Obama-era U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro reacted to President Trump's Mideast initiative: "When I was working on Is-Pal negotiations, I could summarize every conversation I had with every Israeli & Palestinian negotiator in one sentence: "If you, the US, would just adopt all our positions as your own and force the on the other side, everything would be fine."
"It's pretty standard to try to work the ref. But that always struck me as a strange way for a mediator to operate. Admittedly, we were unsuccessful, so that criticism is fair. I guess now we'll get a chance to test the other approach."