The President of the United States has just unveiled a plan which he believes could bring peace to the warring sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Donald Trump hopes to resolve one of the thorniest diplomatic dilemmas in human history, one which has haunted the Middle East since 1948, and whose roots run deep into the history of the region and Europe’s own past.
At a press conference at the White House, the President called his programme “a vision for peace” that is radically different from previous proposals and said that it will offer “a constructive path” and “a very powerful path forward”. The document, which is eighty pages in length, was drafted by a team led by the President’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner.
What is the cause of the Israel-Palestine conflict?
At the heart of the Israel-Palestine dispute are two conflicting demands for self-determination that first emerged under the League of Nations Mandate in Palestine, which was governed by Great Britain after the First World War.
On 14 May 1948, the independent State of Israel was unilaterally declared by Palestine’s Jewish community. This followed the failure of a two-state partition plan proposed by the United Nations in 1947, and the subsequent withdrawal of British forces from Palestine in May 1948. The UN partition plan had been accepted by the Jews of Palestine – the Israelis – but not by the Palestinian Arabs.
On 15 May 1948, the Arab League declared war on the new state in the name of the Palestinian Arabs, leading to open warfare between Israel and her Arab neighbours. There were further Arab-Israeli conflicts in 1967 and 1973.
The Arab States’ proclaimed objective in these conflicts was to defeat Israel and restore Palestinians to the lands from which they had been displaced at the hands of the Israelis in 1948.
After defeating her Arab adversaries in the Six Day War of 1967, the Israel occupied or annexed lands in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights at the expense of Jordan and Syria respectively. Many Israelis argue that these measures were necessary in order to defend their young nation from further attempts made by Arab countries to invade or destroy it. Others fiercely oppose the occupation and the continuing expansion of settlements in these lands.
The ongoing Israeli occupation in East Jerusalem and the West Bank has also been a source of anger and resentment for the Palestinians living in these lands. The official position of the United Nations holds that Israeli settlements in these territories are in breach of international law.
Faced with the Arab states’ failure to defeat Israel, Palestinian nationalist groups increasingly turned to militancy in the 1960s-1970s. Article 19 of the Palestinian National Charter, created in 1964-68 by the secular-nationalist Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), described the state of Israel as “entirely illegal” and denied its right to exist.
However, the PLO leadership under Yasser Arafat eventually turned away from militancy. Arafat and the PLO recognised Israel’s right to exist in peace in the 1990s and expressed a willingness to change or annul large parts of the National Charter in return for the creation of a Palestinian state out of the occupied territories.
This opened the path to direct negotiations and a diplomatic solution. The PLO-controlled Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has been engaged in inconclusive negotiations with several Israeli governments over a potential two-state solution ever since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993-1995.
Today, the PNA holds civil authority in the West Bank but not in the Gaza Strip, which has been controlled by Hamas, a militant Islamist organisation that rejects all peace with Israel, since 2007.
Aside from direct negotiations, various summits and plans to resolve the ongoing disputes between Israelis and Palestinians have been pursued, but none have so far succeeded.
What are the main provisions of the Trump plan for Israel?
Under the new programme for peace proposed by the US President today, Jerusalem will continue to be formally recognised as the “undivided capital” of Israel. This means that the US embassy will remain in the city.
This controversial move was taken by the Trump administration in 2017, overriding the ambiguous policy of previous administrations which had often described Jerusalem as the capital of the country but maintained the official US diplomatic presence in Tel Aviv. Any diplomatic ambiguity on behalf of the White House has now been removed.
On top of this, the US will recognise the indisputable Israeli sovereignty over territories that Trump’s team determine to be a part of the Israeli state. This will be according to what he called a “conceptual map”, in which the areas the Israeli government is, and is not, willing to concede will provide the basis of negotiations with President Mahmoud Abbas of the PLO.
The US President has also reiterated that Israel’s national security will remain a priority, and that “we will never ask Israel to compromise its security.” Accordingly, one key requirement of this plan is that Hamas and other Islamist groups operating out of the Gaza Strip, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, are fully disarmed and demilitarised.
What will the Palestinians get from the plan?
The US President has presented this as an “historic opportunity” for the Palestinians to create their own independent, sovereign state – one recognised by the international community. As it stands, Palestine is acknowledged by 138 UN member states as a partially-recognised “non-member observer state”, rather than a fully sovereign country.
The Trump plan proposes a conceptual map that would “more than double the Palestinian territory and provide a Palestinian capital in eastern Jerusalem”, where the President says the US “will proudly open an embassy”.
The real sweetener is a comprehensive investment plan for the new state. The President announced that $50 billion of investment would be pumped into Palestine, in order to provide “joy, opportunity, and prosperity” for the Palestinian people.
However, in order for the plan to be put into action, President Trump has demanded that several conditions are met first. The Palestinians must recognise the legality and sovereignty of the state of Israel. They will have to enshrine protections for human rights in law, permanently halt financial corruption, and end any compensation to terrorists groups.
Previously, in January 2019, the US President ended all US aid going to Gaza and the West Bank as a part of his drive against terrorist groups in the region.
Will it bring peace to the region?
The President has received the support of the Israeli side for his programme – both the incumbent Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the leader of the main opposition party in the country, Benny Gantz, have been vocal in their support for the deal.
Nonetheless, there are signs that the proposed deal may be dead upon arrival among the authorities on the Palestinian side. Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip and is designated as a terrorist organisation by the US Department of State, was not officially consulted in the creation of the plan and has rejected it outright.
The Palestinian National Authority, which governs in the West Bank Palestinian territories, has expressed its “clear and unwavering” rejection of the Trump initiative.
Mohammad Shtayyeh, the Prime Minister of the PNA, said even before the plan was published that “We reject it, and we demand the international community not be a partner to it because it contradicts the basics of international and inalienable Palestinian rights.” He added that “It is nothing but a plan to finish off the Palestinian cause.”
Dr. Saeb Erakat, Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the PLO, tweeted on 24 January:
“Reminder to the International Community: Israel is an occupying Power of the State of Palestine…Any deal, attempt or dictation that ignores this fact, will be recorded in history as the Fraud of the century.”
None of this is reflected in the tone of optimism sounded at the White House. The President thanked several “Arab nations” such as Oman, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan for their help in creating the proposals.
Trump concluded by stating his belief that “the Middle East is changing rapidly”, and that governments and people in the region are increasingly invested in peaceful solutions. In this atmosphere of reconciliation, he believes that his plan could cut the Gordian knot of Middle Eastern diplomacy and “bring about a new dawn in the Middle East”.