Former Israeli UN Ambassador: Settlement leaders’ failure to embrace Trump plan was huge mistake

“If anyone gives the opportunity to annex the Jordan Valley, do not turn a blind eye,” Gold said.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

Israel’s former ambassador to the UN Dore Gold said Tuesday that the rejection by settlement leaders of the Trump peace plan was a mistake that Israelis will one day regret.

Several key leaders of the settlement movement objected strenuously to the Trump peace deal over fears it would both uproot Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria and lead to a Palestinian state that would threaten Israel.

Despite those fears, Gold said the goal of the Israeli negotiators was “to guarantee that all of the settlements would remain under Israeli sovereignty.”

“I think it was forbidden to object to it,” Gold said in an interview at the two-day “Quiet War” conference hosted online by the Makor Rishon newspaper and the Regavim pro-Zionist movement.

Gold said the failure to accept the plan would leave Israelis “crying for generations.”

Under the Trump plan Gold claimed, “We could get a great map for future generations and defend the country. If anyone gives the opportunity to annex the Jordan Valley, do not turn a blind eye.”

“In the history of Israel we knew when to say yes and when to say no, “Gold explained. “Did we love the [1947 United Nations] partition plan? No. We said yes. What happened in the end? [We received] much better lines.”

Gold retired from Israel’s foreign service several years ago and heads the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs think tank, but said the Americans approached him for his opinions on the Trump peace deal.

“I told them I would gladly do so, as long as I could update the prime minister, even though I came as a private person,” Gold noted.

One of the outcomes of recent diplomatic developments is the progress from Israel and Saudi Arabia having Iran as a common threat to unite them.

“If Trump had continued, we would have already had diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia,” Gold postulated, adding that two decades ago the Saudis had provided more than half the Hamas terror group’s funding, but that had shrunk to nothing today.

“The one who provides the money for the missiles that Hamas fires is Iran,” Gold said. “In other words, it is our common enemy that has made the difference for the better in terms of the possible relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.”

In comparing the Trump and Biden administrations, Gold noted that the two are different, but Biden cares for Israel.

“President Trump was most friendly to issues that are important to us – settlement, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, as well as the scenario of the annexation of the Jordan Valley,” Gold said. “Biden came from a different atmosphere, even though he was a Democratic hawk when he was a senator, and was also a man with a fondness for Israel.”

Gold called the Biden administration’s conduct on backing Israel against criminal investigations by the International Criminal Court issue “excellent. “