When not opposing the construction of houses in Israel, the advocacy group J Street, working alongside far-left and pro-Iranian organizations, has been lobbying the U.S. Congress to suspend sanctions against Iran. In doing so, it gives the lie to its claim that it is really a pro-Israel organization dedicated to a diplomatic solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It seems more likely that it has made itself into an extension of the Obama administration. Eric Greenstein writes:

This wouldn’t be the first time J Street has worked together with the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) to prevent either a military strike or the strengthening of sanctions against Iran. Already in 2009, J Street head Jeremy Ben-Ami and Dr. Trita Parsi of NIAC worked against sanctions, and the two organizations have developed warm ties. A Jerusalem Post investigation showed that J Street received donations from Muslim and Arab bodies, including those with connections to NIAC.

The character of the organizations and the timing of their “grassroots” pressure on Congress raise serious questions about J Street’s role as an arm of the White House. The timing of the petition is no coincidence. On November 24, the ultimatum set for the Iranians in the framework of the nuclear talks will expire. Along with other powers, the United States is working intensively to reach an agreement with Iran that would reduce the number of [but not eliminate] its active centrifuges.

Over the weekend, Elliot Kaufman of the Wall Street Journal reported about a formal letter, signed by five prominent sheikhs from the Judean city of Hebron and addressed to the Israeli economy minister Nir Barkat. The letter proposed that Hebron, one of the West Bank’s largest municipalities, “break out of the Palestinian Authority (PA), establish an emirate of its own, and join the Abraham Accords.” Kaufman spoke with some of the sheikhs, who emphasized their resentment at the PA’s corruption and fecklessness, and their desire for peace.

Responding to these unusual events, Seth Mandel looks back to what he describes as his favorite “‘what if’ moment in the Arab-Israeli conflict,” involving

a plan for the West Bank drawn up in the late 1980s by the former Israeli foreign minister Moshe Arens. The point of the plan was to prioritize local Arab Palestinian leadership instead of facilitating the PLO’s top-down governing approach, which was corrupt and authoritarian from the start.

Mandel, however, is somewhat skeptical about whether such a plan can work in 2025:

Yet, . . . while it is almost surely a better idea than anything the PA has or will come up with, the primary obstacle is not the quality of the plan but its feasibility under current conditions. The Arens plan was a “what if” moment because there was no clear-cut governing structure in the West Bank and the PLO, then led by Yasir Arafat, was trying to direct the Palestinian side of the peace process from abroad (Lebanon, then Tunisia). In fact, Arens’s idea was to hold local elections among the Palestinians in order to build a certain amount of democratic legitimacy into the foundation of the Arab side of the conflict.

Whatever becomes of the Hebron proposal, there is an important lesson for Gaza from the ignored Arens plan: it was a mistake, as one sheikh told Kaufman, to bring in Palestinian leaders who had spent decades in Tunisia and Lebanon to rule the West Bank after Oslo. Likewise, Gaza will do best if led by the people there on the ground, not new leaders imported from the West Bank, Qatar, or anywhere else.