Trump’s Middle East peace plan: a bad deal
Photography by Timon Studler
Sayf Abdeen considers the shortcomings of Trump’s Middle East peace plan.
While political analysts and activists across the spectrum predicted the Palestinians’ categorical rejection of Donald Trump’s peace proposal, many less-informed colleagues of mine have asked, “Why?”
Before discussing the key flaws of this one-sided plan, I would like to note: the opinions expressed in this article are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Palestinians as a whole, who share a broad spectrum of political, social, and religious views.
Firstly, the plan requires Palestinians to relinquish their right of return. For those who don’t know, this is a reference to the Palestinian refugees who were forcibly expelled by Israeli forces in 1948 and 1967, and the right to return to their homes and lands. This is unacceptable. Many Palestinians would agree that the right of return — a principle of international law — is even more important than Palestinian statehood. The plan allows limited numbers of refugees to return to the proposed Palestinian quasi-state, but implicitly declines repatriating the millions of victims into the now-Israeli territories from which they were originally expelled. Any proposed plan that does not allow the right of return will be categorically rejected by Palestinians. Israeli intransigence must give away to natural rights.
Secondly, Jerusalem. The plan proposes complete Israeli control of the city, feebly suggesting a Palestinian capital in a distant neighbourhood on its outskirts. There is no negotiation over East Jerusalem. Already, the partition of the city into East and West is a compromise on the part of Christian and Muslim Palestinians, its historical inhabitants. Anything less than a Palestinian capital of East Jerusalem is a concession far too big. However, I believe creative solutions may be necessary, such as a previously proposed Vatican-type autonomy. Unfortunately, the current leaders — Trump, Netanyahu, and Abbas — are not the leaders to embrace such endeavours.
Thirdly, the illegal Israeli settlements. They violate international law. They separate the population along ethnic lines (Jewish and Palestinian), granting the former full political and economic rights, while imposing military rule on the latter. The plan has been construed to contain an Israeli concession of a four-year freeze on settlement building. But take a closer look. Netanyahu clarified this was only a freeze on building new settlements on land that Israel does not immediately desire to annex, and that he considered “the plan to impose no limitations on construction.” Even if there was a freeze, it still wouldn’t be enough.
There must be a full closure of all illegal settlements in the West Bank and the resettlement of its inhabitants either back in Israeli territory, or, if they so choose, as equal citizens to the Palestinians around them in their areas. There is a counterargument invoking antisemitism at the thought of transferring the largely Jewish settler population back to Israel. To respond, I would argue that the settlers were placed in these West Bank colonies as a means of fragmenting Palestinian territories and were used by the Israeli regime as an expansionist tool.
Supporters of the plan point to its economic dimension, citing duty-free access to Israeli ports accompanied by $28 billion in aid as a great deal. I considered discussing why, economically, this is insufficient and unreliable, but it’s more than that. Attempting to add economic incentives is a lazy attempt by the US and Israel to de-politicise the conflict. If all Palestinians wanted was good infrastructure and steady jobs, the conflict could’ve ended long ago. The irrelevance of the economic dimension was shown last June, when Jared Kushner revealed to the world the plan’s economic aspects in Bahrain – and neither Palestinians nor Israelis cared to even attend.
I left the easiest and most obvious point for last. Trump’s Palestine looks like Swiss cheese. It shares many of the 1937 and 1947 partition proposals’ outstanding flaws: some degree of territorial contiguity is necessary for normal state operations. However, to their credit, Israel has actually done away with this problem, by simply assuming all necessary state operations of the Palestine for itself: demanding full control over Palestine’s borders, maintaining restrictions over Palestinians’ freedom of movement within their own “state” by retaining control of its connecting roads, streets, and tunnels, and taking charge of security in the state. Palestine would have no military nor control of its own airspace.
On top of all that, statehood is not even a guarantee under the plan. As the Economist observed, the plan, “would not give the Palestinians a sovereign state immediately; that might come only later, after they built a government that satisfied both Israel and America.” This is no proposal for a sovereign Palestinian state. This is a formalisation of the current Israeli apartheid system. No people would accept such humiliation.
The condition that Palestine cannot file complaints against Israel in the ICC, the political contexts the plan materialised within, and the parallels with the Bantustan system in British South African apartheid are also notable points that must be addressed. But most importantly, the plan does little to achieve peace. It is one-sided and degrading. Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani once responded to an interviewer’s question about peace talks by saying, “You do not mean peace talks, you mean surrender.”
When Zionist extremists accuse Palestinians of warmongering for rejecting deals throughout the 20th century, they seem to forget to ask “Why?” The answer lies not in some violent political culture, nor antisemitism. We have participated in and led reasonable plans — Oslo, the Arab Peace Initiative, and the 2008 negotiations. The reason we reject this plan, along with previous ones, is simple. It is a bad deal.
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