. At the meeting, Abbas rejected their demand that he halt payments to terrorists and their families. (Photo by Thaer Ghanaim/PPO via Getty Images)

The Palestinians have never laid eyes on US President Donald Trump's plan for peace in the Middle East. The Palestinians know nothing about the plan, which still has not been made public.

That fact, however, has not stopped them from categorically rejecting the yet-to-be-announced plan -- a stance the Palestinians repeated this week as US Middle East envoys Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt visited Israel and a number of Arab countries to discuss the plan.

The Trump plan has not even been finalized and, as such, has not officially been presented to any of the parties to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Kushner and Greenblatt have been working on the plan for several months; their current tour of the region comes in the context of Jordan and Egypt.

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Nuclear Deterrence: Adopting the Reagan Approach

by Mark B. Schneider and Peter Huessy • June 25, 2018 at 4:00 am

President Reagan's successful policies involved not the elimination of all nuclear weapons, but the simultaneous modernization of all legs of America's nuclear Triad, while significantly reducing the size of the strategic nuclear arsenals of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review confirms reports going back to 2004 that, "Russia is in violation of its... political commitments that directly affect the security of others, including... the 1991 Presidential Nuclear Initiatives." These eliminated America's battlefield nuclear weapons and many other nuclear capabilities, while Russia violated its reciprocal pledge to do the same.
Today, Russia and China not only have massive nuclear modernization programs, but also precision nuclear missiles, while the U.S. does not. Let it be a cautionary tale for the current administration in Washington.

Pictured: The test-launch of an unarmed Trident II D5 missile from the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine USS Nebraska off the coast of California. (Image source: U.S. Navy/Ronald Gutridge/Released)

Ronald Reagan, one of the most important presidents in American history, advanced a defense policy based on "peace through strength," and "reducing nuclear dangers." In so doing, he dramatically altered the United States' approach to dealing with the Soviet nuclear threat.

President Reagan's successful policies involved not the elimination of all nuclear weapons, but the simultaneous modernization of all legs of America's nuclear Triad in a manner that enhanced national security and strategic stability, while significantly reducing the size of the strategic nuclear arsenals of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. He further enhanced America's deterrent by deploying nuclear cruise missiles (SLCMs) on naval ships, and medium-range nuclear missiles and new nuclear artillery in Europe.

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