A stillborn plan?
Greed must be considered a serious illness. Greed accompanied by ignorance must be even a far serious condition. If greed and ignorance are accompanied with the power of the top seat of the most powerful state of the world, I have no idea how I can describe the situation other than pointing at the White House.
Meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, American President Donald Trump “released” his long-delayed and unilateral Middle East peace plan that his team negotiated in bits and pieces with the Israelis and some other world leaders, including Britain’s Boris Johnson, but not with the Palestinians.
The details of the 80-page plan, apart from remarks of Trump and comments of Netanyahu, were not immediately available but obviously will be discussed at length over the days and weeks to come.
Whether it was part of the “new sanctions” on Turks, it was not clear, but Turkish journalists, including those accredited to the White House, were not shunned from the event.
As is understood, even though the United States revealed a while ago that he abandoned a two-state settlement concept, the plan is indeed based on the creation of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital over a period of four years, while Jerusalem will be the “undivided capital” of the Jewish state.
Apparently what Trump and the president’s men described in the plan as “East Jerusalem” is something not at all related with today’s physical east Jerusalem.
To meet the “required conditions” of the peace plan and “deserve” to become an independent state on a territory “two times bigger” than what they already have, Palestinians and the Arab countries will be provided with some sort of a Marshall Plan, a $50 billion economic program over the next four years. While the Palestinians were required to accept the conditions spelled out in the plan to “deserve” to have their independent state, Israel would generously accept to negotiate terms of establishment of the Palestinian state that Trump described as “their last chance.”
During the four-year period Palestinians would work to earn their state, according to a factsheet released, and Israel would not build new settlements.
Obviously Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and chief adviser to the American president, must have contributed seriously to this plan for the sake of which Trump and the American state allowed the royal murderer of a Saudi-American journalist at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last year get away with the brutal and heinous act.
The status of al-Aqsa Mosque, the first qibla Muslims turned to during prayer, would not be changed under the plan but Palestinian refugees would not have the right to return to their homes in areas that are now Israeli territories.
According to what Trump and Netanyahu said during the White House event, while the plan offered generous U.S. recognition of Israeli territorial claims, it firmly legitimized Israel’s right to long-disputed areas. Probably that was why Netanyahu, with a big smile on his face, said the plan was a great and historical achievement.
Further details will help understand whether this plan, which was reportedly written over a period of three years and included “revolutionary elements” to support peace, might have a chance to bury the most intractable problem of the world, the Arab-Israeli problem. But the real problem appears to be somewhere else. Initial objections to or embracement of the plan by third parties might not mean much unless Palestinians develop a united position on it.
The polarization of the Palestinian people between Hamas and Fatah (and others) is not conducive to any sort of serious peace talks. Is there any magical formula anywhere to establish peace among Palestinians?