President Donald Trump’s planned visit to India next month, his offer to mediate between India and Pakistan on Kashmir which despite an earlier rebuff from New Delhi was repeated a few days ago, his self-proclaimed “overly good” peace plan for Palestine and his propensity to shoot from an often undiplomatic hip must – viewed together – be sending shivers down his hosts’ spines.

Mr Trump is in the middle of a messy impeachment proceeding and faces an election a few months down the road. A lot that he says and does will be for domestic consumption and aimed at presenting him as a credible global statesman. That by itself should force Indian diplomats to view his visit with a degree of circumspection.

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But when viewed against the backdrop of the just-announced peace plan for Palestine, one that was astoundingly crafted without taking Palestinians on board and is said to be the brain-child of the President’s somewhat controversial son-in-law Jared Kushner, there may well be reason to wonder if Mr Trump will drop any bricks in relation to Kashmir.

Praised lavishly by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “great plan for peace”, Mr Trump’s formulation would have Israel retain control of all of Jerusalem, plus sovereignty over the Jordan valley and principal Jewish settlements that are considered illegal in international law. In return for the loss of occupied West Bank territory, Palestine would get a large swathe of the desert linked to the Gaza Strip as part of a scheme that would see different parts of the proposed state linked to each other through tunnels and bridges that pass through Israeli territory.

Predictably, the 80-page peace plan was dismissed almost as soon as it was announced with one former Palestinian negotiator saying it had “nothing to do with peace.” Khalid Elgindy, a former adviser to the Palestinian leadership was quoted as saying, “It’s about completely changing the terms of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement to move away from ending the occupation, to move away from two sovereign states. It’s consecrating the status quo.

It’s really about normalising Israeli occupation on a permanent basis.” American commentators too were quick to denounce the plan, with one terming it as a ploy to help Mr Netanyahu as he goes to an election in March facing serious corruption charges. Mr Netanyahu seemed to aid this narrative when at the release of the plan, he called Mr Trump the “greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House”.

Aaron David Miller, a negotiator for different American administrations reacted by saying, “I worked in administrations from Carter through Bush. However misguided some of our efforts have been they were always linked to the objective of trying to make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more tractable.

This plan is completely untethered from any desire to create an environment for negotiation, narrow the gaps between the parties, condition each party to accept certain realities that might, in fact, produce a negotiation.” South Block should be worried; a loose cannon is on the way to New Delhi.