At a press conference Sept. 26 on the margins of the meeting of the UN General Assembly, President Donald Trump was asked a question that he may not have been prepared for. His response included the claim that in two, three or maybe four months, he would present his administration’s plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It was the first time he ever referred to his peace plan in terms of time. On the other hand, the world has long gotten used to hearing the leader of the free world say things that he doesn’t usually mean, so no one will be standing there with a stopwatch, counting the days until Jan. 26, which would mark exactly four months since his off-the-cuff remark. At the same time, it is also certainly possible that this statement was more serious than his other remarks, largely because of three changes that occurred since this past September.

The first took place in Israel. Conventional wisdom just two months ago was that once the Knesset’s summer recess ended, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would bring a proposal before the Knesset to hold early elections in the spring of 2019, just a few months before they are officially scheduled. Pundits believed that it would be in his interest to hold early elections before his coalition falls apart, and that he would take advantage of one contentious issue or another (such as the conscription of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, which has been on the government’s agenda for over 70 years) to announce that he prefers to hold early elections than to surrender to the ultra-Orthodox. This would be a particularly easy issue for him since the vast majority of Israelis are uncomfortable with the idea that young ultra-Orthodox men are exempted from three years of military service, while Israelis who are not ultra-Orthodox are required to serve.

Since then, the Knesset’s winter session has begun, and the ultra-Orthodox seem likely to accept the revised Conscription bill (even if they will vote against it for their own reasons). They do not want to give Netanyahu an excuse to break apart a government that is otherwise so convenient for them because of its right-wing, ultra-Orthodox composition. At the same time, it is also possible that Netanyahu himself has gone back on his desire to hold early elections. The polls seem to favor him, and Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit is in no hurry to indict him for bribery. In other words, the cases being built up against him will only be ready in 2020, when he is — he hopes — starting his fifth term.

The second change took place in the United States. Trump may use his Orwellian language to describe every defeat as a victory. Still, the fact is that he lost the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. It doesn’t matter that other presidents lost the House two years after they were elected or in some cases lost both the House and the Senate. It will now be very difficult for him to pass laws affecting internal affairs, so it is only natural that he will find himself focused more and more on foreign affairs instead. This will happen regardless of his very limited understanding of international affairs and his even more limited enthusiasm for these issues. Trump needs victories over the next two years to prove that he is a capable president before the 2020 election, and he feels that he and his staff — led by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — can succeed where all their predecessors failed. In other words, they can resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.