In an in-depth analysis of the last three decades of attempts to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict—informed in part by their own first-hand involvement during the George W. Bush administration—Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby explain why these efforts failed, often at significant cost of human life. Repeatedly, Palestinian leaders were rewarded for rejecting offers of territory, as each Israeli or American proposal was followed by a more generous one. The plan set forward by the Trump administration, however, deviates from that pattern:

After the major conflicts of the 20th century, the United Nations and its predecessor organizations sought to resettle millions of refugees in new homes. But, as Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf explain in The War of Return, the UN has taken a different approach to those Arabs who fled their homes during Israel’s War of Independence, seeking instead to keep them and their descendants in a permanent state of a homelessness. Matti Friedman writes in his review: