Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ Won’t Bring Peace – That Was the Plan
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 Benjamin 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.
*
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A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.
Jonathan Cook
won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include
“Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to
Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine:
Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Jonathan Cook, Global Research, 2020
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