For two years, White House officials have spoken of crafting a proposal to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict; the Trump administration reportedly will release the details shortly after the April 9 Israeli election. Tom Gross notes several reasons why this plan might succeed where so many others have failed:

[T]he Arab states have changed. Utterly tired of Palestinian intransigence and refusal even to negotiate publicly for a decade now—and far more concerned about the increasing Iranian threat across the region—they are favorably disposed to Israel as never before. They also know that their economies can benefit greatly from Israeli expertise. . . .

In the past, when Palestinian leaders turned down offers of independent statehood without even agreeing to further discussions (offers of a kind that Chechens, Kurds, Baluchis, Tibetans, and dozens of other stateless people would have jumped at), far from being pressured or ostracized, the Palestinian leadership was given even more money and more red-carpet treatment by Western countries. Casting themselves as perpetual victims paid off. No longer. Trump has already shown, through his decision to move the American embassy to western Jerusalem, recognize Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights, and cut funding to the Palestinians, that there will be a price to pay for such intransigence. . . .

Palestinians will learn that there will be massive financial investment if they accept. Incentives were offered in the past too, but the Palestinian public was never properly informed. Today, because of very high Internet usage, it will be hard for Palestinian leaders to hide from their people what is at stake.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.