AFTER 70 years, even conflicts start to repeat themselves. On September 2nd the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, told Israeli visitors about an unexpected proposal. He said America had offered to help form a confederation between Palestine and Jordan. The idea has been floating around for half a century. King Hussein of Jordan first proposed it in the 1970s. The Palestinians rejected it, then embraced it, then dismissed it again.

It has some merits. Most Jordanians are of Palestinian descent, with ties across the border. Businesses in the West Bank would gain access to Jordan and to export markets beyond. The Jordanian army could secure the border with Israel, assuaging its security concerns. But Mr Trump’s seemingly offhand proposal is not realistic. The Palestinians will discuss it only after Israel grants their independence. Jordan rejects it. The idea sits uneasily with ethnic Jordanians, who dominate the government. Waves of Palestinian and other refugees made them a minority. They fear that absorbing 3m Palestinians would dilute their power.

This was Mr Trump’s second break with precedent in a week. On August 31st America said it would stop funding the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which supports 5m Palestinian refugees. The agency is already suffering from previous cuts: America slashed its donations from $364m in 2017 (30% of UNRWA’s budget) to just $60m this year (see chart). Next year it will give nothing. The cuts will hit hardest in Gaza, destitute after a decade under Israeli and Egyptian blockades. Two-thirds of its 2m people are registered refugees who rely on UNRWA for doctors, teachers and other services. Israeli generals fear the cuts will push them closer to another Gaza war.

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is delighted. UNRWA is a bugbear for his hawkish allies. Exceptionally, the UN counts all the descendants of Palestinian refugees as refugees themselves. Their numbers have thus grown more than sixfold since the agency was founded in 1949. Israeli politicians complain that this prolongs the conflict, allowing Palestinians to nurture an unrealistic hope of returning to modern Israel. Until recently, Mr Netanyahu never asked America to cut off the agency. But with Mr Trump in power, anything seems possible. He broke with decades of bipartisan consensus in December and recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Israel’s allies in Washington are urging America to recognise its sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which it seized from Syria in 1967. Instead of negotiating, Mr Trump is making one-sided moves designed to preclude negotiations. The right of return is an emotive issue. Palestinians want justice for decades of displacement. Israelis fear losing their Jewish majority. Mr Trump seems to think he can cut this Gordian knot by asking the UN to redefine the word “refugee”. If most of the 5m Palestinian refugees lose that status, there is nothing to discuss. But the Palestinians will not simply drop their demands. All Mr Trump has done is convince them he is not an honest broker. His ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, says that the administration is close to finishing its “unbelievably detailed” peace plan. But no one outside the administration has seen it. Even if it does exist, it will not be unveiled until next year—after the mid-term elections in America and a probable snap election in Israel this spring.

Mr Netanyahu does not mind the delay. If America is not pressing him to talk to the Palestinians, no one will. He has divided Europe by courting populists like Viktor Orban of Hungary. Russia and China have no interest in wading into the mess. On September 2nd he welcomed Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, on a visit to Israel. There was little talk of the Palestinians. Instead Mr Duterte, who once compared himself to Hitler, praised the quality of Israeli-made weapons.

This is Mr Netanyahu’s dream: to deal with fellow world leaders without the nuisance of talking about the occupation. But it comes at a cost. The Palestinian Authority (PA) is in effect a security subcontractor keeping the West Bank quiet. Foreign donors spend billions a year to keep it afloat, since it is meant to provide the nucleus of a future Palestinian state. “If there’s no two-state solution, there’s no justification for us to pump money into the PA,” says a European diplomat. Mr Netanyahu may at last manage to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state. But then he will have to deal with the consequences of a permanent occupation of the territory captured in 1967.