President Donald Trump claims his peace plan for Israel and Palestine will prove to be a triumph that will last for the next 80 years. But it’s unclear whether it will be viable for even 80 minutes.
The White House’s peace plan which has a four year implementation period came complete with one hundred and eighty pages as well as a map outlining the proposed new Israeli and Palestinian states. recognises Israeli sovereignty over major illegal settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank, something to which the Palestinians will almost certainly object. Trump said Israel would be granted security control of the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank. The blueprint would also permit Israel to extend sovereignty over all major settlements blocs in the West Bank, uphold Jerusalem as “Israel’s undivided capital,” The plan would also see a Palestinian state with its capital in “eastern Jerusalem”, though in an area cut off from much of the city by an Israeli military barrier.
Palestinians reject any proposal that would not see a Palestinian capital in all of East Jerusalem, which includes the walled Old City and numerous sites holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians.Palestinian officials havecut off communication with the U,S after it recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in late 2017. Israeli settlements in the West Bank would also be allowed to stay where they are.and require the Palestinians to concede far more land to Israel than in past proposals..
Trump
described the plan as a "win-win opportunity for both sides,".but the agreement that he has promoted as the
"ultimate deal" amounts to a two-way pact between Trump and Netanyahu. and seems consistent with the US administration’s
approach of granting unilateral concessions to Israel while further isolating
the Palestinians. The Palestinians were not consulted. It's a dictate of take it or leave it. But to hear Trump tell it, he has brokered the most
important diplomatic breakthroughs not just of his presidency but of
modern history.
“It’s been a long and very arduous process to arrive at
this moment,” Trump said in a speech at the White House Tuesday,
standing next to a smiling Netanyahu. “All prior administrations from
President Lyndon Johnson have tried and bitterly failed, but I was not
elected to do small things or shy away from big problems.” Netanyahu, for his part, was thrilled with the outcome.
Analysts say the deal should be understood as two friends lending each other a hand at a sensitive time in their political careers.Trump is currently embroiled in impeachment proceedings, and in November Netanyahu was indicted on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust."Trump
and Netanyahu care more about electoral politics at home and less about
real peace with the Palestinians," said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of
international relations at the London School of Economics and Political
Science.
"It resembles a colonial
arrangement of a bygone era," he added, comparing the impending deal to
past secret agreements that divided parts of the Middle East among
European powers and promised the Jewish community a home in historic
Palestine.
Even before the details were released,
protests rejecting it were already in full swing in Gaza and
Palestinians had called for a "Day of Rage" on Wednesday in the West
Bank.
"The deal of the century, which is
not based on international legality and law, gives Israel everything it
wants at the expense of the national rights of the Palestinian people,"
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said in opening the
Palestinian Authority's weekly Cabinet meeting in Ramallah on Sunday.After the announcement, Palestinians took to social media to react, comment and at times mock the plan. Often dubbed the "deal of the century" Palestinians referred to it as the "the slap of the century". The hashtags #NoToTrumpPlan and #No4DealOfCentury trended on Twitter. "It is a slap and not a deal," wrote one Twitter user, "down with the slap of the century and long live a free Palestine."
The objective of any peace proposal for Israelis and Palestinians should be to resolve the conflict in a manner that can be accepted by both sides. Unfortunately, the Trump plan is not actually designed to do so. Rather, it serves as an annexation roadmap, whereby Israel receives U.S. support to apply sovereignty immediately to all settlements in the West Bank.The deal not only discards long-held assumptions about how the conflict will be resolved, it was constructed with only the input of one party, Israel, making it a fait accompli that the Palestinians would not consider it. The Trump plan is not a realistic effort to bring a permanent status agreement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it should not be viewed as such.It is a a recipe for permanent occupation and endless conflict and is dishonest, inhumane and unjust.
Trump has taken what was already an Israel-centric foreign policy to an extreme:In addition to moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, the Trump administration has also slashed hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians and recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Israel-occupied Golan Heights, in addition the United States has reversed its position and contradicted international law on the illegality of Israeli settlements, the Trump administration in November reversed decades of US policy when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that Washington no longer regarded Israeli settlements on occupied West Bank land as inconsistent with international law. It’s absurd to think that Trump has any credibility or interest in true peace. .
The only sustainable solution is a viable two-state outcome. While Trump paid lip service to a two-state solution, the plan does not promote any recognizable two-state vision. Although the president rhetorically acknowledged the necessity of Palestinian independence and self-determination, a viable and territorially contiguous Palestinian state, and a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, the details do not actually contain any of those critical elements. Palestinian freedom isn’t for Trump to give away or for Netanyahu to steal. What the Palestinians are being offered right now is not rights or a state, but a permanent state of Apartheid. No amount of marketing can erase this disgrace or blur the facts. Many Human rights advocates see the plan as a rubber stamp or the Israeli governmeny's continuing violations of interntaional law, seperate and unequal policies, land grabs and human rights abuses against the Palestinian people. Any attempt to address the Israeli-Palestinian issue that does not begin and end with the full acknowledgement of the Palesestinian right to self-determination , freedom, justice and equality is quite simply a non-starter.
The plan also explicitly states that there shall be no “right to return” for the millions of Palestinians forced out of their ancestral homes during the formation of the Israeli state. The 1948 war uprooted 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, creating a refugee crisis that is still not resolved. Palestinians call this mass eviction the Nakba , Arabic for “catastrophe”, and its legacy remains one of the most intractable issues in ongoing peace negotiations.
Today, there are more than 7 million Palestinian refugees, defined as people displaced in 1948 and their descendants. This population has long languished in a variety of refugee camps, without rights or decent life conditions.A core Palestinian demand in peace negotiations is some kind of justice for these refugees, most commonly in the form of the “right of return” to the homes their families abandoned at the time.The failure to address this issue in a responsible manner is both a deficiency in the current proposal. and a tragic humanitarian evasion..
The only plan that can genuinely offer peace, is one that delivers. a future not based on supremacy for some and oppression for others, but on full equality, liberty, dignity, and rights for all.
