The Trump Peace Plan, Palestinian Apartheid and American Hegemony

In January 2020, the United States and Israel, in the absence and without the consultation of Palestinian leaders brokered the ‘Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People’ proposal, also known as the Trump Peace Plan, chiefly administered by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The Plan is historical, in the sense that it has come the closest to an actual deal between Israel and Palestine with the potential to initiate the end of a centuries-long conflict. However, in the absence of any Palestinian role in the architecture of the Plan, from its onset, the Plan seeks to neutralize and disable the very Palestinian state it seeks to provide international legitimacy to, under a carefully

schemed Israeli domination, approved by the American authority.

The Plan strategically avoids all the demands that have been made by the Palestine Liberation Organization and the people of Palestine, who first, seek to be rehabilitated and a ‘right to return’ to their ancestral home in Israel; second, have the right to form their military as the independent state of Palestine and third, be able to share the city of Jerusalem with Israel, which officially recognizes Jerusalem as its national capital, in contradiction to international law and United Nations mandate (UN Security Council Resolution 478).

The plan explicitly denies a ‘right to return’ for almost a million Palestinians, who became stateless overnight as an outcome of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, when they lost almost three- quarter of their homeland to Israeli annexation and were forced to flee and take refuge in the West Bank region and in the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, creating one of the largest refugee crises in history, often dubbed as the ‘Nabka’, the Arabic word for ‘catastrophe’. The Plan offers a few tokenistic options of local integration into host countries for Palestinian refugees and the option of allowing 5000 Palestinian refugees into the other Organization of Islamic Cooperation states, who agree to participate in Palestinian refugee settlement for a period of ten years.

The plan also attempts to redraw boundaries, all in Israel’s favour, as it gives major control of the West Bank, (that is largely populated by Palestinians, but also contains many Israeli settlements which are considered illegal, again by the aforementioned Resolution 478 of the Security Council), and the Jordan Valley, that, if initiated strategically provides geopolitical security to Israel in the border sharing region of Jordan, which has made multiple attempts of invasion in Israel. Most controversially, the Plan calls for a complete demilitarization of the future state of Palestine, that won’t be able to enter into military, security and intelligence agreements with other states that would affect the security of the state of Israel, as determined by the State of Israel. Finally, the Plan also aims to give Israel complete control of the undivided city of Jerusalem (the city is divided into East and West, and West Jerusalem is officially recognized as the capital city of Israel under international law and East Jerusalem is considered as occupied Palestinian territory, envisioned to be part of the State of Palestine), giving control of a small fraction of the heavily Palestinian-populated East Jerusalem, that excludes all the holy sites of Islam.

Calling the Israel-Palestine conflict a ‘religious issue’ seriously undermines the chances for negotiation and makes it intractable when it is a conflict rather about territory and identity of both Israelis and Palestinians regarding a nation and a homeland. What is extremely dangerous about the Trump Peace Plan is that, in refusing to accept it, Palestine will end up letting Israel continue its illegal annexation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip under the excuse of non-cooperation by Palestine, thus putting itself in the same diplomatic deadlock it has been in since 1945, and aborting the chances of another Plan coming into fruition for years to come. However, the Plan has been pushed aggressively by both the United States and Israel. Overarching the apparent benefit of acquiring control over the land Israel has already illegally annexed for years now, this move helps both Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel in the domestic political front as well.

Netanyahu is the first prime minister of Israel who is facing corruption charges and is up for a general election where he has to win the support of the minority parties for a coalition. A hardlined Plan regarding Palestine that allows Israel complete control over territory and strategic

location, that cripples Palestine politically and economically, will help Netanyahu’s Likud Party receive support from the centrist Blue and White Party who advocate for stringent action against

Palestine. At the same time, the Plan helps Donald Trump amidst impeachment charges and the trade war with China, repair his image as the first American president in history who has been able to achieve peace and consensus over the conflict that so many of his predecessors have failed to do. At the same time, Palestine has failed to initiate any resolution over the Plan in the Security Council, leaving the future extremely uncertain for the millions of Palestinian people. At the end of the day, the Plan yet again is a symbol of American neo-imperialism, this time imposing a system of apartheid on the Palestinian people, in response to their demand for recognition, legitimacy and a home.

Shromona Jana

Intern, AGA