Vox - Trump releases Middle East peace plan for Israel-Palestinehttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2020-01-31T08:30:00-05:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/208766342020-01-31T08:30:00-05:002020-01-31T08:30:00-05:00Palestinians don’t need Jared Kushner to civilize them. They need rights.
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<figcaption>Jared Kushner, senior adviser to President Trump and architect of the administration’s new peace plan, stands for a television interview on Fox News outside the White House on January 29, 2020. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>I’m Palestinian American. I reject my people’s oppression. And I want my government to listen.</p> <p id="zoIhEu">The struggle for Palestinian freedom was denigrated, yet again, this week when the leaders of the US and Israel stood side by side at the White House and unveiled <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/1/28/21100068/trump-peace-plan-israel-palestine-netanyahu-gantz">the Trump administration’s new “peace plan.”</a> </p>
<p id="GGVPIE">The plan was met with anger and skepticism from many sides. Top Democrats including <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Democratic-senators-including-Sanders-and-Warren-criticize-Trumps-peace-plan-615948">Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Amy Klobuchar</a> decried it as “one-sided” and said it “violates the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.” </p>
<p id="Jo54Y0">One <a href="https://prospect.org/world/dont-call-it-a-peace-plan-israel-palestine-trump/">former Israeli negotiator called it</a> “an act of aggression dripping with the coarse syntax of racism. A hate plan, not a peace plan.” </p>
<p id="V8oP4k">Much of the blame for the proposal’s one-sidedness has focused on President Trump and his cozy relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But the truth is that the plan is merely the formalization of a status quo with roots that far predate the rule of these two demagogues.</p>
<p id="nrsk04">Put simply, the plan is a brutally honest manifestation of Washington’s long-standing anti-Palestinian bias. And Palestinians worldwide know it.</p>
<p id="ZPmHUc">But as a Palestinian American from a family that was displaced by the Israeli military in 1967, I am not mourning the death of the two-state solution, or the rhetorical abandonment of <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/building-on-the-oslo-framework-1.5420121">the Oslo Accords</a> that have long served as the framework for peace negotiations<strong>.</strong></p>
<p id="4a2q80">Those solutions never addressed the core issues of the Palestinian freedom struggle: actualizing the right of Palestinian refugees to return, ending Palestinian statelessness, and affirming the Palestinians’ right to determine their collective future.</p>
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<cite>Hazem Bader/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Palestinian women wave national flags as they protest the Trump administration’s peace plan proposal in the city of Hebron in the West Bank on January 30, 2020.</figcaption>
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<h3 id="bLjGpo">I have lived my entire life dreaming for a just peace in my Palestinian homeland</h3>
<p id="Zrrk4y">Born in the Oslo era<strong> </strong>and privileged enough to have been born in the United States, my experience is one that reveals the futility of the Trump administration’s efforts to deliver a death blow to the Palestinian drive to shape their destiny. </p>
<p id="OyMFDq">I never lacked the basic necessities in life: food, clothing, shelter. I have been blessed with access to quality education and the ability to pursue my goals. </p>
<p id="mbMuiW">I have freedom of movement, neither trapped in the blockaded Gaza Strip nor under military occupation in the West Bank. Nor am I languishing from statelessness and a lack of opportunity in refugee camps in the occupied territories and surrounding Arab countries.</p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="jHL3NO"><q>I have lived my entire life dreaming for a just peace in my Palestinian homeland</q></aside></div>
<p id="ohHNvZ">Despite this, I have lived my entire life dreaming for a just peace in my Palestinian homeland. </p>
<p id="l6XTtR">The attitude behind Trump’s plan assumes that displaced Palestinians living with none of the privileges I had will abandon their rightful demands in exchange for the crumbs this deal will throw at them. </p>
<p id="BTtFGc">Coming of age in the Oslo era, I saw how these so-called “peace” plans only paid lip service to Palestinian self-determination without addressing the core problems of their suffering, and how their failure usually ended in<strong> </strong>victim-blaming — which Trump and his son-in-law and senior adviser <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/01/jared-kushner-peace-plan-palestinians">Jared Kushner</a>, the architect of the administration’s grand plan, have regurgitated. </p>
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<cite>Quique Kierszenbaum/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>A Palestinian demonstrator uses a slingshot to throw stones at Israeli Army Jeeps during clashes with Israeli soldiers on the outskirts of the West Bank town of Ramallah during the Second Intifada on September 28, 2001.</figcaption>
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<p id="Ygwpi2">What followed was the Second Intifada, or “uprising,” a reaction to the world’s indifference to their struggle and the futility of plans like Oslo. Watching the news as a child, images of the ensuing violence were seared in my memory, offering my generation’s Palestinian diaspora a visualization of what we are up against as a people.</p>
<p id="JeVtCJ">It was the first time many of us understood what it meant to be Palestinian: our love for each other, our love for freedom, and our grief over the loss of our compatriots, of futures stolen from our youth, the trauma we see in the eyes of our parents and grandparents. </p>
<p id="w9KkBx">It is that shared history<strong> </strong>that does not allow the privileges of our lives in the first world to anesthetize ourselves from this collective pain.</p>
<p id="Py2vF3">Palestinian Americans mourned and protested against Israel’s successive wars on the Gaza Strip in 2008-2009, 2012, and 2014. We called for an end to the military blockade on Gaza, and to the settler violence and military occupation of the West Bank. </p>
<p id="01xwg5">We helped grow a movement for Palestinian human rights and universal human dignity for everyone, everywhere. We have been waiting for decades to return to our land, property, and memories from which we were forcibly and unjustly expelled. </p>
<p id="6UDRNa">To hear <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-prime-minister-netanyahu-state-israel-joint-statements/">Trump’s condescending, hateful remarks</a> that promulgate a narrative that Palestinians are inherently violent and will only change if the United States and Israel unlock their “extraordinary potential” is insulting. </p>
<p id="cdspJ5">It merely makes it clearer than ever what the US government’s underlying attitudes toward Palestinians have always been. Palestinians have long been maligned in Washington as “rejectionist.” It is their fault these “peace” plans have not worked out. </p>
<p id="KPivz0">But that attitude ignores a grim reality: Many Palestinians are poor and frustrated because they have been suffering for 70 years. Nevertheless, they are yet again being blamed for a lack of enthusiasm for the formalization of Israeli practices that have caged, starved, traumatized, and humiliated them. </p>
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<cite>Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>An aerial view of the largest popular market in Gaza City on February 13, 2018.</figcaption>
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<p id="4RrRTX">If the success of a plan offers only peace and privilege for some at the expense of others, it is no peace plan at all. </p>
<h3 id="SQK9wH">Palestinians do not need Jared Kushner to civilize them</h3>
<p id="rY54Ak">I refuse to give up on my refugee family’s dream of returning to their emptied <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/31%C2%B050'31.9%22N+35%C2%B001'18.1%22E/@31.8411572,35.0141956,2826m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d31.8422!4d35.0217?hl=en">village</a>. I reject the oppression of my people. </p>
<p id="fxKpey">My community’s embrace of freedom and a just peace requires us to demand a new way forward: refusing to acknowledge the root of the problem does not work, the Oslo model did not work, and the Trumpian approach will not force Palestinians to their knees. </p>
<p id="Km0LmG">Palestinian Americans have been demanding US government support for a century, and now there are more than <a href="https://oldwebsite.palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/39401">250,000</a> of us in the US. Our government cannot continue to ignore our demands.</p>
<p id="OkNEWg">The only difference between me and other young Palestinians living in Gaza, or the West Bank, or the many refugee camps,<strong> </strong>is that my family was lucky enough to rebuild their lives and start over. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="zIWnI3"><q>If the success of a plan offers only peace and privilege for some at the expense of others, it is no peace plan at all</q></aside></div>
<p id="hHnNsn">For many from my village, it required a journey by foot to Jordan, and then a journey across the world to the United States. </p>
<p id="AHtB6D">Growing up in the post-9/11 era, we dealt with anti-Arab bigotry and Islamophobia, and waited for the day our government would change course and affirm Palestinian rights. </p>
<p id="zJXlLp">There is no refrain more ironic to Palestinian Americans than the taunt shouted at us growing up in this climate: “Go back to your country.” </p>
<p id="jELmc0">There have been moments in which my family has felt unwelcome here, but we are forbidden by the State of Israel from returning to our village, <a href="https://oldwebsite.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/jq-articles/Pages%20from%20JQ%2069%20-%20Mundinger.pdf">Yalu</a>, emptied of its residents in 1967, and still empty today. </p>
<p id="m4ZSwM">Trump lectured Palestinians to “meet the challenges of peaceful co-existence” in his <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-prime-minister-netanyahu-state-israel-joint-statements/">speech</a> Tuesday. I ask, why am I still barred from returning to <a href="https://www.palestineremembered.com/al-Ramla/Yalu/Picture47892.html">my family’s empty village</a>? Why are Palestinians like my family prevented from returning to land they lived on peacefully for generations?</p>
<p id="pcnIRj">Palestinians do not need Jared Kushner to civilize them. What Palestinians need is respect and the ability to shape the political systems they live in. They need human rights, political rights, and civil rights. </p>
<p id="sH7sUI">My Palestinian American story is not unique; there are thousands of us here who want accountability from our elected officials on an issue that affects us so deeply.</p>
<p id="i3Ah2t">Despite the heaviness the Trump-Netanyahu announcement brought, it has offered an opportunity for all Americans to reevaluate our understandings of this conflict — and, hopefully, to echo the Palestinian call for political rights and a just peace in our demands to our government. </p>
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<cite>Ali Jadallah/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Palestinian children hold candles during a protest against US President Donald Trump’s Middle East plan, at the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on January 30, 2020.</figcaption>
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<p id="h7fQEr"><em>Hanna Alshaikh is a PhD student in History and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. She also holds an MA from the University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Find her on Twitter </em><a href="https://twitter.com/yalawiya"><em>@yalawiya</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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https://www.vox.com/world/2020/1/31/21116230/trump-middle-east-peace-plan-israel-palestinian-rights-america-kushnerHanna Alshaikh2020-01-29T14:00:00-05:002020-01-29T14:00:00-05:00What will Palestinians do now?
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<figcaption>Palestinians protest against President Donald Trump’s peace plan in Jordan Valley, West Bank, on January 29, 2020. | Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>An expert explains Palestinian leaders’ options after Trump revealed his peace plan.</p> <p id="2MY0R5">It took almost no time for Palestinian leaders to reject <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/1/28/21083615/trump-peace-plan-map-netanyahu-israel-palestine">President Donald Trump’s Israel-Palestine peace plan</a>.</p>
<p id="wTpgyr">“After the nonsense that we heard today we say a thousand no’s to the ‘deal of the century,’” said <a href="https://apnews.com/0dcb0179faf41e1870f35838058f4d18">Mahmoud Abbas</a>, president of the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, at a news conference shortly after the proposal’s unveiling Tuesday. “We are certain that our Palestinian people will not let these conspiracies pass. So, all options are open.”</p>
<p id="VkzbjR">What those options are, though, remains an important question. It’s still unclear just what Palestinian leaders plan to do going forward, especially if they continue to refuse to negotiate with the Trump administration.</p>
<p id="cYmp3c">Will Abbas try to gain international support for his views instead of Trump’s, or will he simply try to wait out the American president’s time in office? What of the terrorist group Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, and therefore plays an important role in defining next steps? And how about the millions of Palestinians directly affected by the US and Israeli-backed plan? Will they choose to demonstrate peacefully, violently, or not at all?</p>
<p id="yteB47">To get a better sense of what might happen, I called <a href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/experts/view/ghaith-al-omari">Ghaith al-Omari</a>, who’s a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank. A former adviser to Abbas and the Palestinian negotiating team during the peace process, he has a deep insight into what leaders in the West Bank and Gaza are thinking right now.</p>
<p id="LR0Wgn">The one thing he’s sure about? Trump’s plan strengthened hardliners and weakened those who might still want to chart a diplomatic path. “It devalues the Palestinian Authority’s paradigm of diplomacy and negotiation and will reinforce the Hamas paradigm of violence and terror,” he told me.</p>
<p id="roQqVy">Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.</p>
<h4 id="f3aymk">Alex Ward</h4>
<p id="6Mhm1T">How will Palestinians respond to the peace plan?</p>
<h4 id="4zaHUo">Ghaith al-Omari</h4>
<p id="cILBeM">They’ve already rejected the plan. They also called for an <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/arab-league">Arab League</a> meeting on Saturday with the idea of getting support from Arab countries. I have to say that Israeli Prime Minister <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israels-government-plans-to-vote-sunday-on-annexing-30-percent-of-the-occupied-west-bank-officials-say/2020/01/28/1e0b681a-4203-11ea-99c7-1dfd4241a2fe_story.html">Benjamin Netanyahu’s immediate push for annexation</a> of parts of the West Bank and the clear inclinations of the Trump administration will make the Palestinians’ job much easier. No Arab country can accept unilateral annexation.</p>
<h4 id="2F4V1Z">Alex Ward</h4>
<p id="Hcj6a1">Should we assume that the peace plan is dead on arrival, then?</p>
<h4 id="3Pgm82">Ghaith al-Omari</h4>
<p id="EYyUHI">In diplomatic terms, it’s dead. Once the Palestinians and the Arab states take a clear position, then the Europeans will follow suit, and the Russians would come on board, and in the end we’re likely going to end up with a plan that is only truly supported by the US and Israel, and maybe some marginal countries. </p>
<p id="H8OZW0">Now, what does the plan mean for changes on the ground? That’s really up to the Israelis. Are they going to go for extensive annexation? Would this lead to a collapse of the Palestinian Authority, et cetera? We have to wait and see.</p>
<h4 id="6Wuu8g">Alex Ward</h4>
<p id="VVOLHj">As you alluded to, Netanyahu has said his cabinet will vote on annexing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/world/middleeast/israel-west-bank-annex-sovereignty.html">30 percent of the West Bank</a>. What do you make of that news?</p>
<h4 id="YdmeXb">Ghaith al-Omari</h4>
<p id="KA0MA6">The timing is precious. Annexing any parts of the West Bank or any parts of the Jordan Valley will create a very strong Arab reaction. Not only Palestinian, but also Jordanian, because <a href="https://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/article239719463.html">Jordan has said</a> annexation would have dire consequences in terms of the relations with Israel. </p>
<p id="sBZ59x">A situation like that would certainly make it impossible for the United States to build any international support for the plan.</p>
<h4 id="upaGg5">Alex Ward</h4>
<p id="UI7S0z">What should Palestinian leaders do if diplomacy is dead?</p>
<h4 id="L7QRWk">Ghaith al-Omari</h4>
<p id="uWEdMR">The Palestinians are playing the long game. Their concern is that the Trump plan becomes their new terms of reference. The way that they would counter that is by creating wall-to-wall international consensus against this plan. They would go to the Arab League and get a resolution. They would go to the European Union and try to get a resolution. </p>
<p id="e3oat0">If that doesn’t work, they will get support for their side through bilateral agreements with key states, and then they’ll go to the UN Security Council. They would surely garner an American veto there on a resolution, but that’s fine for them as long as they get the other 14 countries on the panel to sign on to it.</p>
<p id="JIqyt4">So we’re going to see a very intensive diplomatic effort to create an international consensus that they hope will outlive Trump. On the ground, if there is an annexation, then the Palestinians will find it very hard to continue their security cooperation with Israel. And if that ends, then the possibilities for deterioration and instability become extremely worrying. </p>
<h4 id="feRPWk">Alex Ward</h4>
<p id="A0IMG6">To be clear, what would going to the UN or the EU really do? Why are those important steps for Palestinians to take at this point?</p>
<h4 id="GW7wy2">Ghaith al-Omari</h4>
<p id="9f35WN">Because from the Palestinian point of view, they think that they can wait out Trump heading into the US presidential election in November. They want to be in a position where they have a new US administration and the international consensus remains within the old parameters. Then they’ll hope that the new administration will revert back to the traditional US position. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="FgTwg9"><q>If history is any guide, this can very quickly turn into a crisis</q></aside></div>
<h4 id="dNjkSb">Alex Ward</h4>
<p id="fKG6y0">Not all Palestinian leaders agree diplomacy is the right course of action. One could argue the Trump administration’s plan is a gift to hardliners who want to pursue a new course. How do you expect the intra-Palestinian struggle to play out?</p>
<h4 id="Ybf0LY">Ghaith al-Omari</h4>
<p id="xQRo9Z">It’s playing out as we speak. Palestinian leader <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2012/12/04/world/meast/mahmoud-abbas---fast-facts/index.html">Mahmoud Abbas</a> convened a meeting, and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/11/20/18080058/israel-palestine-hamas">Hamas</a> and the <a href="https://apnews.com/f9a2cf41c62b43aca62401f75de2796e">Islamic Jihad</a> were at the meeting. These two actors will continue pushing for more violence. Ironically, they will push for it in the West Bank, but not where they govern, in Gaza. </p>
<p id="xhCOaW">The main line that they will advocate is to cut security cooperation with the Israelis because security cooperation has really limited Hamas’s ability to operate in the West Bank. But they will go back to what they always do, which is engage in terror, engage in destabilization. </p>
<p id="5x9k9v">They are trying to corner Abbas, and part of that is dictating the agenda with terror. They feel politically very empowered and Abbas really is in a very difficult place to reject their inclusion. This crisis will not lead to unity. But this will lead, I think, to Hamas being empowered in the West Bank.</p>
<h4 id="KfDXh9">Alex Ward</h4>
<p id="wth9cJ">So you’re saying the Trump administration’s peace plan proposal might give Hamas a bit more power within Palestinian leadership?</p>
<h4 id="eiOxrL">Ghaith al-Omari</h4>
<p id="8FgFaA">Absolutely. It devalues the Palestinian Authority’s paradigm of diplomacy and negotiation and will reinforce the Hamas paradigm of violence and terror.</p>
<h4 id="WwzQJU">Alex Ward</h4>
<p id="uGKvHK">There was a lot of worry that if the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/5/14/17340798/jerusalem-embassy-israel-palestinians-us-trump">US moved its embassy to Jerusalem</a>, there’d be a lot of violence. <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2018/5/14/17352016/us-jerusalem-embassy-gaza-violence">There was some</a>, but it didn’t become a big thing. What should we expect the popular reaction to be to this plan?</p>
<h4 id="3oSETM">Ghaith al-Omari</h4>
<p id="3xHXD9">That’s the biggest unknown. The lack of violence after the Jerusalem embassy move was partly because the public was tired and partly because the Palestinian security forces were coordinating with the Israelis to keep demonstrations away from friction points. Today, it’s clear the Palestinian public is checked out. But if history is any guide, this can very quickly turn into a crisis.</p>
<p id="c03lal">We have volatility, but simply no way of predicting how the public is going to react. Keep in mind that the Palestinian public is not only fed up with the Israeli diplomacy, but also with their own leadership. So would they respond to Hamas’s calls for violence or not? This is truly an ongoing concern, and I think this is what’s keeping the Israeli and Palestinian security folks awake at night.</p>
<h4 id="t2IY4u">Alex Ward</h4>
<p id="ev6VcX">Surely some will worry that a declining change of diplomacy means the possibility of a major conflict — or at least a bigger conflict — grows. Do you think that fear is justified?</p>
<h4 id="d4A5cZ">Ghaith al-Omari</h4>
<p id="i0Jj5s">Yes, I think that fear is justified. Again, I wouldn’t go for doom and gloom because we have no certainty, but I think it increases the likelihood and increases the volatility of the situation.</p>
<h4 id="GqGfuv">Alex Ward</h4>
<p id="zuC49u">What needs to happen for this situation to improve, then?</p>
<h4 id="ZMfYjP">Ghaith al-Omari</h4>
<p id="eVgMP0">In the short term, I believe the priority is to ensure that things don’t devolve into a security problem. Here, the Arab countries can play an important role in convincing Abbas to maintain security control. </p>
<p id="QudzWT">In the longer term, I think the real battle is whether the Trump administration manages to turn this into the new international terms of reference, in which case the Palestinians will only become weaker. If that happens, Palestinians might manage to isolate themselves from the American and Israeli positions.</p>
<p id="QWheOw">So far, though, I have to say that the Trump administration’s diplomatic performance has been extremely lackluster. So for the Palestinians, the way they see it is: Wait out this administration and see what comes next. </p>
https://www.vox.com/2020/1/29/21113423/trump-israel-palestine-peace-plan-optionsAlex Ward2020-01-28T18:00:00-05:002020-01-28T18:00:00-05:00Jared Kushner, architect of Trump’s Middle East peace plan, still doesn’t get it
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<figcaption>White House senior adviser Jared Kushner at a press conference with President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on January 28, 2020, in Washington, DC. | Alex Wong/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Kushner’s main talking point on the peace deal highlights the whole problem with it.</p> <p id="0eRyCD">Senior White House adviser and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner spent three years working on the Trump administration’s newly released <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/1/28/21083615/trump-peace-plan-map-netanyahu-israel-palestine">Israel-Palestine peace plan</a>. Yet the main talking point he’s using to sell the proposal reveals the fundamental problem at the heart of the plan itself: the administration’s tacit endorsement of Israel’s continued illegal settlements in Palestinian territory.</p>
<p id="BN74rH">In multiple interviews right after the administration released its proposal on Tuesday, Kushner said Israel’s rapid growth — in other words, the settlements — are precisely why Palestinian leaders should make a deal now.</p>
<p id="qJYcPH">“If we don’t do this today, at the rate at which Israel is growing, I think that it will never be able to be done,” Kushner told <a href="https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1lDGLgvkdyzKm">Al Jazeera</a>. “So we see this as the last chance for the Palestinians to have a state.” </p>
<p id="vzkezK">He didn’t misspeak, which we know because he repeated this same talking point over an hour later. “This is something that we inherited, the situation where Israel continues to grow and grow,” he told <a href="https://twitter.com/camanpour/status/1222259577963589633">CNN’s Christiane Amanpour</a>.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Jared Kushner on the new Middle East peace plan: "It was very, very difficult to draw these lines... This is something we inherited." <a href="https://t.co/C4hk69u9Az">pic.twitter.com/C4hk69u9Az</a></p>— Christiane Amanpour (@camanpour) <a href="https://twitter.com/camanpour/status/1222259577963589633?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 28, 2020</a>
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<p id="bZc1QA">Let’s be clear about what this means: The White House’s lead staffer for finding a peaceful solution to the Israel-Palestine stalemate says Israel’s growth is basically unstoppable. For that reason, he claims, Palestine has no choice but to strike a deal.</p>
<p id="jWuEh8">It’s an astounding thing for Kushner to say. Israel restrains itself from extending its settlements into the West Bank unless it feels it has tacit American approval. Kushner’s plan and his statements will likely serve as a green light to Israeli leadership to expand those settlements. They may explain why Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu wants a vote on Sunday to annex <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israels-government-plans-to-vote-sunday-on-annexing-30-percent-of-the-occupied-west-bank-officials-say/2020/01/28/1e0b681a-4203-11ea-99c7-1dfd4241a2fe_story.html">30 percent of the West Bank</a>.</p>
<p id="sYDYMl">That could make a fraught issue so much worse. </p>
<h3 id="kKLDKx">Why settlements make a peace deal harder to reach</h3>
<p id="kAO5ln">About <a href="http://www.btselem.org/settlements/statistics">500,000</a> Israelis live in the settlements, of which there are about 130 scattered around the West Bank. Roughly <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/israels-settlement-crisis-its-not-too-late-for-a-two-state-solution/254955/">75 percent</a> of settlers live on or near the West Bank border with Israel. Some of the settlements are vast communities that house tens of thousands of people and look like suburban developments. Some look like hand-built shanty outposts.</p>
<p id="oFehoo">Settlements create what Israelis and Palestinians call “new facts on the ground.” Palestinian communities are split apart and their connection to the land weakened, while Jewish communities put down roots in territory meant for Palestinians. </p>
<p id="aqxSdU">In effect, it shrinks the area of land left available for any future Palestinian state to exist on and chops it up into pieces, destroying its potential viability as a real, contiguous state. For some settlers, this is the point: They want the West Bank fully incorporated as Israeli territory and are trying to make that happen.</p>
<p id="GoWHu6">A “conceptual map” of Palestine released as part of Kushner’s proposal shows he wants some of those settlements to remain where they are (they’re the flecks of beige interspersed among the blueish green parts). </p>
<p id="3SvKGK">Instead of coming up with a plan that would see those settlers relocated or finding some other solution, Kushner’s plan just takes the huge chunk of land where most of the settlements are located and gives it to Israel. In return, Palestinians get some pockets of land far away in the desert on the border with Egypt and not much else.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A map of proposed territory for Israel and Palestine." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wyCDKEyIQqqHZ_NKzy-mPR_bweE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19653734/Screen_Shot_2020_01_28_at_3.43.26_PM.png">
<cite>White House</cite>
</figure>
<p id="WO8qhq">Which means one of two things: either Kushner doesn’t know how sensitive this issue is, or he doesn’t care and is using it as a cudgel against Palestinians. It’s hard to know which one is worse.</p>
https://www.vox.com/2020/1/28/21112558/kushner-peace-plan-israel-palestine-settlements-cnn-jazeeraAlex Ward2020-01-28T16:30:00-05:002020-01-28T16:30:00-05:00Trump’s Israel-Palestine peace plan, explained
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ajkzj0ke13MAYDVt99mC7Ygc97M=/747x0:6720x4480/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/66209035/GettyImages_1196823795.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>A man peeps from inside his caravan in the Israeli Shilo settlement in the West Bank on January 27, 2020. | Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“The real threat to peace is if the plan succeeds,” an expert told Vox.</p> <p id="zJTfOE">President Donald Trump claims his peace plan for Israel and Palestine will prove to be a triumph that will last for the next <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-trump-s-deal-of-the-century-was-written-so-the-palestinians-would-reject-it-1.8443677">80 years</a>. But it’s unclear whether it will be viable for even 80 minutes.</p>
<p id="OBMuU4">That’s because most analysts believe the deal — the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Peace-to-Prosperity-0120.pdf">political portion</a> of which was finally released on Tuesday — is dead on arrival.</p>
<p id="k9JrO2">“It’s a total shitshow,” a former senior White House official familiar with the peace plan process told me the day before its release. </p>
<p id="AEno8f">In roughly 50 pages, the administration’s political strategy — masterminded by Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner — aims to solve the intractable problems that have stymied both Democratic and Republican administrations for decades. </p>
<p id="hZ6z8q">It defines the future of Israeli settlements, how Palestinians might conditionally form a state, and America’s view of Israel’s myriad security concerns. </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/g3_BIwREnOERWI99hmrcKS9Bf48=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19646667/GettyImages_1196864332.jpg">
<cite>Kobi Gideon/GPO/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>US President Donald Trump meets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on January 27, 2020.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="LSCHWX">What it doesn’t do is provide a “right of return” for displaced Palestinians to their ancestral homes in Israel, allow for a sovereign state of Palestine to form a military that it could use to threaten Israel (or to defend itself against Israel), or give Palestinians any meaningful part of Jerusalem as its capital.</p>
<p id="7Woa1U">In fact, it essentially ignores all of the Palestinians’ key desires, as the plan was drafted with no input from Palestinian leaders.</p>
<p id="P6J8r1">The rollout’s optics, which featured Trump alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but with no Palestinian leadership present, won’t quell those concerns. Some even argue the plan’s release is more meant to help Netanyahu win a <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2019/12/27/21039049/israeli-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu-wins-primary-indictments">tough election</a> in March. </p>
<p id="DCKn83">“The so-called ‘deal of the century’ isn’t a peace plan at all. It is a plan to reelect Benjamin Netanyahu,” Guy Ziv, an Israel expert at American University, told me. “If this plan was truly aimed at breaking the diplomatic stalemate, the Palestinians would have been consulted in the plan’s formulation.” He noted that their negotiators cut off ties when Trump’s team decided to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/5/14/17340798/jerusalem-embassy-israel-palestinians-us-trump">move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem</a>. </p>
<p id="S3auKD">“It’s not a serious plan,” Ziv continued. “It satisfies neither the national aspirations of the Palestinian people nor Israel’s security needs.”</p>
<p id="ni8oY6">But to hear Trump tell it, he has brokered the most important diplomatic breakthroughs not just of his presidency but of modern history. “It’s been a long and very arduous process to arrive at this moment,” Trump said in a speech at the White House Tuesday, standing next to a smiling Netanyahu. “All prior administrations from President Lyndon Johnson have tried and bitterly failed, but I was not elected to do small things or shy away from big problems.”</p>
<p id="JuKcGQ">Netanyahu, for his part, was thrilled with the outcome.</p>
<p id="9aS5sC">“I believe that down the decades, and perhaps down the centuries, we will also remember January 28, 2020, because on this day, you became the first world leader to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over areas that are vital to our security and central to our heritage,” the prime minister said to Trump.</p>
<p id="cqqiI2">What happens next is key. It’s unclear if America’s allies in the <a href="https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1222212153568120834">Middle East</a> and Europe will stand behind the strategy, and <a href="https://twitter.com/yosefyisrael25/status/1222239340912422914?s=20">Palestinian leaders have already rejected it</a>. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israels-government-plans-to-vote-sunday-on-annexing-30-percent-of-the-occupied-west-bank-officials-say/2020/01/28/1e0b681a-4203-11ea-99c7-1dfd4241a2fe_story.html">Netanyahu aims to push for a vote Sunday</a> to annex 30 percent of the West Bank and parts of the Jordan Valley — clearly emboldened by the plan’s release.</p>
<p id="W196Mh">Which means it already looks like the Trump administration has deepened the crisis it promised to solve. “The real threat to peace is if the plan succeeds,” Khaled Elgindy, an adviser to Palestinian leadership from 2004 to 2009 and now at the Middle East Institute in Washington, told me.</p>
<h3 id="TmT2sq">What the new peace plan actually says </h3>
<p id="slpCJW">There’s a lot to this document, but there are four major elements of the new political proposal in particular you need to know about: 1) Israel keeps the vast majority of Jerusalem as its sovereign capital; 2) Palestinians get no right of return; 3) it redraws borders mainly between Israel and the West Bank; and 4) doesn’t allow for Palestine to create a fighting force to defend itself. </p>
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<cite>Christina Animashuan/Vox</cite>
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<h4 id="r7UE6q">Jerusalem</h4>
<p id="cxZ7Ku">First, Israel gets the entirety of an undivided Jerusalem as its capital. A future state of Palestine would get a few neighborhoods in far eastern Jerusalem. </p>
<p id="2A3puq">That’s a major decision. For the first 20 years of Israel’s existence, Jerusalem was divided. Israel controlled the parts of Jerusalem and its suburbs inside the red dotted line on this map, while Jordan controlled everything outside of it (blue dotted lines separate Jerusalem proper from suburbs):</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iocXCwt5xovQHJrOLCJtS58TG54=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19653204/jerusalem_before1967.gif">
<cite><a class="ql-link" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_israel_palestinians/maps/html/1967_and_now.stm" target="_blank">BBC</a></cite>
</figure>
<p id="Nyq1l3">Jordan controlled the Temple Mount, a hill in the map’s brown splotch. The hill hosts the <a href="http://english.thekotel.org/content.asp?id=212">Western Wall</a>, a retaining wall of an ancient Jewish temple and one of Judaism’s holiest sites, and two of Islam’s most important landmarks, the <a href="http://insideislam.wisc.edu/2012/02/important-sites-al-aqsa-mosque/">al-Aqsa Mosque</a> and the <a href="http://insideislam.wisc.edu/2012/02/important-sites-the-dome-of-the-rock/">Dome of the Rock</a>. Israeli Jews weren’t allowed to pray in the area while Jordan controlled it. During the 1967 war, Israel took control of East Jerusalem.</p>
<p id="MMbFt2">Israel calls Jerusalem its undivided capital today, but few countries recognize it as such. UN Security Council Resolution 478 <a href="http://www.cfr.org/israel/un-security-council-resolution-478-israel/p11226">condemns</a> Israel’s decision to annex East Jerusalem as a violation of international law and calls for a compromise solution.</p>
<p id="ni9Hnl">So for the Trump administration to basically say, “Sorry, all of Jerusalem belongs to Israel,” is a gutsy move that will make Israel’s leaders happy but doom any chance of bringing the Palestinians on board.</p>
<h4 id="zn3ncv">No “right of return” for Palestinian refugees</h4>
<p id="tv2AaN">The plan explicitly states that there shall be no “right to return” for the millions of Palestinians forced out of their ancestral homes during the formation of the Israeli state.</p>
<p id="Ug2qgP">The 1948 war uprooted 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, creating a refugee crisis that is still not resolved. Palestinians call this mass eviction the Nakba — Arabic for “catastrophe” — and its legacy remains one of the most intractable issues in ongoing peace negotiations.</p>
<p id="c9L9gz">Today, there are <a href="http://www.irinnews.org/report/89571/middle-east-palestinian-refugee-numbers-whereabouts">more than 7 million</a> Palestinian refugees, defined as people displaced in 1948 and their descendants. A core Palestinian demand in peace negotiations is some kind of justice for these refugees, most commonly in the form of the “right of return” to the homes their families abandoned at the time.</p>
<p id="PaWDYy">Israel can’t accept the right of return without abandoning either its Jewish or democratic identity. Adding 7 million Arabs to Israel’s population would make Jews a minority; Israel’s total population is about 8 million, a number that includes the 1.5 million Arabs already there. So Israelis refuse to even consider including the right to return in any final status deal — and now, it seems, the Americans agree with that view.</p>
<p id="9lVEjS">The plan lays out three options for these refugees:</p>
<blockquote>
<p id="tEbZky">1. Absorption into the State of Palestine (subject to the limitations provided below);</p>
<p id="eF9Tee">2. Local integration in current host countries (subject to those countries consent); or</p>
<p id="ub8jQF">3. The acceptance of 5,000 refugees each year, for up to ten years (50,000 total refugees), in individual Organization of Islamic Cooperation member countries who agree to participate in Palestinian refugee resettlement (subject to those individual countries’ agreement).</p>
</blockquote>
<h4 id="Hp5ZUs">Redrawing of borders</h4>
<p id="Mj3AfP">The proposal redraws borders to effectively give Israel more land in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank, in exchange for “land swaps” that include two areas in the Negev Desert. </p>
<p id="fGIygj">Here’s the “conceptual map” included in the proposal:</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/96K5ueFsKqRg4bofLMb9gopVi7E=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19653514/Screen_Shot_2020_01_28_at_3.43.26_PM.png">
<cite><a class="ql-link" href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Peace-to-Prosperity-0120.pdf" target="_blank">White House</a></cite>
</figure>
<p id="rtpPes">As you can see, the map gives Israel a large chunk of the West Bank where there are currently a number of Israeli settlements. These settlements in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory are <a href="https://twitter.com/sfrantzman/status/1222225700960309248">currently illegal under international law and are not considered part of Israel proper</a>. This plan would change that by granting Israel the big section of land they’re built on.</p>
<p id="zsOrny">The map also shows that Israel would take control of the Jordan River Valley. That’s a promise <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2019/9/10/20859101/israel-netanyahu-jordan-valley-annex-election-september">Netanyahu</a> made to his people last September, and it’s highly controversial.</p>
<p id="jMXa2P">The Jordan Valley runs along the east edge of the West Bank, the heavily Palestinian-populated area taken by Israel in the 1967 war, marking its boundary with neighboring Jordan. It contains both Palestinian population centers, like the city of Jericho, and a number of Israeli settlements.</p>
<p id="sqAweG">The most credible argument for Israel formally seizing control of this land is essentially strategic. Israel has faced invasions from Jordan before, and an IDF military presence in the Jordan Valley is <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/some-israeli-generals-say-1967-lines-with-swaps-are-defensible/248167/">arguably vital</a> to protecting Israel from a hypothetical future invasion.</p>
<p id="Rra7Eg">However, there is no imminent risk of such an invasion to justify an immediate land grab. And there are lots of arrangements by which Israel could protect legitimate security interests in the Jordan Valley <em>without</em> outright seizing the land. It could station some troops there with permission from a Palestinian state, for example.</p>
<p id="lW19gK">Which means the plan looks simply like a big land grab that would also ruin any hope of a future Palestinian state.</p>
<h4 id="NoHzUH">A permanently demilitarized state of Palestine</h4>
<p id="tlSAVP">Finally, the plan calls for a future state of Palestine to basically never be able to secure itself.</p>
<p id="tFvxRg">“The State of Palestine will not have the right to forge military, intelligence or security agreements with any state or organization that adversely affect the State of Israel’s security, as determined by the State of Israel,” the document reads. “The State of Palestine will not be able to develop military or paramilitary capabilities inside or outside of the State of Palestine.”</p>
<p id="uR9Szu">In other words, a future Palestinian state would not be able to create armed forces to protect itself or fight others. This might seem prudent for Israel’s security, but it would basically leave the state of Palestine at the mercy of Israel’s strong military, giving Israel a greater ability to bully its future neighbor.</p>
<h3 id="XVI5Wc">There’s an economic component to the peace plan too</h3>
<p id="qf3lBl">This is all supposed to add to the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/peacetoprosperity/">economic portion of the peace plan</a> the administration released last June.</p>
<p id="8ydZUy">Dubbed <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/peacetoprosperity/">“Peace to Prosperity,”</a> the economic plan was billed as “a vision to empower the Palestinian people to build a prosperous and vibrant Palestinian society.” The administration claimed it had “the potential to facilitate more than $50 billion in new investment over ten years.”</p>
<p id="ypuWaF">But critics slammed the proposal, likening it to a <a href="https://qz.com/1650724/kushners-palestinian-peace-plan-resembles-real-estate-brochure/">“real estate brochure”</a> — complete with glossy <a href="https://twitter.com/braunold/status/1142602095293546496">promotional photos from Palestinian aid programs</a> that the Trump administration has cut funding for. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="Eq2Tri"><q>“It’s a total shitshow”</q></aside></div>
<p id="3e3Lpy">Crucially, the plan lacked any details about a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That was by design: Kushner decided to put out the economic half before releasing the political half, saying that releasing the economic bit was <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-17/israel-palestinian-authority-won-t-attend-bahrain-peace-meeting">“less controversial.”</a> But without that second political half, the economic proposal was essentially meaningless.</p>
<p id="sCkUWT">It’s hard to imagine anyone investing billions of dollars in big infrastructure and transportation projects for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza while <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2019/06/envoy-israel-annex-west-bank-land-190608131911933.html">the Israeli government continues to annex more and more territory in the former</a> and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/over-90-rockets-fired-israel-gaza-israel-s-military-n1001991">regularly</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/25/israeli-military-bombing-gaza-after-rocket-strike">bombs</a> the latter. The question now is if the political portion satisfies any of those concerns, but experts almost unanimously say that it won’t.</p>
<p id="CSFjsR">No plan was ever going to be perfect. Past administrations, Republican and Democrat, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-plan-history/long-line-of-israeli-palestinian-peace-bids-precede-trump-push-idUSKBN1ZQ0RQ">failed to realize a peace deal</a>. Trump’s plan was thus always likely to join theirs on the trash heap of diplomatic history.</p>
<p id="2OuIgf">But this administration’s attempt differed in the way it bluntly sidelined Palestinian interests and leaders while prioritizing Israeli interests. It was less of a negotiation, then, and more of a strong-arming.</p>
<h3 id="wCtJCc">The peace plan continues Trump’s support for Israel’s right wing</h3>
<p id="xts8A8">A hallmark of Trump’s approach to the Middle East is his close personal relationship with Netanyahu and his support for the right-wing government he leads. </p>
<p id="oiPNjZ">Their friendship, and Trump’s extremely pro-Israel advisers — from Vice President Mike Pence to US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman to <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-disclosure-form-west-bank-settlements-israel-white-house-729290">Kushner</a> himself — have led his administration to back many of Netanyahu’s priorities in the region, in some cases overturning decades of US foreign policy and destroying the chance of bringing Palestinians into the process.</p>
<p id="tYXeq6">For example, Trump moved the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/5/14/17340798/jerusalem-embassy-israel-palestinians-us-trump">US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem</a> in May 2018, following through on his promise from months earlier. </p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AeNYDT3amgBmBgvOcQMb51kS6-k=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19647647/GettyImages_1131800590.jpg">
<cite>Jim Young/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ambassador to Israel David Friedman stand next to the dedication plaque at the US Embassy in Jerusalem on March 21, 2019.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="qJkCdy">In March 2019, the US recognized the <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2019/3/21/18276101/trump-israel-netanyahu-golan-heights">Golan Heights</a> as part of Israel, another massive change in US foreign policy. The Golan Heights, as <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/4/25/17263644/israel-bombs-syria-strikes-iran-war-conflict-map">Neri Zilber wrote for Vox</a> in 2018, is a “strategic area of elevated land situated along Israel’s northern border with Syria. For decades it was part of Syria ... [but] Israel conquered the region during the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Six-Day-War">1967 war</a> and later <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-47657843">annexed it</a> in a move not recognized by the international community.”</p>
<p id="Low5qU">And last November, Pompeo announced <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/world/middleeast/trump-israel-west-bank-settlements.html">he was reversing a longstanding State Department legal opinion</a> labeling Israel’s settlements in the West Bank as illegal under international law. The new position sharply contradicted mainstream interpretations of the law, the historical US approach to the conflict, and the broader international community’s view of the situation.</p>
<p id="8o8cRy">The announcement sent a clear message to Israeli settlers and its government: Go ahead and keep moving into land that the Palestinians want as a home for their future state. </p>
<p id="fEsaDY">All of that, mixed in with Trump’s order to close a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/09/trump-administration-close-plo-office-washington-dc-180910064915646.html">Palestinian mission in Washington</a> and stopping <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/08/ends-funding-palestine-refugee-agency-180831203947486.html">aid for Palestinian refugees</a>, showed just how much Trump favored Netanyahu’s vision for Israel and why Palestinian leaders gave up on the process. </p>
<p id="hkMPR5">But Trump also had a domestic political reason to do all this: Republicans want the US president to show pro-Israel bona fides. </p>
<p id="udO0ya">There’s been a remarkable surge in pro-Israel sentiment among Republicans over the past several decades. Gallup polling shows that in 1988, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/11/11/9708018/republicans-israel">47 percent of Republicans and 42 percent of Democrats</a> took Israel’s side in the conflict with the Palestinians. As of March 2019, that figure is roughly similar for Democrats (43 percent) but dramatically higher for Republicans (<a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/247376/americans-not-liberal-democrats-mostly-pro-israel.aspx">76 percent</a>).</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HM4JOSt7zyxmV5eAUIeA5-lD81c=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19632477/AAAAAA.png">
<cite><a class="ql-link" href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/247376/americans-not-liberal-democrats-mostly-pro-israel.aspx" target="_blank">Gallup</a></cite>
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<p id="lTD7my">It is therefore in Trump’s political interest to keep siding with Netanyahu.</p>
<p id="YXEDzW">“Rather than build on previous efforts, the Trump White House has taken measures, such as recognizing Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, and created a plan that serves the interests of Netanyahu, Israeli settlers, and the agenda of the conservative evangelical community in the US — the latter a key part of Trump’s base,” American University’s Ziv said.</p>
<p id="MyMJce">And that brings us to why Trump wanted to release the peace plan now.</p>
<h3 id="ORhktL">The new plan is mainly about Netanyahu, not peace</h3>
<p id="0ODG5o">Netanyahu is battling corruption and bribery charges while simultaneously campaigning for reelection in <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-the-hurdles-facing-israel-s-parties-ahead-of-third-election-in-march-2020-1.8264748">March 2020</a>. </p>
<p id="9NDyrw">A November 2019 indictment against Netanyahu covers three different cases, with <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/21/20974465/benjamin-netanyahu-indicted-bribery-corruption">his alleged offenses</a> including the receipt of inappropriate gifts from a billionaire and corrupt arrangements with media magnates aimed at improving his press coverage. The technical charges are bribery, fraud, and breach of public trust — bribery being the most serious under Israeli law. </p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Vi-QgaNLmTOqQEvNfhRdZwdfZTc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19649638/GettyImages_1136007662.jpg">
<cite>Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Israeli Likud party campaign posters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strewn on the floor at the party headquarters in Tel Aviv on April 10, 2019.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="wx3TLH">Jail time is not out of the question: Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert got wrapped up in a bribery scandal during his time in office in the late 2000s and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-40472158">eventually served more than a year in prison</a>.</p>
<p id="5BiF7t">The indictment came at a critical time in Israeli politics: the aftermath of an inconclusive election. Neither Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party nor its chief rival, the centrist Blue and White party led by Benny Gantz, has been able to form a governing coalition. </p>
<p id="IEHTJ8">The parties had been in talks to ally and form a national unity coalition, but one of the key sticking points has been Netanyahu himself. He wants to keep the top job in some capacity, while Blue and White leaders have adamantly refused to allow him to do so while an indictment is still on the table.</p>
<p id="4hv6vp">That’s why Israel will have its third election in a year to form a government, with Netanyahu’s and Gantz’s parties still the leaders. This political and legal crisis has left Netanyahu clawing for power. Enter Trump, who with this right-wing-friendly strategy could give his Israeli friend a boost.</p>
<p id="5CEk5B">“The timing of this plan’s release was clearly orchestrated by Netanyahu and his supporters in Washington. It provides an embattled prime minister, who seems to be on his way out, with a major pre-election gift — possibly a life raft,” says Ziv. “It shifts the focus of the Israeli election campaign from an indicted prime minister who may face prison time to a plan that is portrayed as highly favorable to Israel.” </p>
<p id="2dyJG4">“It’s therefore the most blatant interference in domestic Israeli affairs we’ve seen to date,” he concluded.</p>
<p id="jMkx2g"></p>
https://www.vox.com/2020/1/28/21083615/trump-peace-plan-map-netanyahu-israel-palestineAlex Ward2020-01-28T16:10:00-05:002020-01-28T16:10:00-05:00Trump’s Israel-Palestine “peace plan” is a con
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/nTzND0_DHldSZmuFxCKKtJE1TG4=/549x0:5724x3881/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/66208884/1197125171.jpg.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Netanyahu and Trump unveiling the peace plan. | Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>The proposal destroys the prospects for any real deal and brings Israel meaningfully closer to “apartheid.”</p> <p id="mLRWAp">Donald Trump’s “peace plan” isn’t a plan for advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. It’s a plan for scuttling them. </p>
<p id="Gxx7yj">The president released the long-awaited political framework of his <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Peace-to-Prosperity-0120.pdf">“Peace to Prosperity”</a> plan on Tuesday afternoon after a White House ceremony featuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.</p>
<p id="3emURs">The proposal is missing a signature feature of every prior peace plan: a path to a viable Palestinian state. It divides up the Palestinian territories and surrounds them by Israel, and gives Israel total control over Palestinian security — allowing a future Palestinian government to exercise full control over its own land only when Israel deems it acceptable. It’s a kind of state-minus: a Palestine without much of its land and subservient to Israel for basic functions.</p>
<p id="6ooTrg">“Trump can try to make this a Palestinian state by calling it a state. But it ain’t ever gonna whistle,” writes Tamara Cofman Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy. </p>
<p id="i3Umb9">Needless to say, the Palestinians cannot and will not agree to such humiliation, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has already ruled it out.</p>
<p id="bZn6Rk">“No, no, and no,” <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/abbas-well-send-us-plan-to-dustbin-of-history-our-rights-are-not-for-sale/">he has said</a>. “Jerusalem is not for sale. All of our rights are not for sale or bartering.”</p>
<p id="xfJ5CP">In fact, the Palestinians didn’t even have a role in writing the plan: It was put together primarily by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, in consultation with the Israeli government. The notion that this is a good-faith effort to make peace is laughable. </p>
<p id="IBY15K">So if the “peace plan” isn’t a peace plan, then what is it?</p>
<p id="0znVrL">First, it’s an effort to help Netanyahu, a staunch Trump ally, in advance of tightly contested March elections in Israel. The release of a plan so tilted to Israeli priorities helps the right-wing prime minister sell himself as the man best positioned to handle the vital US-Israel relationship. And it <a href="https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1222177357064220674">doesn’t seem like an accident</a> that the plan was released on the same day that Israel’s attorney general formally indicted Netanyahu on bribery and corruption charges.</p>
<p id="ErPH6B">Second, and more insidiously, it is a plan to legitimize Israel’s ongoing effort to seize additional Palestinian land. </p>
<p id="ovuhem">The United States, as Israel’s most important ally and the historic mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, helps define the parameters of what counts as an acceptable outcome. </p>
<p id="KylcTg">As soon as the Palestinians have rejected the plan — and it took only minutes for them to do so — the Israelis can say, “Well, we tried, but they wouldn’t deal.” And they can proceed with settlement expansion and land grabs, moving Israel toward “not peace, but apartheid,” as B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights group, put it in a press release on the proposal.</p>
<p id="8QlbKh">The Trump vision is, in short, a truly Orwellian creation: a “peace plan” that actually is a plan to destroy the prospects for peace.</p>
<h3 id="T4ViQO">Trump’s peace plan is a nonstarter</h3>
<p id="Bmw2nJ">Prior to the Trump plan, the basic framework for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations had been relatively fixed. There would be two states, with the Palestinians taking control of the overwhelming bulk of the Palestinian-populated West Bank and Gaza Strip, and with Israel largely retreating to its current internationally recognized borders. </p>
<p id="EfJqX9">The two sides would come to agreement on thorny issues like which Israeli settlements in the West Bank could become part of Israel, and how exactly to share Jerusalem (a holy city for Judaism and Islam that both sides claim as their capital).</p>
<p id="73Uzau">The Trump plan pretty much throws out this framework entirely.</p>
<p id="u4DIAh">Instead of allowing the two sides to negotiate solutions to these core disagreements, the plan lays out a detailed vision for final terms before negotiations have even begun. </p>
<p id="rZmiww">On each of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/11/20/18080090/israel-palestine-peace-process">four main issues</a> — West Bank borders/settlements, Jerusalem, justice for Palestinian refugees displaced in the 1948 war, and balancing Israel’s security needs with Palestinian sovereignty — the plan is heavily tilted in Israel’s direction. </p>
<p id="Q8UJoP">“Palestinians are being offered no state at all, just the box a state came in,” writes <a href="https://twitter.com/Ibishblog/status/1222234846011043840">Hussein Ibish</a>, the senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute. “Israel will be left in complete control of the entire area from the river to the sea. Pure apartheid.”</p>
<p id="S0Lai8">Perhaps the easiest way to see why is to look at the plan’s map for what final borders would look like. The proposed Palestinian state is in green; the little dots in the middle of the West Bank are Israeli “enclaves” that will remain part of Israel:</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/MYj0T0pzxDZBggvM1l_kzV_R_GI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19653194/Screen_Shot_2020_01_28_at_2.05.15_PM.png">
<cite><a class="ql-link" href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Peace-to-Prosperity-0120.pdf" target="_blank">United States Government/Vision</a></cite>
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<p id="nbC08U">What you see is a Palestinian “state” that covers Gaza and a fraction of the West Bank, is surrounded by Israel, and is cut up even further by Israeli land. The plan seems to permit Israel beginning the process of annexing part of this land, starting with the Jordan Valley in the eastern part of the West Bank, an area that would cut off Palestinians from neighboring Jordan.</p>
<p id="jJLXj1">And the drawing actually understates how bad things will be, because it’s simply too zoomed out to illustrate how many different Israeli settlements there are and how much they’d screw up Palestinian development. This map alone would render the entire plan unacceptable to Palestinians. </p>
<p id="MtYGFZ">“For the first time, the United States has unveiled a map with precise borders, and an Israeli leader has endorsed it. That map is a maximal vision of Israeli territorial control in the West Bank and Jerusalem,” Michael Koplow, the policy director of the Israel Policy Forum, writes in <a href="https://forward.com/opinion/439006/donald-trump-the-destroyer/">the Forward</a>.</p>
<p id="R3FSLV">But it’s also terrible for Palestinians on the other three main contentious issues.</p>
<p id="IOw0WJ">The plan states that “Jerusalem will remain the sovereign capital of the State of Israel, and it should remain an undivided city.” The Palestinians will be granted only a tiny fraction of the heavily Palestinian-populated part of the city known as East Jerusalem that excludes the religious holy sites; “all of Jerusalem’s holy sites should be subject to the same governance regimes that exist today,” as the plan euphemistically puts it.</p>
<p id="o97Rxc">On refugees, the Palestinians literally get nothing — just a vague promise that some money might come up.</p>
<p id="HTj8cA">“Proposals that demand that the State of Israel agree to take in Palestinian refugees, or that promise tens of billions of dollars in compensation for the refugees, have never been realistic and a credible funding source has never been identified,” the plan explains. “Nevertheless, we will endeavor to raise a fund to provide some compensation to Palestinian refugees.”</p>
<p id="zEkJTJ">Yet it is the security section that is perhaps most revealing. Not only would the future state of Palestine not be permitted to develop its own “military or paramilitary” forces — ever — but Israel would also maintain full security control over Palestinian territory until it decides not to. And if at any time Israel changes its mind, it is within its rights under the deal to retake military control.</p>
<p id="saWry7">“Once the State of Israel determines that the State of Palestine has demonstrated both a clear intention and a sustained capacity to fight terrorism, a pilot program will be initiated in an area of the West Bank portion of the State of Palestine, designated by the State of Israel, to determine if the State of Palestine is able to meet the Security Criteria,” the plan explains. “Should the State of Palestine fail to meet all or any of the Security Criteria at any time, the State of Israel will have the right to reverse the process outlined above.”</p>
<p id="dJoDSW">A peace plan is supposed to end Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank. By giving Israel full control, the Trump plan makes such a withdrawal nearly impossible to envision.</p>
<p id="U7Kt9r">“If you put it in Israel’s hands it will never happen,” <a href="https://twitter.com/ilangoldenberg/status/1222231562709880838">writes Ilan Goldenberg</a>, the Middle East security director at the Center for a New American Security. “It’s a recipe for permanent occupation.”</p>
<h3 id="BCvahc">The real purpose of the plan</h3>
<p id="QYIhYv">Given these harsh terms and the total lack of Palestinian buy-in, there is no plausible reason to believe this plan could ever serve as the basis of an actual peace agreement for the two sides. </p>
<p id="luZGvC">So what’s the purpose of releasing it with all this fanfare?</p>
<p id="p8ChJE">Part of the explanation is purely political: Trump wants to help his friend Netanyahu seem strong before Israel’s elections. The timing of the plan’s release makes this relatively transparent.</p>
<p id="5Pfkrx">But the Trump administration wouldn’t go through all the trouble of drafting a plan just to interfere in a foreign election. There’s a deeper, even likelier explanation: that the right-wingers who make up Trump’s Israel-Palestine team have worked with the Israeli right to figure out a way to undo the peace process itself.</p>
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<img alt="ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN-CONFLICT-WEST BANK" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DOsv6OvJncfKCMzovam-CbZAbV8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19653435/1137688665.jpg.jpg">
<cite>Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>A picture taken from the Israeli settlement of Gilo in Jerusalem, shows an Israeli army watchtower and the occupied West bank city of Bethlehem on the background</figcaption>
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<p id="s9CcW2">Israeli politics has tilted heavily against peace negotiations in the past two decades, largely as a result of the collapse of the 1990s-era peace process into the violence of the second intifada. </p>
<p id="q1oihD">The March elections are primarily a contest between Netanyahu and the center-right Blue and White party, which itself has endorsed the idea of <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Gantz-calls-for-annexation-of-Jordan-Valley-614803">annexing part of the West Bank</a> — and celebrated the release of Trump’s plan as providing “a strong, viable basis for advancing a peace accord with the Palestinian.”</p>
<p id="SzTq97">Consider the likely effect of this plan’s release on Israeli politics in this context. The Israel Policy Forum’s Koplow does a good job outlining it:</p>
<blockquote><p id="GCH1jL">Israeli expectations have been permanently reset, and the trajectory of the Israeli position moving closer to the Palestinian one with each successive round of talks is over. Trump has destroyed any remaining hope that Israel will settle for the deal that peace processers have envisioned for a quarter century. In fact, Trump’s vision is weighted so far in one direction that it makes any deal at all hard to envision, particularly if Israel actually goes through with the annexation scenario that Trump has now greenlit.</p></blockquote>
<p id="VWB8ch">Not only will Israeli leaders be hard-pressed to accept less than what Trump offered, the inevitable Palestinian rejection of Trump’s plan will give them the opportunity to start taking land on their own. </p>
<p id="fHM5st">The Israeli argument since Oslo has always been: “We tried to negotiate, but the Palestinians wouldn’t listen.” They’ll be able to say that this time around too, even though the negotiations were never offered in good faith.</p>
<p id="AuqB85">What’s more, they can use the plan’s huge territorial concession — that Israel will get to keep its West Bank settlements permanently — as a justification for annexing at least part of it unilaterally. Netanyahu had vowed to annex the Jordan Valley prior to the plan’s release; Israel’s cabinet appears <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israels-government-plans-to-vote-sunday-on-annexing-30-percent-of-the-occupied-west-bank-officials-say/2020/01/28/1e0b681a-4203-11ea-99c7-1dfd4241a2fe_story.html">set to start the annexation effort</a> as early as Sunday.</p>
<p id="lImHtq">Such a land grab would force Israel down one of two dangerous one-state paths.</p>
<p id="znlV6W">Option one would be to give the vote to Palestinians and make them full citizens of Israel, leading to an Arab demographic majority and thus ending Israel’s status as a Jewish state. This is not only <a href="http://www.americantaskforce.org/in_media/pr/2009/08/28/1251432000">a recipe for violence</a> between Muslims and Jews but also unacceptable to Israel’s current leadership, who care much more about the state’s Jewish character than its democratic one.</p>
<p id="I07uuu">The other option is indefinite Israeli rule over Palestinians without granting them citizenship. There’s a word for keeping an ethnically defined part of your population in permanent second-class citizenship: apartheid.</p>
<p id="nmgTBb">And that is the most fundamental effect of the Trump plan: to grant legitimacy to the move toward apartheid, to give America’s imprimatur to something its government once saw as impermissible.</p>
<p id="var0SJ">They are destroying any prospect for a just peace plan in the name of saving it.</p>
https://www.vox.com/world/2020/1/28/21111890/trump-israel-palestine-peace-plan-deal-century-apartheidZack Beauchamp2020-01-28T13:14:59-05:002020-01-28T13:14:59-05:00Trump’s Israel-Palestine peace plan: Read the full text of his so-called “deal of the century”
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<img alt="President Donald Trump and&nbsp;Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu&nbsp;talk to reporters at the White House on January 27, 2020 in Washington, DC." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WEDgwV89eMqihNbCvsfFVhFxRo8=/0x0:4183x3137/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/66207013/1202311597.jpg.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Mark Wilson/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Some experts say it’s dead on arrival.</p> <p id="8P156D">After much delay, President Trump has finally unveiled his Middle East peace plan — a plan he claims will lead to the “deal of the century.”</p>
<p id="6SGjH7">The problem? It’s likely dead on arrival.</p>
<p id="EXR7z7">The administration’s strategy, masterminded by Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, aims to solve the intractable problems between Israelis and Palestinians that have stymied both Democratic and Republican administrations for decades. </p>
<p id="YCpFJC">But it essentially ignores all of the Palestinians’ desires, as the plan was drafted with no input from the Palestinian side. It’s pretty hard to make a historic deal when one side isn’t part of the negotiations.</p>
<p id="Y54Nzy">Even so, the Trump administration clearly believes its peace plan is ready for primetime and released the document with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. It’s a moment that crystallizes just how far the US has gone to align itself with Israel’s right wing under Trump, and how little the president has cared about actually crafting a serious, feasible peace deal.</p>
<p id="wqkAOZ">Here are some of the key points, as outlined by the White House:</p>
<blockquote>
<p id="t2sGUy">—The Vision provides for a demilitarized Palestinian state living peacefully alongside Israel, with Israel retaining security responsibility west of the Jordan River.</p>
<p id="LEvGqZ">—Over time, the Palestinians will work with United States and Israel to assume more security responsibility as Israel reduces its security footprint. </p>
<p id="BP41Vg">—Neither Palestinians nor Israelis will be uprooted from their homes.</p>
<p id="5kiPbM">—Israel has agreed to a four-year land freeze to secure the possibility of a two-state solution.</p>
<p id="sKPvkw">—Jerusalem will stay united and remain the capital of Israel, while the capital of the State of Palestine will be Al-Quds and include areas of East Jerusalem</p>
<p id="hFEoRO">Palestinian refugees will be given a choice to live within the future State of Palestine, integrate into the countries where they currently live, or resettle in a third country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p id="sJVdTt">With little global support for Trump’s plan, it’s likely destined for the trash heap of diplomatic history. Before it goes there, though, you can <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Peace-to-Prosperity-0120.pdf">read the full report here</a>.</p>
<p id="AvpVTo"><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Peace-to-Prosperity-0120.pdf"></a></p>
https://www.vox.com/2020/1/28/21100068/trump-peace-plan-israel-palestine-netanyahu-gantzAlex Ward