What's in Trump's "deal of the century"? The answers are in plain sight

Noticeably, the latest annual report from the US State Department on the human rights situation by country, published in April, drops for the first time the term "occupied Palestinian territories," implying that the Trump team no longer views much of the West Bank as under occupation.

Netanyahu told a recent meeting of his Likud faction: "Our successes are still to come. Our policies are not based on weakness. They are not based on concessions that will endanger us."

So given Israel's recent moves, what can we infer about the likely terms of Trump's peace plan?

The most sensitive of the final-status issues is Jerusalem, which includes the incendiary Muslim holy site of al-Aqsa. Trump appears to have effectively recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital by relocating the US embassy there last month.

The embassy move is likely to be interpreted by Netanyahu as a retroactive seal of approval from the US for a series of Israeli measures over recent months designed to engineer a Greater Jewish Jerusalem.

The main thrust are two legislative proposals to gerrymander the city's boundaries and its population to create an unassailable Jewish majority. Both have been put on hold by Netanyahu until the announcement of the peace plan.

The first -- called the Greater Jerusalem Bill -- is intended to annex several large Jewish settlements close by in the occupied West Bank to the Jerusalem municipality. Overnight that would transform some 150,000 West Bank settlers into Jerusalem residents, as well as effectively annexing their lands to Israel.

In a sign of the impatience of members of Netanyahu's cabinet to press on with such a move, the bill is due to come up for consideration again on Sunday.

A separate bill would strip residency in the city from some 100,000 Palestinians who are on the "wrong side" of a wall Israel began building through Jerusalem 15 years ago. Those Palestinians will be all but barred from Jerusalem and assigned to a separate council.

In addition, Israel has intensified harsh measures against Palestinians still inside East Jerusalem, including night arrests, house demolitions, the closing down of businesses, the creation of "national parks" in Palestinian neighborhoods, and the denial of basic services. The barely veiled aim is to encourage residents to relocate outside the wall.

Experts have noted too that Palestinian schools inside the wall are being pressured to adopt the Israeli curriculum to erode a Palestinian identity among pupils.

With Jerusalem as Israel's exclusive capital, Trump's team is reported to be seeking a face-saving alternative location for a future Palestinian "capital" outside Jerusalem's municipal borders.

According to rumors, they have selected the town of Abu Dis, 4 km east of Jerusalem and cut off from the city by Israel's wall more than a decade ago.

The Abu Dis plan is not new. At the end of the 90s, the US administration of Bill Clinton proposed renaming Abu Dis "al-Quds" -- Arabic for "the Holy," the traditional name of Jerusalem because of its holy places. That was seen as a prelude to designating it the future capital of a Palestinian state.

Reports about the elevation of Abu Dis in the new peace plan have been circulating since late last year. In January, Abbas rejected the idea outright.

Only last month Yair Lapid, leader of Israel's center-right Yesh Atid party, highlighted reports about the imminent change of Abu Dis's status in comments directed at Netanyahu.

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