Newshub reported:

A swarm of previously inactive Twitter accounts claiming to be from the US have sprung to life, professing their admiration for embattled Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters. …

Out of nowhere on Saturday, that post attracted attention when nearly 40 Twitter accounts replied to it with the same message of praise for Peters.

“I stand with #winstonpeters – he’s a very good leader and dear to our hearts,” each user tweeted. 

Many of the tweets were posted within minutes of each other and came from users that appear to be bots or compromised accounts. The majority of the users – mostly using images of young women – have less than 20 followers, last tweeted years ago, and say they are located in the US.

I’m reminded of the fact that Winston insisted on having in the coalition agreement that NZ pursue a free trade agreement with Russia.

The Herald reports:

Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft has called for the right to silence to be abolished, saying that “the fact you might incriminate yourself isn’t a reason for not talking”.

Becroft’s comments come in the wake of the brutal assault on a four-year-old in Hawke’s Bay.

Police say the boy, who is in a stable condition at Starship children’s hospital, suffered a sustained beating – possibly over days – at a Flaxmere address in late January and will most likely suffer from brain damage.

Speaking to Newshub this morning, Becroft said: “I think [the right to silence] needs to be abolished or amended.”

My heart agrees with Judge Becroft but my head says if you abolish it for child abusers, then it will end up being abolished for other charges also. So I’m against a law change, and sad to see National backing one.

I wonder if there is a halfway house though such as you have the right not to incriminate yourself for criminal proceedings, but you may not be allowed to raise children if you are a witness to child abuse and refuse to testify?

Interesting stats on school attendance and truancy.

• Regular attendance rate down from 63% in 2017 to 57.7% in 2019
• Unjustified absence rate up from 4% to 4.7%
• Maori regular attendance rate down from 50% in 2017 to 43.8% in 2019
• Pasifika regular attendance rate down from 51.7% in 2017 to 44.7% in 2019
• Asian regular attendance rate down from 73.4% in 2017 to 68.9% in 2019

The attendance rate has been falling since 2015 it seems. I would have thought it would be an educational priority to increase it as if people aren’t at school, then of course they aren’t learning.

Winston repeatedly claims that the NZ First Foundation is based on the National Party Foundation and operates just like it, so nothing to see here. This lie is wrong is so many regards, I thought it would be useful to document all the ways it is wrong.

1. All donations to the National Party Foundation are treated as donations to the National Party for electoral law purposes and disclosed as party donations. The NZF Foundation donations were not.
2. The National Party Foundation’s purpose is to build up a capital fund, own the building National HQ is in, and produce future income for National. It is not to secretly pay day to day expenses of the party. In fact the National Foundation has never spent a cent as far as i know. The NZF Foundation however was paying day to day expenses on behalf of NZF including sending MPs to the races.
3. No donations for the National Party are siphoned off into the Foundation without the knowledge of the donor. NZF donors had their donations put into the NZF Foundation without their knowledge.
4. The National Foundation is transparent and well known with a website here. Major donors are no secret – they are listed on the wall of National House. NZF Foundation donors were apparently even hidden from the NZF Board and President and Treasurer.
5. The National Foundation is under the control of the National Party and chaired by the Party President. The NZF Foundation is not under their board’s control and many board members claim they know nothing about it.

The 1st bolded point is the key one. And this is the point on which the Electoral Commission has concluded NZ First has broken the law by not declaring donations. But the other points are salient also. Apart from the fact they are both called foundations, they are like chalk and cheese in terms of how they operate.

UPDATE: The Serious Fraud Office has just announced they have launched an investigation into the NZ First Foundation. Tick tock.

Newsroom reports:

New Zealand will emit a million more tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2020 than previously forecast, new figures from the Ministry for the Environment show.

The 2019 edition of the biennial climate change report, mandated by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, contains new projections with a gloomier outlook for the country’s greenhouse emissions. While the 2017 report had forecast 79.96 million tonnes of gross CO2 equivalent emissions in 2020, the new numbers predict 80.93 million tonnes for this year.

“The report says the two big drivers of emissions growth in New Zealand are land transport and the dairy sector,” Russel Norman, executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa New Zealand, told Newsroom. “The Government has virtually no policy to reduce emissions from the transport sector and nothing to reduce emissions from the agriculture sector – nothing regulatory or price-wise. It’s hardly surprising that we’re not making progress.”

The Government is good at talking the talk but once again very bad at walking the walk.

Newsroom reports:

The SFO’s wording for the joint deception charges says: “By deception or without claim of right directly or indirectly obtained for the National Party possession of, or control over, any property, namely a $100,050 [for the 2018 charge] donation made to the National Party between June 1, 2018 and June 8, 2018 (“the 2018 donation”) in circumstances where the identity of the donor was not disclosed in the National Party’s Annual Return of Party Donations.”

The SFO describes the offending over the donations in these words: “The defendants adopted a fraudulent device, trick or stratagem whereby the … donation was split into sums of money less than $15,000 and transferred into bank accounts of eight different people before being paid to, and retained by, the National Party.”

I have said previously that I suspected this may have happened once charges were laid. It is clearly illegal. We actually have a comprehensive law which specifically forbids doing this to avoid disclosure. It is good those involved have been charged.

The political party generally has no way of knowing the ultimate source of a donation, hence the law requires the person making (or transmitting) the donation to identify anyone who has contributed to it. The SFO alleges this did not happen in this case.

For the fourth person’s charge of misleading the SFO, the charging document says: “In the course of complying with a requirement … of the Serious Fraud Act 1990 supplied information knowing it was false or misleading in a material particular.”

The SFO says of that charge that this defendant told investigators a $100,000 sum transferred to their account was a deposit for a building on another person’s property – when the money had been intended as a donation to the National Party. Further, in 2019 the defendant created, signed and back-dated a contract to that end, when no real contract for that work existed. The office alleges the made-up contract copied wording from an unrelated contract.

That sounds very interesting. The offence has a maximum penalty of $15,000 and/or one year imprisonment. Lying to the SFO is a very bad idea.

The SFO appears to have charged the four defendants for deception under the Crimes Act, rather than just the Electoral Act. That has a maximum imprisonment of three years jail as opposed to merely a $40,000 fine under the Electoral Act.

So the SFO is really throwing the book at this, which is great. For far too many years electoral law breaches have not been prosecuted. These prosecutions may serve as a valuable deterrent.

This suggests the investigation into NZ First and its Foundation will be very robust also. Good.

Some interesting stats found under the OIA about asylum claims.

The most frequent claims come from China, India, Sri Lanka and Iran which seems logical as they all have situations where people do fear persecution and death.

But I was surprised there were claims from citizens of countries where it is most unlikely. This includes:

• Czech 17
• Hungary 18
• Samoa 6
• Slovakia 5
• Tonga 6
• US 5

Overall around 1/4 to 1/3 of claims are successful.

Douglas Murray writes:

Recent analysis by the Tax Payers Alliance (TPA) proves the trend.  Its scrutiny of appointments to public bodies or quangos over the last decade breaks down appointees by declared political activity. Over the last decade Labour appointees exceeded Conservatives in almost every year.

Even in 2018-9 there were 54 appointees who declared significant political activity in the Labour party as opposed to 36 who said the same about the Conservative party. Given some of the other numbers over the decade it is surprising the Conservative presence was so high. But it is also a demonstration of a pathetic and craven oversight by three consecutive Conservative governments.

The Conservatives have been in power for 10 years, yet they’re still appointing Labour activists to more boards than their own people.

I suspect we see some of the same here. National often appointed ex Labour people to boards, but you never see the same in reverse unless it is a Bolger like figure who is there just to blunt attacks from the opposition.

National in Government supported Mike Moore to the WTO and Helen Clark to UNDP. Can’t imagine the same being done in reverse.

Which brings me to the third excuse of the party faithful. “We just can’t find people willing to be put forward” they say. To which – assuming that is true – one might pertinently ask “And why might that be?”

One reason is because of something like what happened to Toby Young during the weakest days of the Theresa May minority government. Readers will remember that over New Year’s Eve 2018 the Conservative government slipped out the news that Young – a prominent, writer, journalist and founder of and campaigner for free schools – was to be appointed as a member of a 15-member advisory board called the Office for Students.  

Now frankly the whole OfS is the sort of entity that shouldn’t exist. If the entire board of the OfS agreed as one to do something bold it would still merely land as a recommendation to sit as a paper on a ministerial desk and possibly provide a blueprint for future consideration and action. I am amazed that Young wanted anything to do with such a eunuch-like body.

But the Left went for him when it discovered one of its toys might land in his hands. They picked his life apart, found some sophomoric tweets from a decade earlier and destroyed him in public view. During the ensuing firestorm the government allowed Young to step down from the role he had not started. So it isn’t exactly difficult to work out why Right-wing, or even just vaguely conservative people, might not find the whole appointments thing attractive.

Well here is a thought. I would think that the present government has no more than three to six months to enact it. Flood the public sector with Right-of-centre cultural and political figures.  Change the weather. Re-centre the culture. If they don’t do it now they never will, and the frit-ness of the last decade will remain the default position of this one.

As well as all the other appointments the Conservatives should also focus on making appointments that enrage their opponents. To demonstrate that the era of Clegg-ism and May-ism is over. Appoint Toby Young – and worse – to meaningful, “damaging” roles. Watch the Left scream and stamp their feet once more. At which point we can all turn round to them and say “Well, perhaps you should have won a majority of 80 at the last election”. And “Isn’t this what you would do?”

Boris might do it. The screaming alone should make it worthwhile. First though he needs to move the House of Lords to Birmingham.

Radio NZ reports:

Assistant Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the New Zealand First Foundation – which faces investigation from the SFO – has nothing to do with her or Winston Peters’ role in her Cabinet.

So we have it on the record. False donation returns and false election returns are not a barrier to a role in Cabinet.

In the latest development last week, NZ First leader Winston Peters claimed photos taken of investigative journalists Guyon Espiner (RNZ) and Matt Shand (Stuff) had been taken by a party supporter – after earlier saying “we took them [the photos]”.

Speaking to RNZ’s Morning Report today, Ardern kept her distance from the whole affair, saying none of it was a matter for her. …

She was asked directly whether – considering the fact he was in her Cabinet and was the deputy Prime Minister and stood in for her when she was unavailable – it was truly not a matter for her.

She was also asked whether Peters’ conduct met the threshold required by the Cabinet manual of upholding the highest ethical standards.

“It is not conduct I’ve been engaged in. No, I don’t see these things as being explicit to the Cabinet manual, which is the conduct of how we run the government,” she said.

Ardern is flat out wrong her, and effectively she is saying the Cabinet Manual is no longer worth the paper it is written on. Let me quote sections 2.55 and 2.56

The Cabinet Manual is explicit (ie no wriggle room) that the requirement to behave to the highest ethical standards does not just apply to Ministers in their ministerial capacity but also in their wider political capacity.

So Ardern is either lying about the Cabinet Manual only being about “the conduct of how we run the Government” or she doesn’t know what it says. You can decide which one is more likely.

Stuff reports:

Four members of an international drugs syndicate that attempted to smuggle $20m worth of cocaine into New Zealand have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from 27 to 14 years.

​The men, a Serbian, a Croat and two Australians, were sentenced at the High Court in Rotorua on Tuesday for the audacious plot that involved submersible scooters, gym bags stuffed with cash and the use of container ships as unwitting drug mules. 

It remains the biggest seizure of cocaine in New Zealand history and, it was revealed in court, was the syndicate’s third importation into the country.

Croatian Mario Habulin was sentenced to 27 years and six months, Serbian Deni Cavallo was sentenced to 23 years and Australians Matthew John Scott and Benjamin Northway received sentences of 24 years and eight months and 14 years and nine months respectively. 

Fairly decent terms.

A cultural report cited by Justice Powell revealed Habulin “took a dim view of the New Zealand prison system compared to the French prison system”.

Powell, however, dismissed Habulin’s concerns cited in the report, including that he would not be able to access education while in prison and run ultra-marathons, as he had in the French system. 

Oh poor diddums.

John Armstrong writes:

What chance of Shane Jones prising the seat of Northland from the tightly-clenched grasp of the National Party at September’s general election?

In short, not much.

Jones is confronted with a simple, but ugly equation — one that he will never be able to come up with enough numbers sufficient to solve it.

National’s majority in Northland at the 2017 election was a relatively slim one — less than 1400 votes. That figure is very deceptive, however.

That is because of what might be termed the “Winston factor”. The sly, cunning but seemingly ageless fox of New Zealand politics captured the Northland seat in a byelection in 2015. National won it back at the general election two years later.

Such is Peters’ popularity, persona and all-round impact on any scenario in which he chooses to make himself a player that trying to draw comparisons from voting statistics pertaining to him with those of any other politician is both bogus and meaningless.

The way the cookie crumbled in terms of the distribution of the electorate vote in Northland in 2017 has little to relevance to what might or will happen in the seat in 2020. Except for one thing. That Peters slid to defeat by 1400 votes suggests that Jones, who is still an apprentice to the maestro, will struggle to do any better.

I agree with Armstrong.

The best way to analyse the seat is look at the party vote. Voters in Northland now know a vote for Shane Jones will be a vote for a Labour-Green-NZ First Government. Very few National voters will vote for Jones knowing doing so would make it more likely National remains in opposition.

Last election in Northland National for 46.4% and ACT 0.5% so say 47% voted CR and the vast majority will not vote for Jones.

The left parties were Labour 30.1%, NZ First 13.2% and Greens 6.0% so 49.2%. So in theory Jones could win if he picks up 95% of the Labour, NZ First and Green party voters. But that is a heroic assumption.

Also add to that the NZ First party vote in Northland is likely to be lower after their decision not to go with National.

So all up, it is mathematically possible but very unlikely Jones can win.

There is another crucial difference. In 2015, Andrew Little, Labour’s then leader, hinted that supporters of his party were free to lodge a protest vote wherever they thought best.

No sooner had Jones confirmed last Monday that he will be New Zealand First’s candidate in Northland than Jacinda Ardern was all but ruling out an electoral pact with her coalition partner — even one of the unwritten variety like that between National and ACT in Epsom.

Her language left a small amount of wriggle room should she have a change of mind, but otherwise it was a pretty definitive statement and will be read as such.

Without any help from Ardern’s quarter, Jones’ candidacy amounts to little more than a flag-waving exercise. 

With NZ First under SFO investigation, will Jacinda really want to endorse Jones in the seat?

Stuff reports:

In 2010, a Kiwi woman’s love of Coca-Cola made news all around the world. 

Natasha Harris, a mother of eight, drank up to 10 litres of the ‘Classic’ soft drink a day – a habit that ultimately contributed to her death. 

An inquest into the “unusual circumstances” surrounding her death was launched in 2012.

The case raised many questions about soft drinks, such as whether there should be warnings on the labels, or whether caffeine restrictions should be introduced.

The problem isn’t Coke. The problem is drinking 10 litres a day of it. That’s mad.

Drink 10 litres of milk a day and you’ll stuff yourself up. The human body can only process around 15 litres of water a day so even if she was drinking just water she’d be close to damaging herself from it.

If you really need to warn people not to drink 10 litres of coke a day, then we’ve become a society of imbeciles.

The Daily Mail reports:

A couple have miraculously walked away from a horrific car accident captured on dash-cam just weeks after their five-year-old son was diagnosed with cancer.

Regan and Rachel Cunliffe were heading home to Kaukapakapa from a medical appointment in Helensville, north-west of Auckland, when an oncoming truck lost control of its trailer on the State Highway 16. 

Video footage shows the couple approach the bend in the road as smoke billowed from the back wheels of the heavy cargo. 

Mr Cunliffe, who was behind the wheel, told Daily Mail Australia he drives the road ‘all the time’ and usually travels along the corner twice a day.

The dashcam footage is terrifying. Thank God Regan kept his cool and helped prevent it from being far worse.

The car accident comes just weeks after the Cunliffe family learnt their son Theo has cancer.

The five-year-old was diagnosed with leukemia on January 9.

A Give A Little page has been created on behalf of the family to relieve the financial burden following the diagnosis and car accident.  

‘For his family it’s a big adjustment and there are lots of unexpected costs,’ the page says.

‘They will need to get a car to manage Theo’s hospital visits and continue to look after their three older kids.

Regan and Rachel are having a very tough time. If you can help them out, I’m sure they’d appreciate it. Rachel incidentally is the web designer for Kiwiblog and Regan manages advertising for it.

Henry Cooke writes:

… the prime minister has slipped this week from the usual kind of space people give Winston to be Winston into plain supplicancy.

Jacinda Ardern is yet to say anything at all about the fact the Electoral Commission made absolutely clear on Monday that the way NZ First was treating donations to its foundations was wrong.

This is no minor thing. It is almost inconceivable the SFO will reach a different conclusion. The only real issue is who should be charged, and how many different sections of the Electoral Act have been broken.

The PM is mute on this finding. She will probably try to divert attention from NZ First by announcing some electoral law changes, to try and fool people into thinking the law is the problem. The law is not the problem. It is people conspiring to get around the law that is the problem. The Electoral Act actually has pretty robust features to stop people getting around transparency obligations.

This silence got even louder on Thursday when it became clear that NZ First had some kind of involvement in two covertly taken photographs of journalists reporting on the Foundation story, which found their way onto a right-wing blog. Peters told Magic Talk on Tuesday that “we took the photographs just to prove that’s the behaviour going on”, but later backtracked to say a supporter just happened to see the journalists and thought he or she should snap a photo.

Because of this shifting story, there is a muddle over exactly how involved NZ First and Peters are, a muddle that would best be sorted out by Ardern demanding a fuller explanation from Peters. Any level of involvement in this kind of tactic – clearly designed to intimidate journalists – is worth condemning, and you can bet that, if Ardern was in Opposition, she would manage it.

Instead she’s not commenting, saying it is a “matter for NZ First”, while her office notes that she speaks about ministerial decisions and comments, not about things said as party leader. 

The thing is, the Cabinet Manual does have a section about ministers upholding and being seen to uphold “the highest ethical standards” at all times, not just when doing ministerial business. Ardern has all the ammo she needs to give Peters a dressing-down over this, but instead she defers. Things don’t have to be illegal to be wrong.

Cooke is correct that the need to act ethically applies to what Winston Peters does as party leader, not just a Minister. So one can only conclude from Ardern’s refusal to comment is that she thinks it is okay to covertly photograph journalists to try and intimidate them and their sources.

Worse, this rot of silence has also infected the Green Party, which, as a confidence and supply partner, has plenty of legitimate room to criticise such tactics. You don’t need to tear the Government up or demand that Peters is fired – you can just say what the journalists’ union said on Friday, that Peters needs to explain himself and apologise.

Instead the Greens just talk about how the law needs to be changed – which most people agree with, but isn’t the point. The topic at hand isn’t underhanded but lawful behaviour, it’s stuff that is potentially illegal – hence the police referral. The party should grow back its spine.

The Greens are so desperate to appease Winston and swallow their previously hallowed principles that they could probably land a job working for the Fyre Festival.

Unherd reports the UK Government saying:

If universities don’t take action, the government will. If necessary, I’ll look at changing the underpinning legal framework, perhaps to clarify the duties of students’ unions or strengthen free speech rights. I don’t take such changes lightly, but I believe we have a responsibility to do whatever necessary to defend this right. 

National should promise to do the same here, if elected.

But the scale of the challenge is huge:

For years, many universities have either indulged or tacitly approved of radical activists who shut down controversial speakers around no-go issues of race, gender and sexuality. The range of subjects which run afoul of these sacred subjects has expanded as the meaning of terms like racism, sexism, transphobia and harm has undergone what psychologist Nick Haslam terms ‘concept creep’ to include innocuous behaviour like wearing sombreros.

Safety is the term now used to demand censorship of everything.

No-platformings are relatively uncommon, but represent the tip of a deeper, growing problem. Activists are launching internal investigations against academics they disagree with, infiltrating university committees, drafting expansive equality and diversity policies, and skewing hiring, promotion and curriculum content. The academic mainstream fears them. An ideologically monocultural, anti-conservative climate is created in the social sciences and humanities which narrows viewpoint diversity, reducing research quality and chilling debates in class. No wonder we found that fewer than 4 in 10 Leave-supporting students felt comfortable expressing this view in the classroom.

It would be interesting to survey students here and find out if they feel comfortable expressing their views in university classrooms?

Tom Chivers at Unherd reports:

There’s a fascinating and slightly unnerving new study out in preprint, by scientists at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

Here’s the technical version. There’s a system called “Registered Reports”, in which scientists preregister their hypotheses before carrying out a study, and scientific journals agree to publish the study on the strength of the methods, rather than the results. The new study found that Registered Reports are only about 50% as likely as standard, non-RR research to confirm their hypothesis.

And here’s why it matters. At the moment, science has some profound problems. Journals tend to only publish “novel”, “exciting” results. That means that if you do an experiment to see if wine gums cause halitosis, and it comes back negative, it probably won’t get published. As I said recently, that means that journals fill up with “positive” studies and “negative” ones sit in file drawers, so the scientific literature is skewed.

The skewing is a real issue and there is value in know a hypothesis wasn’t proved.

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is “frustrated” that RNZ pushed ahead with announcing proposed changes to its Concert radio station.

RNZ is planning to take the classical music station off the FM frequency and replace it with a new station aimed at reaching a wider, younger audience.

Jacinda Ardern told Morning Report the government had asked for time to find an alternative.

“I feel very strongly about this. When I came in as Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, one of the priorities I had was access – that we need to broaden the access of all New Zealander to the arts,” she said.

“I understand that RNZ has obligations to all New Zealanders, and it is their view that they are not catering for one sector. But it is my view as arts minister that one does not need to come at the cost of another.

“My frustration here is that I see this beyond a programming decision and into a structural decision.”

She said when Broadcasting Minister Kris Faafoi was briefed – very recently – on some of the proposed changes, he expressed concern and one of his clear concerns was over the loss of FM frequency for Concert.

“He explicitly asked for time so that we could see if whether or not there was something we could do to prevent the loss of the FM frequency for Concert. RNZ went ahead and announced this regardless.”

The real story here is of Government incompetence. Helen Clark has pointed out Labour made manifesto commitments towards Concert FM stating they would make sure Radio NZ doesn’t reduce funding to Concert FM.

But Labour didn’t seek to implement their promise. They could have done so through the Crown Entities Act which allows the Minister to amend the statement of intent or performance expectations for Radio NZ.

Radio NZ doesn’t have to implement a party’s manifesto but it does need to statements of intent or performance expectations.

So the problem was one of their own making. Radio NZ has backed down, but if the Government was competent they could have prevented the fracas from ever occurring.

Was fascinated to hear about Lloyd Trigg the other day. Not only is he one of the few Kiwis to win the VC, he is the only one to have received it solely due to testimony from enemy forces!

His citation reads:

Flying Officer Lloyd Allan TRIGG, D.F.C. (N.Z.413515), Royal New Zealand Air Force (missing, believed killed), No. 200 Squadron.

Flying Officer Trigg had rendered outstanding service on convoy escort and antisubmarine duties. He had completed 46 operational sorties and had invariably displayed skill and courage of a very high order. One day in August 1943, Flying Officer Trigg undertook, as captain and pilot, a patrol in a Liberator although he had not previously made any operational sorties in that type of aircraft. After searching for 8 hours a surfaced U-boat was sighted. Flying Officer Trigg immediately prepared to attack. During the approach, the aircraft received many hits from the submarine’s anti-aircraft guns and burst into flames, which quickly enveloped the tail. The moment was critical. Flying Officer Trigg could have broken off the engagement and made a forced landing in the sea. But if he continued the attack, the aircraft would present a “no deflection” target to deadly accurate anti-aircraft fire, and every second spent in the air would increase the extent and intensity of the flames and diminish his chances of survival. There could have been no hesitation or doubt in his mind. He maintained his course in spite of the already precarious condition of his aircraft and executed a masterly attack. Skimming over the U-boat at less than 50 feet with anti-aircraft fire entering his opened bomb doors, Flying Officer Trigg dropped his bombs on and around the U-boat where they exploded with devastating effect. A short distance further on the Liberator dived into the sea with her gallant captain and crew. The U-boat sank within 20 minutes and some of her crew were picked up later in a rubber dinghy that had broken loose from the Liberator. The Battle of the Atlantic has yielded many fine stories of air attacks on underwater craft, but Flying Officer Trigg’s exploit stands out as an epic of grim determination and high courage. His was the path of duty that leads to glory.

A real hero. And bravo to the Germans who recommend to their Allied captors he be nominated for his bravery.

A good analysis by Yossi Klein Halevi:

The Trump plan has reopened one of the most significant but least noted divides in Israeli politics: the split between the pragmatic right, which under certain conditions accepts territorial compromise, and the ideological right, which opposes any West Bank withdrawal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has enthusiastically embraced the Trump plan, while settlement leaders deeply oppose it. Though the plan offers the Palestinians only 70 per cent of the West Bank – considerably less than previous offers – it still conforms to the basic principles of those other plans: a Palestinian state with the capital in East Jerusalem, however symbolic.

Worst of all for the ideological right, the Trump plan would limit the ability of settlements to expand, effectively turning them into islands surrounded by Palestinian sovereignty and threatening the long-term viability of the most isolated settlements. That the most pro-Israel administration in memory is presenting a plan whose principles are anathema to the settlement movement is another reminder to Israelis of how deeply the two-state solution has become embedded in international expectation.

So the plan is anathema to the hardline settlement movement. It does preserve their current settlements but freezes and isolates them. In time they may even voluntarily be removed as unviable.

With each Palestinian rejection, the map of a potential sovereign Palestine shrinks. Arguably no national movement has rejected offers for statehood more often than the Palestinians – from the 1937 Peel Commission, which offered the Palestinians 80 per cent of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea including the West Bank; through the 1947 UN partition plan, offering 45 per cent of that land; and President Bill Clinton’s December, 2000, offer of 22 per cent. Each of those plans was endorsed by mainstream Zionist and Israeli leaders. The Trump plan has further reduced the map.

Every time they say no, they end up with a worse offer. Think if they had said yes to the 1947 plan.

It is long past time for Palestinian leaders to do what they have never done in the history of this conflict – offer their own detailed peace plan. We know what Palestinian leaders oppose – but what exactly do they support? Beyond the repetition of the formula of “two states along the 1967 borders,” what is the Palestinian position on refugees, land swaps, settlement blocs and holy places?

Agreed. They have never put up a serious alternative plan. If they did, then real negotiations could occur.