Trump’s Israel-Palestine peace plan isn’t a plan and won’t bring peace | The Business Standard
Skip to main content
  • Home
  • Economy
    • Aviation
    • Bazaar
    • Budget
    • Industry
    • NBR
    • RMG
    • Corporates
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
    • Book Review
    • Brands
    • Earth
    • Explorer
    • Fact Check
    • Family
    • Food
    • Game Reviews
    • Good Practices
    • Habitat
    • Humour
    • In Focus
    • Luxury
    • Mode
    • Panorama
    • Pursuit
    • Wealth
    • Wellbeing
    • Wheels
  • Epaper
    • GOVT. Ad
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Videos
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • COVID-19
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
  • বাংলা
The Business Standard

Thursday
June 08, 2023

Sign In
Subscribe
  • Home
  • Economy
    • Aviation
    • Bazaar
    • Budget
    • Industry
    • NBR
    • RMG
    • Corporates
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
    • Book Review
    • Brands
    • Earth
    • Explorer
    • Fact Check
    • Family
    • Food
    • Game Reviews
    • Good Practices
    • Habitat
    • Humour
    • In Focus
    • Luxury
    • Mode
    • Panorama
    • Pursuit
    • Wealth
    • Wellbeing
    • Wheels
  • Epaper
    • GOVT. Ad
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Videos
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • COVID-19
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
  • বাংলা
THURSDAY, JUNE 08, 2023
Trump’s Israel-Palestine peace plan isn’t a plan and won’t bring peace

World+Biz

Hussein Ibish
30 January, 2020, 11:05 am
Last modified: 30 January, 2020, 12:24 pm

Related News

  • Israeli army mounts rare raid into Palestinian city of Ramallah, clashes ensue
  • US VP Harris says Israel needs 'independent judiciary'
  • Blinken heads to Saudi Arabia amid strained ties, Israel normalisation in mind
  • Crowded 2024 Republican race helps clear way for Trump nomination
  • Netanyahu convenes Iran war drill, scorns UN nuclear watchdog

Trump’s Israel-Palestine peace plan isn’t a plan and won’t bring peace

This isn't a peace proposal. It is an anti-peace proposal

Hussein Ibish
30 January, 2020, 11:05 am
Last modified: 30 January, 2020, 12:24 pm
Palestinians protest against the US President Donald Trump's Middle East peace plan as tires burn, in the southern Gaza Strip January 29, 2020. Photo: Reuters
Palestinians protest against the US President Donald Trump's Middle East peace plan as tires burn, in the southern Gaza Strip January 29, 2020. Photo: Reuters

This election-year charade will only inflame tensions on the West Bank

The Trump administration's plan for Israel and the Palestinians is the biggest blow to any hopes for peace since the Oslo agreements were signed in 1993. It may even be fatal.

Standing next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz, Donald Trump purported to outline a two-state solution. But what he proposed is apartheid: a single state of Israel with limited Palestinian autonomy in some regions. 

The "Palestinian state" outlined in the Trump plan isn't a state at all, but the box that a state might have arrived in. This entity would be surrounded by areas annexed by Israel; demilitarized; forbidden from entering into agreements or joining multilateral institutions; lack control of its airspace, coastal waters and electromagnetic spectrum; and be subjected to a range of other limitations. Israel could even veto which Palestinian refugees could enter this Palestinian "state."

The Trump plan acknowledges this deception by claiming that "Sovereignty is an amorphous concept that has evolved over time." Netanyahu has long called for a "state-minus" for the Palestinians, who are presumably "humans-minus." The Prime Minister then seized the annexationist moment, pledging that Israel will "apply its laws to the Jordan Valley and all settlements" in the occupied West Bank. An actual two-state solution could never survive that.

Palestinians in areas annexed by Israel would not be granted Israeli citizenship. Yet Israel would retain full extraterritorial jurisdiction over the tiny number Jewish Israelis who would find themselves living in this Palestinian non-state.

The obvious historical analogy is the fictional Bantustans in apartheid-era South Africa, nominally independent African countries that were in fact political and legal fictions for the convenience of white rule.
As they say, you can put lipstick on a pig and call it Sally, but it's still a pig.

The plan's deep cynicism is exemplified by the claim that Palestinians would get a capital in Jerusalem, even though Jerusalem would remain undivided and under complete Israeli sovereign control.

The shell game goes like this: a few Palestinian villages on the outskirts of Jerusalem which Palestinians have never considered part of Jerusalem would be renamed "Al Quds" (Jerusalem in Arabic) and made the nominal Palestinian capital. Thanks to this artful rebranding, Palestinians would magically have their capital in "Al Quds" but Israel would retain complete control of an undivided actual Jerusalem.

The plan thus gives Israelis everything they could want, except for those few extremists demanding total annexation of all Palestinian areas rather than just de facto control of them. And it gives Palestinians virtually none of their core goals. No Palestinians were even present for the announcement.

The truth is, it's not a real proposal at all. It's pure domestic politics for both leaders.

The timing gives the game away. Trump is facing impeachment, and Netanyahu is facing indictment, and both of them are relying on reelection to avoid serious legal threats. Trump and Netanyahu were doing a victory dance, with Gantz thrown in as window-dressing on the off chance he might win the upcoming Israeli election.

Trump got to pose as a peace-making statesman and pander to his evangelical base. And Netanyahu got to pose as the man who could deliver the occupied territories and annexation at last to Israeli voters.

But although the plan is a fake, the damage will be real and profound — even if nothing, including annexation, ever comes of it.

What Trump is purporting to do is breathtaking. In 1993 the Palestinians, the Israelis and the United States all signed a Declaration of Principles that laid out the basic framework of the peace process, including five final-status issues. All of them have now been abrogated by the United States and the entire agreed-upon negotiating framework is in ruins.

That's been the main aim all along. The Israeli right never accepted the Oslo agreements, and now the Trumpian right doesn't either.

When the Israelis failed to get the Palestinians to accept this kind of limited, compromised statehood at the Camp David summit in 2000, this moment probably became inevitable. The asymmetry of power is so stark that it was virtually certain that one day Israel would try to impose by force and fiat what they could not get Palestinians to agree to voluntarily.

Until now, the Israelis have been constrained by the fact that their American patrons were co-signatories to the 1993 agreement. Trump has just effectively freed Israel from all limitations imposed by Oslo and done away with the logic of two genuinely sovereign, independent states in favor of a radically separate and unequal Greater Israel. The main questions now are whether the damage can be repaired, and how much blood will be spilled as a direct result of this political malpractice.

This isn't a peace proposal. It is an anti-peace proposal.

Top News

Donald Trump / Israel / Palestine / peace

Comments

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderation decisions are subjective. Published comments are readers’ own views and The Business Standard does not endorse any of the readers’ comments.

Top Stories

  • Photo: Collected
    No govt agency will file cases to harass others to ensure free, fair polls: Law minister
  • Photo: BSS
    Income Tax Bill 2023 placed in Parliament
  • Bangladesh must suspend pilot project to return Rohingyas to Myanmar: UN expert
    Bangladesh must suspend pilot project to return Rohingyas to Myanmar: UN expert

MOST VIEWED

  • A currency trader counts Pakistani rupee notes as he prepares an exchange of dollars in Islamabad, Pakistan December 11, 2017. REUTERS/Caren Firouz/Files
    Pakistan failing in every economic index: key survey
  • US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 7 June, 2023. REUTERS/Ahmed Yosri/Pool
    Saudi foreign minister wants US to bid in domestic nuclear programme
  • Photo: Collected
    Pakistan needs convincing budget for any chance of more funds - IMF official
  • A person carrying a shovel walks in the middle of a street during a snow storm hitting the Buffalo area in Buffalo, New York, U.S. November 19, 2022 REUTERS/Carlos Osorio
    How El Nino could impact the world's weather in 2023-24
  • Artificial intelligence brings great benefits to a wide variety of tasks but potential problems come when AI systems interact directly with human attention. Photo: Bloomberg
    Britain to host first global summit on artificial intelligence safety
  • Photo: Adobe
    Adobe pushes Firefly AI into big business, with financial cover

Related News

  • Israeli army mounts rare raid into Palestinian city of Ramallah, clashes ensue
  • US VP Harris says Israel needs 'independent judiciary'
  • Blinken heads to Saudi Arabia amid strained ties, Israel normalisation in mind
  • Crowded 2024 Republican race helps clear way for Trump nomination
  • Netanyahu convenes Iran war drill, scorns UN nuclear watchdog

Features

Our failure to prevent curious onlookers from gathering around the herds is a hindrance to mitigating human-elephant conflict. Photo: Mohammed Mostafa Feeroz

Bleak and desolate? The future of elephants in northern Bangladesh

4h | Earth
Apple does not need to make mixed reality seem exciting to get customers through its doors. They’re turning up in droves anyway, to buy new iPhones or to visit the Genius Bar for IT support. Photo: Bloomberg

Apple has 520 reasons its $3,499 headset will prevail

6h | Panorama
Md Shamsuddoha. Sketch: TBS

'Extreme heat waves are here to stay'

7h | Panorama
Kestopur’s residents have crafted fans for generations and provided it to Rajbari, Faridpur, Kustia, Madaripur, Dhaka and several other districts. Photo: Masum Billah

Talpakha: When novelty becomes necessity

11h | Panorama

More Videos from TBS

13 helpful tips to negotiate about job

13 helpful tips to negotiate about job

2h | TBS Career
Why did Messi turn away from Europe?

Why did Messi turn away from Europe?

2h | TBS SPORTS
Breaching the Kakhovka dam – who benefits?

Breaching the Kakhovka dam – who benefits?

7h | TBS World
The cost of rechargeable fan is increasing hourly due to heating and load shedding

The cost of rechargeable fan is increasing hourly due to heating and load shedding

9h | TBS Today

Most Read

1
bKash denied permission to pay $4.10 lakh for Argentina football partnership
Banking

bKash denied permission to pay $4.10 lakh for Argentina football partnership

2
Photo: Noor-A-Alam/TBS
Splash

The Night Dhaka did NOT vibe with Anuv Jain

3
Photo: TBS
Energy

2nd unit of Payra power plant to shut down over coal shortage

4
Country's first floating solar power plant connected to national grid
Energy

Country's first floating solar power plant connected to national grid

5
Photo: Screengrab from a video posted by a NSU student
Energy

'Will collapse any moment': NSU teachers, students raise concern after long power outage hit country's largest private uni

6
Photo: Salahuddin Ahmed Paulash/TBS
Energy

LPG price drops by Tk13.42 per kg

EMAIL US
[email protected]
FOLLOW US
WHATSAPP
+880 1847416158
The Business Standard
  • About Us
  • Contact us
  • Sitemap
  • Privacy Policy
  • Comment Policy
Copyright © 2023
The Business Standard All rights reserved
Technical Partner: RSI Lab

Contact Us

The Business Standard

Main Office -4/A, Eskaton Garden, Dhaka- 1000

Phone: +8801847 416158 - 59

Send Opinion articles to - [email protected]

For advertisement- [email protected]