Amid rising doubts over the viability of US President Donald Trump’s yet-to-be-released peace plan, the Obama administration’s special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is speaking out against what he describes as Israel’s “alarming” rejection of previous agreements aimed at moving towards a two-state solution.

Speaking to The Times of Israel last week, former senior State Department official Frank Lowenstein said that Israel was implementing “Oslo reversed,” in which the Jewish state has been gradually transferring power to Israeli settlers in the West Bank rather than to the Palestinian Authority as originally agreed in the bilateral accords of the 1990s.

Earlier this month, The New Yorker reported that it was this realization by Lowenstein in the spring of 2015 that “shocked” Barack Obama into refusing to block UN Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements.

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Lowenstein told The Times of Israel that he’d long been aware of the reality in the West Bank, but had been unable to fully explain it to his superiors until the sixth year of Obama’s presidency when he came across a series of maps that showed how 60 percent of the land beyond the Green Line had become off-limits to Palestinian development.

“We knew this all along. I just couldn’t figure out how to explain it to people until I saw those maps,” he recalled, saying that they were essential in illustrating to then-secretary of state John Kerry and president Obama the reality of Israeli entrenchment in the West Bank.

“If I say to Secretary Kerry, ‘Israel has announced 15,000 new settlement units during the negotiations,’ he understands that… but sometimes pictures tell a story in a way that’s easier to comprehend and explain to the public,” Lowenstein said.

Lowenstein explained that Israeli settlements, which take up roughly 1.5% of West Bank land were not his primary concern. Rather, it was the establishment of nearly 100 illegal outposts that has allowed Israel to cut off Palestinians from nearly two-thirds of the West Bank.

While the international community considers all settlement activity illegal, Israel differentiates between legal settlement homes built and permitted by the Defense Ministry on land owned by the state, and illegal outposts built without necessary permits, often on private Palestinian land.

Lowenstein acknowledged that the 60% he had highlighted was equivalent to Area C, which was placed under full Israeli control under the Oslo Accords. However, he pointed out that the goal of the agreement had been to gradually transfer parts of Area C to the Palestinian Authority.

“That’s how this narrative emerged in my head that this was Oslo reversed. Instead of transitioning power to the Palestinians they were effectively transitioning power over to the settlers,” Lowenstein said.

Upon discovering those maps, Lowenstein’s office had a broader presentation of similar illustrations put together drawing data largely from Israeli rights groups that pinpointed — among other things — Israeli outposts and Palestinian home demolitions.

The presentation was circulated among senior White House staff and it was used to help present the “Oslo reversed” realization to both Israelis and Palestinians.

According to Lowenstein, Israeli officials reviewed the maps and did not object to their accuracy, which the former special envoy found telling because “when the Israelis disagreed with something, they let us know.”