Having your peace plan and eating it too: 7 things to know for July 31

1. More than a workshop? The Yedioth Ahronoth daily is reporting that the US will begin to roll out its long-awaited peace plan at a Camp David summit of Arab leaders sometime in the next month and a half.

• The plan won’t be fully released, but rather detailed in broad strokes to attendees, the paper reports, citing a source in Washington.
• According to the report, Netanyahu likely won’t be invited, to make it easier for Arab leaders to attend without getting shoes thrown at them back home. Nahum Barnea also predicts that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will reject the plan, and Netanyahu will praise the effort with a bunch of caveats.
• Though the administration has indicated the plan won’t be released until after Israeli elections on September 17, the meeting is slated to take place sometime before then, and the timing may not be coincidental.
• “The summit, if it happens, will help Netanyahu’s campaign place him as a global leader, whom even Arab leaders are poised to develop [ties with]. It will also soften opposition of Blue and White and Labor to joining his government after elections.”

2. Too hot to handle: The announcement comes as Jared Kushner, who is leading the White House peace effort, is set to visit Jerusalem and then other hot spots around the region.

• In Barnea’s telling, the fact that an American official is visiting the region in the summer, “when temperatures near 50 degrees C and rulers plan vacations in Switzerland,” is proof of its urgency.
• The claim is obvious poppycock as American officials and their air conditioned entourages regularly visit the Mideast in the summer. John Kerry, for instance, visited Saudi Arabia in August 2016 and June 2013. In 2015 and 2016, he was in Cairo in late July.
• An administration official tells Vanity Fair that Kushner’s trip is planned to finagle Arab leaders to open their wallets to the tune of some $50 billion after the Bahrain investment summit.
• “The goal of this trip is to convince foreign leaders to commit to funding, noting that it is a ‘soft commitment’ that could earn countries ‘goodwill’ because they would not have to give any money until a political deal is reached,” the magazine writes, presumably quoting their source.
• Israel Hayom reports that Israeli leaders are also not afraid of a little heat, with government minister slated to make their way to the resort city of Eilat on Sunday for vacation a special government meeting that is definitely not a vacation on the taxpayers’ dime.

3. Autonomy? Why did nobody think of that before? It may be that the donors never actually have to pony up, with peace seeming as distant as ever.

• Speaking to CNN about the plan, US envoy David Friedman says while the administration won’t back a Palestinian state, it does “believe in Palestinian autonomy.”
• “We believe that autonomy should be extended up until the point where it interferes with Israeli security and it’s a very complicated needle to thread,” he says.
• If the idea of autonomy instead of statehood sounds familiar, it may be because that’s basically the system the Palestinians have lived under since the Oslo Accords.

In a CNN interview, David Friedman says the political plan won't endorse a one-state solution nor call for a Palestinian state. It's about "autonomy." After 2.5 years of hard work and creative thinking Kushner decided, hey, what if we keep the status quo? https://t.co/bCCdr17OJR

— Gregg Carlstrom (@glcarlstrom) July 31, 2019

• Underlining how hard the job will be, leaders of both the Likud party and its Blue and White rival spend the morning Wednesday parts of the West Bank and vowing to hold them like the Thompson Twins.
• Kicking off a meeting of the Socialist International in Ramallah, PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh warns that if a two-state solution is not achieved, Israel will suffer “demographic death,” ToI’s Adam Rasgon reports.

4. I’ve got homes in different Area Cs: But let nobody say Israel never threw the Palestinians a bone. On Tuesday, ministers approved the rare move of okaying over 700 Palestinian homes in Area C of the West Bank.

• Has the government gone soft? Don’t be ludicrous. Haaretz reports, “The Israeli cabinet’s decision to approve construction permits for Palestinians in the West Bank is part of a policy shift intended to push out the Palestinian Authority’s involvement in planning and construction in the territories.”
• Alongside the 700 homes, Israel also approved 6,000 settler homes. And it’s not clear whether any of the homes are actually new construction, or just retroactive approval for homes built without permits, which Palestinians say are impossible to get.

5. The kingmaker has no clue: Somehow Israel Hayom forgets to put the news about the West Bank homes in the august pages of its tabloid.

• Instead, it latches onto Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign against Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, with a massive front page headline quoting Netanyahu claiming that “Liberman wants [Benny] Gantz to win.”
• In fact, Liberman said at a campaign launch Tuesday night that he will back a unity government of Blue and White and Likud.
• During a speech at his party’s Jerusalem headquarters, Liberman said that there was “essentially no difference” between the two factions and that he would recommend that the first leader to call for a unity government be tasked with forming a coalition.
• In Zman Yisrael, Shlomo Yerushalmi notes that the promise is “another U-turn” for Liberman, who had previously said he would back whoever gets the most votes.
• Writing that Liberman seems “confused,” Yerushalmi says that the Yisrael Beytenu leader can’t actually expect a unity government between Blue and White and Likud. “Such a government cannot exist, since Netanyahu cannot be in it — Blue and White won’t team up with Likud if it is headed by him.”
• Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev writes Liberman has “metamorphosed from a sectoral politician tied to the right and hovering around the Knesset entrance threshold to the ultimate king of kingmakers with predictions of double digit seats and, who would believe it, the great hope of the left.”

6. Polling right: A poll published Tuesday by Channel 12 news continued to show Liberman with 10 seats, while the United Right led by Ayelet Shaked leapfrogged him to get 12 seats, which would make it the third largest party.

• The poll also shows that adding extremist Otzma Yehudit to the United Right will give it an extra seat, and bring Likud down by one to 28. Throwing Zehut into the mix would shift a second seat from Likud to United Right.
• What that means, if the poll can be relied on, is that the right-wing bloc would still remain several seats away from being able to form a government without Liberman, keeping him as kingmaker.

7. Sign the damn paper: Likud does not need to worry about Zehut joining the right wing slate, as Moshe Feiglin’s semi-liberterian juggernaut filed Wednesday to run alone.

• There are still last minute efforts to bring Itamar Ben-Gvir and his extremist friends in, though.
• Amit Segal of Channel 12 news reports that Otzma Yehudit has been offered spots 8 and 13, almost certainly giving it at least one seat in the Knesset and possibly two if it plays its homophobic cards right.
• Pressure appears to be on Ben-Gvir to agree to the deal. “You’ve never been so close to two Knesset spots, and you probably never will be again,” writes Segal’s dad Hagai Segal, editor of Makor Rishon, in a post widely quoted in right-wing news sites. “Instead of crying over the great chance you lost on September 18 and the number of votes you threw away, pull out a pen and sign.”
• In a Facebook video, Ben-Gvir says he is sticking to his demand for the 5th and 11th seats, but claims it’s not for him, it’s for the party. “If it were up to me I would take the eighth spot,” he’s quoted saying by the Kipa national religious website. “I don’t care about titles. They said I could be a deputy minister, head of a committee, all sorts of sweeteners. The only thing I care about is representing Otzma Yehudit.”
• Who it is that is keeping him from taking the spot is not detailed.