ONE-PARTY DEAL

The essence of the long-awaited and so-called 'Deal of the Century' aimed at implementing the measures to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was announced on January 28 at a press conference in the East Hall of the White House. U.S. President Donald Trump, speaking in the presence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and twelve Arab officials, unveiled the long-awaited Middle East peace plan. But the implementation of certain points of the plan began much earlier...

Factual plan

In fact, the plan is a set of unilateral steps, including the recognition of Jerusalem as the united and indivisible capital of Israel by the United States, Israel’s rights to implement a settlement policy in the West Bank and others. The main lobbyist for the plan is the senior adviser to the American president, his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Although the plan is presented as Washington’s initiative to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, it is a US-Israeli plan in the core. It ignores previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements, in particular, many of the provisions reached back in 1993 in Oslo. In other words, the U.S. reintroduces the approaches of the Reagan administration, which considered Israel the main beneficiary of the deal. This in turn leads to new problems with Palestine and its partners in establishing dialogue.

At the same time, the decision of Israeli authorities adopted in the fall of 2019 to build more than 2,300 houses for Jewish settlers in the West Bank contrary to the spirit of previous agreement significantly complicates the problem. Israel demonstrates that it remains committed to plans to change the ethnic composition of the population of the West Bank, which means complete absorption of the region by the Jewish state.

Just before the early parliamentary elections in Israel in the autumn of 2019, Prime Minister Netanyahu reached agreement upon the draft law proposed by Sharry Haskell of the Likud party to apply state sovereignty of Israel to the Jordan Valley (law on the annexation of the Jordan Valley). This is also an integral part of the new American plan, which provides for the creation in the Palestinian territories of the quasi-state entity named New Palestine, the borders of which, in fact, are already formed. In other words, Israeli authorities force both the Palestinian Authority and international community face the fact. Mr. Netanyahu is simultaneously trying to solve the issue of forming a new Israeli cabinet.

Gift to Israel

The U.S. is trying to advance the plan because it provides an opportunity to rely more on Tel Aviv to neutralise Iranian influence in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. In fact, in addition to Israel, Washington no longer has real allies against Iran. Israel is bombing the positions of pro-Iranian forces in Syria and is providing multifaceted support to the Kurds in Syria and Iraq.

With the growing anti-Iranian sentiment in Iraq, U.S.-Israeli joint actions are an important tool in the fight against the spread of Iranian influence in the region. They are also important as they provide an opportunity to take joint actions against Iran in case of further destabilisation of the situation in the country.

Washington creates an important corridor for Israel to advance its line of conduct with regard to Palestine, while also strengthening its own position in the region. Given the reaction of potential stakeholders and real participants in regional politics, their ability to counteract the actions of the two countries is very limited.

As expected, the U.S. proposal was sharply criticised in Palestine, Arab and several other Islamic countries. Arab leaders, in particular the leaders of the Palestinian Authority, view the new U.S. policy as a direct threat to their interests and view the steps of the American administration as a revision of the entire international legal framework relating to the Palestinian settlement.

There are plenty of reasons for this. According to the Kushner plan, Palestinians will receive about 70% of the territory of the West Bank. Even the democratic administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama offered more, with the borders of Palestine directly touching the borders of Jordan. According to the new deal, Palestinian territories become an enclave bordering Israel only, since the only possible border with other countries may be the Jordan Valley. Moreover, Trump believes that it should be an Israeli border because of its 'special significance' for the security of the Jewish state.

Unfair exchange

According to the plan, the capital of New Palestine should be a suburb of Jerusalem adjacent to the eastern part of the city. The developers of the plan suggest calling it al-Quds. It does not bother them that all Muslim shrines are located on the territory of real East Jerusalem. Under these conditions, a promise to provide free access to shrines sounds disappointing.

Another part of Palestine, located in the Gaza Strip, is also completely under Palestinian control. It should be connected to the West Bank by a tunnel or overpass over Israeli territories. Control of the Gaza Strip opens up access to the sea. However, the plan makes it possible to build a port and even an airport there only five years after the conclusion of a peace agreement. Until that moment, Israel allows Palestine to use its two ports in the cities of Ashdod and Haifa.

It is proposed to compensate for the loss of territories in the West Bank by transferring to the Palestinian side several zones in the Negev desert in southern Israel. It is planned to build a high-tech industrial zone and new settlements in these zones, as well as carry out agricultural development. This compensation also looks, to put it mildly, unconvincing.

The condition prohibiting the newly created State of Palestine to have its own army looks even more illusory. It is assumed that Israeli armed forces will take care of the defense of Palestine. For Palestinians, it looks like wolves are taking responsibility to protect the sheep. President Trump's promises that it would be better for the Palestinians, since they would not need to spend money on weapons and the army, sound ridiculous.

It is hard to imagine that anyone in Palestine agree with Israel's right to block the supply of weapons to Palestine by sea, or even veto international agreements if it saw them as a threat to its country.

"We do not need such sovereignty!"

It is no surprise that in response to the proposals, the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, announced that his administration ceases all contacts with Israel and the U.S. He added that only one provision of the deal announcing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is enough to reject Trump's proposal.

Palestine also regards the proposals related to the economic block of the deal ($50 billion over the coming years) as nothing more than bribery. "I will not go down in history as someone who vends or gives up on Jerusalem. I completely reject this plan," Abbas said. If such a 'moderate' man (for Israel) like Mahmoud Abbas took such a tough and implacable stance, then what about the rest?

Remarkably, the new deal takes an unequivocal stance against Hamas, which should be disarmed and dissolved completely. It is very difficult to imagine that this will be done on a voluntary basis.

Were the developers of the deal aware of the possible reaction of Palestinians? Maybe they thought that $50 billion is the price that will help Palestine give up the idea of creating a full-fledged state. It is more likely that the authors knew well that the regional situation, as well as the situation in the Middle East as a whole will force the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organisation to take a more 'realistic' look at the ongoing processes and abandon previous views, albeit not immediately.

However, they did not take into account the views of millions of Palestinians living outside Palestine and considered the most radical and influential political lobby, as well as the influence on the decision of the Palestinian leadership in the Islamic world.

Thus, they made it clear that they will not allow the review of existing approaches and the international regulatory framework. Organisation of Islamic Cooperation opposed the implementation of the so-called 'deal of the century'. Moreover, the foreign ministers of the member states unanimously adopted the draft resolution submitted by Palestine, rejecting the proposals of the American president. Among them were representatives of those Arab states that were present when the deal was announced in Washington on January 28.

The existing situation is difficult indeed. The interests of the main parties to the conflict and their supporters are completely different. In such circumstances, any 'deals of the century' turn out to be either a unilateral program of actions designed for specific domestic dividends, or another dead-end material with ambiguous desire to move the process off the ground.