Opinion/Commentary By Trudy Rubin
WASHINGTON, Feb 3 (NNN-PI) – If anyone doubts President Trump’s long awaited Israel-Palestine peace plan was mainly an election-oriented political document, he shattered those doubts Tuesday.
On the very day Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu was indicted for bribery and fraud, and Trump’s impeachment trial was upended by firsthand evidence he blackmailed Ukraine, the president rolled out his “deal of the century.”
In a stagy production, replete with Trumpian hyperbole, as he stood alongside Netanyahu, the president was clearly pitching his evangelical base for the 2020 election and pumping for Netanyahu in the Mar 2 Israeli election.
Trump’s proposal sticks closely to the very plan Netanyahu has been touting for years, which the Israeli leader labelled “state-minus, autonomy-plus.” That means the Palestinians can have something they can call a state, but without any normal trappings of statehood, other than diplomatic representation and passports.
I’ve covered the Israel-Palestine issue for decades and don’t pretend that there is any easy solution at this stage. But this plan ignored Palestinian input. And it depended on first-son-in-law, Jared Kushner’s naive impression that Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman could “deliver” the Palestinians.
Rather than provide a two-state solution, this plan officially buries that concept, confirming that the United States endorses permanent Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza. Trump’s proposal is dressed up to look like something different – putting forward a series of economic fantasies far removed from political realities.
But without addressing those realities, the plan guarantees Palestinian rejection. (Was it really designed for that purpose, one wonders.) And that will leave Israel in a one-state solution, controlling territory with more Arabs than Jews.
A close look at the “state-minus” will explain my pessimism.
Palestinians would have nominal control over a shrunken portion of the West Bank. It calls for Israeli sovereignty over the entire Jordan Valley (one-third of the West Bank) and more than 120 Jewish settlements and towns in that territory.
This would divide the Palestinian-controlled areas into a series of islands, connected by tunnels and bridges and enclosed by sovereign Israel territory, a long-standing idea on the Israeli right. (Decades ago, I was told by an aide to the late Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, that “tunnels and bridges” wound enable Israel to shut down Palestinian cantons whenever they chose.)– NNN-PI
