{"id":53647,"date":"2020-02-19T11:36:45","date_gmt":"2020-02-19T00:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=53647"},"modified":"2020-02-20T10:48:23","modified_gmt":"2020-02-19T23:48:23","slug":"the-paradigm-shift-on-palestine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-paradigm-shift-on-palestine\/","title":{"rendered":"The paradigm shift on Palestine"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Nobody should be surprised that US President Donald Trump\u2019s Middle East peace proposal<\/a> is heavily tilted towards the Israelis. What is surprising is that, rather than rejecting Trump\u2019s proposal, the world has left the Palestinians largely on their own.<\/p>\n

While dismissing the Palestinians\u2019 national yearnings with the patronising promise to \u2018improve their lives\u2019, the Trump peace plan embraces Israel\u2019s national narrative that it alone has valid historical claims to Judea and Samaria, the Jews\u2019 biblical homeland. So, while it would give the Palestinians their own state, it would be a fragmented territory covering Gaza and 70% of a West Bank dotted with Israeli settlements and surrounded on all sides by Israeli-annexed territory. Its capital would be located in a suburb of East Jerusalem, which would remain Israel\u2019s undivided capital.<\/p>\n

The plan ignores Palestinian demands for the right of return to homes left when Israel was established in 1948\u2014a right that was recognised at the time by United Nations General Assembly resolution 194. Moreover, in line with Israel\u2019s far-right ethnocratic ambitions, the border would be drawn in a way that strips 300,000 Israeli Arabs of their citizenship, making them citizens of the Palestinian state.<\/p>\n

The Palestinian territories would be connected by a maze of tunnels and bridges, and much like the Bantustans of apartheid South Africa, they would be subject to overwhelming Israeli military control. Anyone entering the new Palestine\u2014by air, sea or land\u2014would have to go through Israel.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Palestinians would be prohibited from creating their own armed forces or engaging in any activities \u2018that adversely affect the State of Israel\u2019s security\u2019\u2014as determined by Israel\u2019s government. Likewise, the Palestinians would have to earn the right to this sham state by disarming Hamas and proving\u2014not to any international body, but to Israel and the United States\u2014that they have created a democratic system governed by the rule of law.<\/p>\n

In presenting such a deeply unfair plan, Trump has destroyed any credibility that the US may have still had as an honest mediator. Moreover, he has undermined the belief\u2014crucial for progress towards a fair deal\u2014that internationally agreed principles of the Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace process, from the need to adhere to the pre-1967 borders to the illegality of Israeli settlements, are unassailable.<\/p>\n

Given how willing the rest of the world seems to be to abandon the Palestinians, these losses will not be easy to reverse, even if Trump loses the November presidential election and his successor abandons the plan, as candidates like Bernie Sanders<\/a> and Elizabeth Warren<\/a> seem prepared to do. The fact that anyone is taking Trump\u2019s skewed plan seriously is a testament, first and foremost, to the radical transformation that the Middle East has undergone in recent years. Solidarity with the Palestinians used to be the glue that held together an otherwise fragmented Arab world; now, their plight is seen as a nuisance, a burden and above all an obstacle to rapprochement with Israel.<\/p>\n

Yes, the Arab League repudiated the US plan at a meeting of its foreign ministers in Cairo. But the truth, as Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah movement put it<\/a>, is that Trump\u2019s \u2018deal of shame\u2019 would not have happened without the \u2018complicity and betrayal\u2019 of several Arab states.<\/p>\n

The ambassadors of Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates participated in the White House unveiling ceremony, implying these countries\u2019 approval. Moreover, despite \u2018renewing its assertion\u2019 of support for the Palestinian people, Saudi Arabia noted<\/a> that it \u2018values the efforts\u2019 of the Trump administration in \u2018developing a comprehensive peace deal between the Israeli and Palestinian sides\u2019. Given Trump\u2019s apparent loyalty to Saudi Arabia\u2014based, not least, on lucrative arms deals\u2014the kingdom\u2019s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was probably privy to the plan\u2019s contents before it was released.<\/p>\n

In Jordan, King Abdullah initially warned that Israel\u2019s annexation of the Jordan Valley would have serious security consequences. But he has since advised<\/a> other countries to \u2018look at the glass half full\u2019. Judging by its ambiguous attitude towards Palestinian statehood, one must wonder whether Jordan would prefer having as its neighbour Israel, with which it has historically colluded to rein in Palestinian aspirations, rather than a Palestinian state.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Egypt\u2019s foreign ministry called<\/a> upon both sides \u2018to carefully consider\u2019 the peace plan, and even claimed that creating an independent and sovereign state in the occupied territories would restore all the \u2018legitimate rights\u2019 of Palestinians. And though Tunisia\u2019s president condemned<\/a> the peace plan as \u2018the injustice of the century\u2019, the country\u2019s ambassador to the UN was soon sacked for leading the challenge against it in the Security Council.<\/p>\n

But it is not only the Arab world that is letting down the Palestinians. The European Union\u2019s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Josep Borrell<\/a>, strongly condemned the plan. However, his unilateral statement was needed precisely because some EU countries\u2014including the Czech Republic, Hungary and Italy\u2014blocked<\/a> a shared resolution. France, for its part, gave<\/a> the plan a cautious welcome.<\/p>\n

Beyond the EU, the UK government hailed<\/a> the Trump peace plan as \u2018a serious proposal\u2019 and \u2018a positive step forward\u2019. And despite officially condemning<\/a> the plan for \u2018contradicting UN resolutions\u2019, Russia stands to gain from what a Moscow Times <\/em>editorial called<\/a> the \u2018unilaterally imposed humiliating terms\u2019 of the deal. This \u2018provides a precedent for major powers dictating terms to weaker ones\u2019 and vindicates Russia\u2019s occupation of Crimea, \u2018Russia\u2019s West Bank\u2019. In fact, \u2018limited sovereignty\u2019 was exactly what the Kremlin wanted to give the former Soviet republics.<\/p>\n

If, with the probable connivance of the Trump administration, Israel annexes its West Bank settlements, the paradigm shift in the Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace process would be complete. Israel\u2019s status as an apartheid state would be officially confirmed. And the Palestinians will face a stark choice: submit or struggle. If they choose the latter, it had better be a diplomatic struggle; a third intifada would be calamitous for their cause. Boycotting America, still an indispensable power for an equitable regional solution, proved to be a wrongheaded Palestinian policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nobody should be surprised that US President Donald Trump\u2019s Middle East peace proposal is heavily tilted towards the Israelis. What is surprising is that, rather than rejecting Trump\u2019s proposal, the world has left the Palestinians …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":484,"featured_media":53655,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[240,218,926,435],"class_list":["post-53647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-palestine","tag-sovereignty"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe paradigm shift on Palestine | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-paradigm-shift-on-palestine\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The paradigm shift on Palestine | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Nobody should be surprised that US President Donald Trump\u2019s Middle East peace proposal is heavily tilted towards the Israelis. 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