Interviewed by Neri Zilber, Efraim Inbar compares the current American proposal for creating a Palestinian state with the plan for territorial compromise set forth by the Labor politician Yigal Allon in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. Like that plan, the new plan “gives Israel control over the Jordan Valley, keeping Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty,” while proposing withdrawal from other West Bank territory. To Zilber’s question of whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be willing to go along with it, Inbar responds:

Netanyahu was and is willing to make territorial compromises with the Palestinians if they behave. Netanyahu has in fact [always] been in the “left wing” of his Likud party, and I’ve heard he’s not averse to giving up additional land for a good deal. But of course, a good deal in his eyes is different from a good deal in Palestinian eyes. And the proof of this is that he accepted the Trump plan as well as indirectly the idea of a Palestinian state, which is included in the Trump plan. And his right wing . . . is up in arms.

Even during the Obama administration, Netanyahu was willing to say yes to [then-Secretary of State] John Kerry in the spring of 2014, including giving up sovereignty in exchange for [Israeli] military control over the Jordan Valley.

Most importantly, argues Inbar, the new peace plan is “definitely not” a solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict:

It’s very naïve if you think you can stop this conflict. It’s over 100 years old, but compared with other protracted, territorial-religious conflicts it’s still young. . . . I do not believe we should be speaking in terms of solutions but rather in terms of managing and limiting the conflict for both sides. The conflict cannot be solved. . . . In the meantime, we should try to manage it within bearable parameters.

[Israel] can never give up security control over the West Bank. The Trump plan acknowledges that. Israel will continue doing what it does now. The status quo is bearable, and I do not see the Palestinians being able to fulfill the minimum criterion of a state, which is the monopoly over the use of force. This is not only a Palestinian problem, but a general Arab political and cultural problem in the region.

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.