Amb. Dore Gold told the StandWithUs organization in New York last week,
We’ve had a lot of lessons we’ve learned from past diplomatic initiatives. The people of Israel really do want peace, but they want peace with security. Unfortunately we’ve learned the hard way that if our security interests are not protected, if our vital interests are ignored, we invite the next round of conflict.
Those of you who were in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv during the second intifada know what an exploding bus looks like – and those buses exploded when we had already signed peace agreements. We can never let that happen again, period.
So any arrangements we might make with our Palestinian neighbors, first of all, will not just be with them. It will have to be with Arab states as well. And second of all, the security elements in any understanding with our Palestinian neighbors are going to have to be far stronger than anything you’ve seen before in diplomacy. And I believe the Trump Administration understands that.
