Currently Jerusalem is mulling plans to apply sovereignty to certain areas of the West Bank with negligible Palestinian populations, following parameters set forth in the peace proposal the Trump administration released in January. Moshe Koppel comments on how best to proceed:

There are two purposes in applying Israeli law [to parts of Judea and Samaria]: 1) to regulate and normalize life through unified, modern laws and to allow for long-term planning and 2) to make it clear that Israel is here for eternity. According to the Trump plan, the application of Israeli law entails a construction freeze and the start of a process that could theoretically end with a Palestinian state. The plan is very good for Israel, but two steps must be taken to ensure that the blessing doesn’t turn into a curse.

The first step is for Israel and the U.S. to sign a memorandum of understanding in which Washington will promise to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state until the Palestinians fulfill all eight of the conditions of the [American] plan, which they will most likely never do. It is important to remember that Donald Trump won’t always be president. Agreement on a map brings us closer to a Palestinian state without the conditions being fulfilled if a less friendly president moves into the White House. A signed memorandum might not bind the hands of another president, but American tradition would make it very hard for that president to ignore it.

The second step is to improve the maps attached to the Trump plan. Let’s tell the truth: these maps were drawn up in an almost criminally amateur manner. The current maps annex nearly 100,000 Arabs in the area of Biddu and Beit Lakiya to Israel and cut off entire cities from adjacent roads, as well as other elementary mistakes.

To make the maps viable, there is no need to institute major changes. The conceptual map gives Israel 32.4 percent of Judea and Samaria. Maintaining that same percentage, we could apply Israeli law to all settlements and the Jordan Valley, including the allocation of land for settlements, corridors to connect communities, and major transportation arteries. None of this would require bringing any Arab village inside the new lines.

Examining the effects of Iran’s decision to launch nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Benny Morris takes stock of the Jewish state’s strategic situation:

The massive Iranian attack has turned what began as a local war in and around the Gaza Strip and then expanded into a Hamas–Hizballah–Houthi–Israeli war [into] a regional war with wide and possibly calamitous international repercussions.

Before the Iranians launched their attack, Washington warned Tehran to desist (“don’t,” in President Biden’s phrase), and Israel itself had reportedly cautioned the Iranians secretly that such an attack would trigger a devastating Israeli counterstrike. But a much-humiliated Iran went ahead, nonetheless.

For Israel, the way forward seems to lie in an expansion of the war—in the north or south or both—until the country attains some sort of victory, or a diplomatic settlement is reached. A “victory” would mean forcing Hizballah to cease fire in exchange, say, for a cessation of the IDF bombing campaign and withdrawal to the international border, or forcing Iran, after suffering real pain from IDF attacks, to cease its attacks and rein in its proxies: Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

At the same time, writes Morris, a victory along such lines would still have its limits:

An IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a cessation of Israeli air-force bombing would result in Hizballah’s resurgence and its re-investment of southern Lebanon down to the border. Neither the Americans nor the French nor the UN nor the Lebanese army—many of whose troops are Shiites who support Hizballah—would fight them.