To turn the Trump administration’s proposal from a bad plan to end the conflict into a good plan to transform the conflict, all references to ending the conflict should be removed. The Palestinians cannot be expected to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, formally renounce the right of return or sign a document announcing an “end to claims.”

What would Israel gain from a plan to reconfigure the conflict? Plenty. Most Israelis are trapped between two national aspirations. On the one hand, they don’t want to rule over the Palestinian people, but on the other, they don’t want to live under the threat of rockets from a Palestinian state. The tension between these two impulses has paralyzed Israel’s ability to address the conflict. A plan to reconfigure the conflict would dramatically reduce Israel’s control over the Palestinians and do so without putting Israel in danger. In other words, for Israelis, the Trump plan would smash the zero-sum game between security and ending the occupation. Israelis would be able to greatly reduce their rule over the Palestinians without being any more threatened by them.

And what do the Palestinians stand to gain from a plan to reconfigure the conflict? Also plenty. The Palestinians, too, are trapped. On the one hand, they want an independent state of their own, but on the other, most of them want the Palestinian refugees to “return” — that is, to be relocated to Israel. Moreover, a large section of Palestinian society is unwilling to recognize non-Muslim sovereignty over any part of the Holy Land. Reconciling with Israel would be a religious concession, and relinquishing the “right of return” would be a national concession. For many Palestinians, those two concessions would mean renouncing their most sacred beliefs, which form a part of Palestinian identity. For many years, the various peace plans proposed to the Palestinians expected them to forgo these two axioms. But the Palestinians have always refused a deal in which they would have to relinquish core elements of their national identity as the price for independence. A plan to rearrange the conflict would give the Palestinians a state without expecting them to pay for it by renouncing their demand for a right of return and thereby conceding a plank of their national identity.

Under the plan, the new Palestinian state will not be completely sovereign, but it will be mostly sovereign, and the elements of the occupation that immiserate Palestinians in their day-to-day lives — namely restrictions on movement, construction and economic growth — will be swept away.

In other words, any plan would need to drop the pretense of realizing either side’s perfect deal. This plan begins to do that. Under it, the Palestinians could dramatically enhance their sovereignty without conceding their aspirations, and Israel should control far fewer Palestinians without conceding its security. Neither side will give up on what is truly important to it, and both will reduce what is truly painful. It won’t be peace. It won’t be a new Middle East. But it will be progress.