Trump, Playing One-Dimensional Chess, Announces Plan to Screw Palestinians at Some Point in Future

Donald Trump promised during the 2016 campaign that, if elected, he would move the U.S.’s Israel embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This was pleasing to the contingent of hard-line Israelis (and Americans who hold hard-line beliefs about Israel) who believe that Jerusalem is Israel’s one true capital. As you may know, however, many Palestinians also consider Jerusalem to be part of their rightful territory. And Trump has also promised to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians during his term, which means he can’t just go and gratuitously insult the Palestinians by moving our Israel embassy onto disputed land. So the Trump administration leaked word a few weeks ago that it was reneging on the Jerusalem promise. It’s now made the backtrack official in a statement—a weird statement:

I’m not a master negotiator, but it seems like one way to ensure that the Palestinians won’t agree to an American-brokered peace deal is to guarantee that the U.S. will take an action that Palestinians perceive as hostile as soon as the deal is done. In fact, you might say this promise raises the question of why they would even begin negotiating with us in the first place.