The criminal "Deal of the Century"
The Trump administration has finally lifted the curtains on the final act of its Middle East diplomacy by revealing the long-awaited, ahem, "peace plan" in a surrealistic White House celebration.
I will admit from the outset that I cannot write this about it with a straight face, considering the absurdity of the last three years of Trump policies towards Israel and Palestine.
To call it a "peace plan" is to do injustice to the infamous "peace process" and its many failed "peace plans". It is so much worse, that a better term for it would be an "assault on peace".
Everything about the plan is farcical.
In the three decades of the American-led "peace process", successive administrations pretended to engage, consult or listen to the Palestinian side, even when doing Israel's bidding.
Since occupying the White House, the Trump administration has, on Netanyahu's advice, unashamedly acted to permanently deprive the Palestinians of their participation in the negotiations - and deprive them of their land, liberty and dignity, without even trying to make believe Washington is not bias.
Las week, the Trump administration, in complicity with the Netanyahu government, took the root causes of the protracted conflict in Palestine, repackaging them and presenting them as a permanent solution.
The devil is not in the detail; it's in the headlines of Trump's initiative.
So, to resolve the problem of the illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian lands, Trump wants them legalised and recognised as part ofIsrael.
To resolve the problem of Israel's illegal annexation of occupied Jerusalem, Trump wants it recognised as the capital of Israel and Israel alone.
To deal with the question of Palestinian refugees and their inalienable right of return and compensation, Trump wants to prevent their return.
To solve the problem of violent, repressive and inhumane Israeli control over the Palestinians, Trump wants to see that extended indefinitely. Even after the Palestinians meet all the new conditions imposed on them, they would still be at the mercy of Israel's security forces.
The Trump plan tramples over United Nations Security Council resolution 242, which requires Israel to return to its 1967 borders (or to their approximate, according to past US initiatives), and redraws the borders to suit Israel's settlements and facilitate its control.
Instead of ending Israel's apartheid system in Palestine, Trump wants to enhance it under a different name, at least until his promise for a provisional Palestinian "state" is fulfilled, one which will have no sovereignty or independence.
Basically, Trump envisions half a Palestinian state on half of the West Bank, but only after the Palestinians "combat terrorism" and recognise Israel as a Jewish state extending over some 90 percent of historic Palestine.
Trump's embrace of apartheid in the holy land, as a pragmatic even indispensable prerequisite for "peace" and stability adds insult to Palestinian injury.
And lest we forget, the Trump administration has already closed down the office of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Washington, suspended aid to the Palestinian Authority, transferred the US embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and repealed US recognition of the refugee issue by suspending all funding to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
Future generations will probably remember nothing of significance from Trump's 80-page plan, but they will recall the soap opera behind the "Deal of the Century": how an inexperienced but ambitious man-boy named Jared manipulated his father-in-law, the powerful president, to support the fraudulent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stay in power, and help Israel maintain all it gained illegally through war and violence.
If Jared cannot solve the Middle East conundrum, Trump remarked last month, no one can. He actually said that! A slap in the face to countless able American diplomats.
At any rate, no one really believes Trump is acting deliberatively, fairly or altruistically. No one. I suppose not even the president himself.
Nor does any reasonable person believe that the "talented Mr Netanyahu" is anything but a fraud - certainly not Israel's own attorney general, who indicted him on fraud charges just weeks before the US House of Representatives impeached Mr Trump over the abuse of power.
What a great couple they make! What a match! With Brazilian President Bolsonaro on the leash as any small mean dog.
Netanyahu has obviously a lot to gain, but what is in it for Trump? He is clearly after the vote of evangelical Christians, especially after some have denounced him recently; and of course, he is after the support of rich radical Zionists like Sheldon Adelson. And Trump is seemingly buying into the ego trip - or trap - laid out for him by radical evangelicals and Zionists who have designated him a Jewish Messiah, destined to save not only the Jewish people, but the world.
Being a messiah certainly beats being a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. It has a nicer ring to it.
So it is opportunism, populism and cynicism all wrapped in one deal, as Trump sacrifices whatever is left of US credibility on the international scene to get himself a second term - and Netanyahu a fourth.
Indeed, as one prominent former US diplomat remarked, never has an American president conceded to a foreign leader so much, so quickly, for so little, until the self-declared "great dealmaker" appeared on the scene.
And so the farce continues: the blatant lies, the obvious complicity, the offensive deceit - and the disastrous consequences.
It is so outrageous that even leading American Zionist officials and diplomats, who long stood behind unconditional support for Israel, feel eerie and anxious about Trump's "disastrous" plan.
It is as tragic as it is laughable. But it will also prove dangerously disruptive for the region and America's standing in it.
The Trump administration is banking on the more vulnerable or the more cynical Arab regimes to support and finance its plan despite its unbearable shortcomings.
That is why the plan is modelled, at least structurally, on the Bush administration's 2003 road map for peace that was conceived after the US invasion and occupation of Iraq to ensure Israeli supremacy and Arab support.
Like Trump and Netanyahu, President George W Bush, in complicity with Israeli then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, also envisioned a Palestinian pseudo-state in the form of self-governing autonomy, somewhere down at the end of a long road of Palestinian concessions and humiliation.
It was the sort of bait necessary for Arab and European leaders to justify their support - or at least non-rejection of the plan to their people. And it was the sort of trick that allowed Sharon to claim moderation and concession despite opposition from his fanatic settlers.
Bush hoped Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be gone before the final implementation of the final phases and replaced with the "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas.
Today, Trump hopes to see the 84-year-old Abbas, now considered an obstructionist, also gone and replaced by someone more amenable to US dictates.
Meanwhile, Trump has been deluded into thinking that if the US cannot write off the Palestinians altogether, at least it could pay them off with Arab money.
Kushner's Bahrain summit last year was designed to pave the way for that kind of Gulf investment in his "Deal of the Century".
Billions in of dollars may buy the Trump administration some time and some leverage, but that will be short-lived, as such bribery proved in the past.
Sooner or later, the Trump plan will find its way to the same place where the Bush plan ended, the dustbin of history.
Subservient Arab dictators will eventually fall but the people will endure, and they will not be so forgiving to the United States and Israeli arrogance. Their pent-up fury will come out sooner rather than later.
So, before president Trump gets too comfortable in his new anointment as messiah, he should familiarise himself with basic biblical wisdom: arrogance leads to downfall.
Much of Donald Trump’s long-trailed “deal of the century” came as no surprise. Over the past 18 months, Israeli officials had leaked many of its details.
The so-called “Vision for Peace” unveiled on Tuesday simply confirmed that the US government has publicly adopted the long-running consensus in Israel: that it is entitled to keep permanently the swaths of territory it seized illegally over the past half-century that deny the Palestinians any hope of a state.
The White House has discarded the traditional US pose as an “honest broker” between Israel and the Palestinians. Palestinian leaders were not invited to the ceremony, and would not have come had they been. This was a deal designed in Tel Aviv more than in Washington – and its point was to ensure there would be no Palestinian partner.
Importantly for Israel, it will get Washington’s permission to annex all of its illegal settlements, now littered across the West Bank, as well as the vast agricultural basin of the Jordan Valley. Israel will continue to have military control over the entire West Bank.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has announced his intention to bring just such an annexation plan before his cabinet as soon as possible. It will doubtless provide the central plank in his efforts to win a hotly contested general election due on March 2.
The Trump deal also approves Israel’s existing annexation of East Jerusalem. The Palestinians will be expected to pretend that a West Bank village outside the city is their capital of “Al Quds”. There are incendiary indications that Israel will be allowed to forcibly divide the Al Aqsa mosque compound to create a prayer space for extremist Jews, as has occurred in Hebron.
Further, the Trump administration appears to be considering giving a green light to the Israeli right’s long-held hopes of redrawing the current borders in such a way as to transfer potentially hundreds of thousands of Palestinians currently living in Israel as citizens into the West Bank. That would almost certainly amount to a war crime.
The plan envisages no right of return, and it seems the Arab world will be expected to foot the bill for compensating millions of Palestinian refugees.
A US map handed out on Tuesday showed Palestinian enclaves connected by a warren of bridges and tunnels, including one between the West Bank and Gaza. The only leavening accorded to the Palestinians are US pledges to strengthen their economy. Given the Palestinians’ parlous finances after decades of resource theft by Israel, that is not much of a promise.
All of this has been dressed up as a “realistic two-state solution”, offering the Palestinians nearly 70 per cent of the occupied territories – which in turn comprise 22 per cent of their original homeland. Put another way, the Palestinians are being required to accept a state on 15 per cent of historic Palestine after Israel has seized all the best agricultural land and the water sources.
Like all one-time deals, this patchwork “state” – lacking an army, and where Israel controls its security, borders, coastal waters and airspace – has an expiry date. It needs to be accepted within four years. Otherwise, Israel will have a free hand to start plundering yet more Palestinian territory. But the truth is that neither Israel nor the US expects or wants the Palestinians to play ball.
That is why the plan includes – as well as annexation of the settlements – a host of unrealisable preconditions before what remains of Palestine can be recognised: the Palestinian factions must disarm, with Hamas dismantled; the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas must strip the families of political prisoners of their stipends; and the Palestinian territories must be reinvented as the Middle East’s Switzerland, a flourishing democracy and open society, all while under Israel’s boot.
Instead, the Trump plan kills the charade that the 26-year-old Oslo process aimed for anything other than Palestinian capitulation. It fully aligns the US with Israeli efforts – pursued by all its main political parties over many decades – to lay the groundwork for permanent apartheid in the occupied territories.
Trump invited both Netanyahu, Israel’s caretaker prime minister, and his chief political rival, former general Benny Gantz, for the launch. Both were keen to express their unbridled support.
Between them, they represent four-fifths of Israel’s parliament. The chief battleground in the March election will be which one can claim to be better placed to implement the plan and thereby deal a death blow to Palestinian dreams of statehood.
On the Israeli right, there were voices of dissent. Settler groups described the plan as “far from perfect” – a view almost certainly shared privately by Netanyahu. Israel’s extreme right objects to any talk of Palestinian statehood, however illusory.
Nonetheless, Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition will happily seize the goodies offered by the Trump administration. Meanwhile the plan’s inevitable rejection by the Palestinian leadership will serve down the road as justification for Israel to grab yet more land.
There are other, more immediate bonuses from the “deal of the century”.
By allowing Israel to keep its ill-gotten gains from its 1967 conquest of Palestinian territories, Washington has officially endorsed one of the modern era’s great colonial aggressions. The US administration has thereby declared open war on the already feeble constraints imposed by international law.
Trump benefits personally, too. This will provide a distraction from his impeachment hearings as well as offering a potent bribe to his Israel-obsessed evangelical base and major funders such as US casino magnate Sheldon Adelson in the run-up to a presidential election.
And the US president is coming to the aid of a useful political ally. Netanyahu hopes this boost from the White House will propel his ultra-nationalist coalition into power in March, and cow the Israeli courts as they weigh criminal charges against him.
How he plans to extract personal gains from the Trump plan were evident on Tuesday. He scolded Israel’s attorney-general over the filing of the corruption indictments, claiming a “historic moment” for the state of Israel was being endangered.
Meanwhile, Abbas greeted the plan with “a thousand nos”. Trump has left him completely exposed. Either the PA abandons its security contractor role on behalf of Israel and dissolves itself, or it carries on as before but now explicitly deprived of the illusion that statehood is being pursued.
Abbas will try to cling on, hoping that Trump is ousted in this year’s election and a new US administration reverts to the pretence of advancing the long-expired Oslo peace process. But if Trump wins, the PA’s difficulties will rapidly mount.
No one, least of all the Trump administration, believes that this plan will lead to peace. A more realistic concern is how quickly it will pave the way to greater bloodshed.
There is no way to peace in a "Middle East plan" that fully adopts the Israeli agenda and ignores the fundamental problem that has continued for more than 70 years.
Palestinians are not striving to improve the conditions of their imprisonment, they want the return of their refugees and the end of the occupation.
As it is, Palestinians are trapped, with very little freedom of movement and no voice to tell their side of the story. That is not going to change with this "deal", especially when the international community turns a blind eye to the reality on the ground for ordinary people.
More than 70 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulated the right to freedom of movement, this is not something most Palestinians can contemplate.
People around the world, who may not even know they have this defined right, exercise it on a daily basis. But for the Palestinians living in the Palestinian occupaied territories - essentially a detention camp surrounded by fences, walls and military towers - to try is to risk your life.
In Gaza and the West Bank, a person's ability to travel is conditional upon obtaining a permit from the Israeli government and then going on a waiting list administered by Gaza's Ministry of the Interior. As a result, the vast majority of Gazans have not left the Strip since the Israeli blockade began in 2007 - not even to see their relatives in the West Bank. The decision to travel is usually made only in cases of extreme need, such as for urgent medical treatment.
And according to the OCHA, 213 Palestinians had been killed since the Great March of Return demonstrations began in March 2018 in Gaza and more than 36,000 injured, many of whom have been left with permanent disabilities. In contrast, no Israelis had died.
Now, as Trump's new Middle East plan silences the voices of Palestinians, their stories, their realities, more than ever, Europe has a decision to make.
The EU has for years expressed its "deep concerns" over Israel's targeted killings and illegal settlements. But pro-Palestinian activists increasingly face censure and restrictions in European countries.
Last May, Germany passed a symbolic resolution designating the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as anti-Semitic - even though the movement's demands are based on international law and the methods it uses are peaceful.
In December, the French parliament passed a resolution that labelled anti-Zionism a form of anti-Semitism.
Europe today faces a real test: Will it value the principles of freedom of opinion, expression and movement and the international law that underpins these - or will it help in the continued silencing and stifling of Palestinians?
If Europe and the international community get behind Trump's Middle East plan - a plan in which the Palestinians have no say - the answer will be clear.
"Trumps Midle East Plan is a policy of Apartheid and Settler colonialism"
"Yet another declaration of war on Palestinians"
The Palestinians react as expected
Bottomline: Does the "Deal of the Century" make peace impossible?
PALESTINA
BRASIL
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