Key issues settled in Israel’s favour as Donald Trump breaks the peace process mould

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Wednesday. Picture: AFP

For half a century, American presidents have tried to find a path to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Donald Trump on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) became the 10th president in that long line of futility by unveiling his plan for doing the seemingly impossible.

Yet Trump’s plan isn’t simply more of the same. In fact, it represents a significantly different approach to the uphill climb of seeking peace. Plenty of experts think those differences will make the climb harder — though, as Trump aides point out, more conventional approaches haven’t worked, undermining the argument for simply trying more of the same.

The differences start with a key strategic departure. While cloaked in talk of fostering new hope for Palestinians, the Trump administration’s plan also exerts significant new pressure on them by embracing, on a series of contentious issues, solutions that Israel has long demanded.

Implicitly, this approach says to Palestinians that they need to recognise that their position on the ground is getting worse daily as Israel expands into Arab territories, and that accepting this initiative may represent their last hope to salvage a state of their own.

The plan does explicitly embrace a two-state solution to the conflict — which is to say, it calls for Israel and a Palestinian state to exist side by side. Some had wondered whether Trump would abandon the American position favouring a Palestinian state, an idea Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted several years ago but backed away from last year. Netanyhu, a close Trump ally who stood by the President’s side as he announced the plan, has, implicitly, again accepted the two-state concept.

At the same time, though, the US is significantly contracting the vision of what that Palestinian state might be by adopting, even before any negotiations take place, positions that past American administrations have left to be decided at the negotiating table.

For starters, the plan declares that Jerusalem will remain the undivided capital of Israel. Palestinians, who also claim Jerusalem as their capital, would establish a capital in East Jerusalem, beyond the central city.

Similarly, the administration’s proposal cedes to Israel disputed territories where the Israeli government has built settlements, as well as control of the Jordan River Valley, which Israel considers crucial to protect itself from Arab terrorists moving in from the east.

Those steps, US officials said, would give Israel control of approximately 30 per cent of what is now considered the disputed West Bank. In the past peace efforts, control of most of those areas, which Palestinians also claim as their own, was to be decided in negotiations.

Similarly, the US plan dismisses the right of Palestinian refugees, whose families were pushed out of Israel when the Jewish state was created in 1948, to reclaim family lands. Palestinians have long insisted on the “right of return”, though that demand has seemed increasingly unrealistic over time.

By including a lengthy section on economic development, the administration also is calculating that Palestinians now may value economic opportunity more than political progress.

Finally, the plan differs from past efforts because it was conceived with virtually no input from the Palestinians, who are refusing to talk with the Trump administration.

Trump administration officials insisted that the proposal reflects the hard realities of the region circa 2020. One senior administration aide described the plan as a “realistic two-state solution”. While it gives the Palestinians less territory than envisioned in some past proposals, he said, it also would expand the area under their jurisdiction well beyond the territory they control currently.

Ironically, hardline Israeli settlers are raging against the plan, because they oppose the creation of any Palestinian state. That posture underscores how difficult it will be to get negotiations on the plan rolling.

Still, Trump aides stressed that they have tried to provide a wide window for diplomacy by convincing Israel to accept a four-year “land freeze”, during which more territory wouldn’t be annexed. That, it’s hoped, will give Palestinians plenty of time to come to the table.

But will Palestinians ever do so? Dennis Ross, who has worked on Israeli-Palestinian issues for multiple presidents of both parties, says much will depend on whether moderate Arab states say they see positive elements in the plan, and nudge the Palestinians towards diplomacy. “Then the Europeans will engage,” Ross said. “Then you’re in a very different place.”

Philip Gordon, the top National Security Council aide on the Middle East under president Barack Obama, said he’s sceptical that Arab states will risk the wrath of Iran and radical Muslims by pressing Palestinians into negotiations they don’t want.

“Most objective observers,” he said, “don’t think this is a plan designed to lead to a negotiated settlement, but is being put forward for other reasons” — specifically to provide Netanyahu and Trump a boost on the world stage while each is seeking re-election.

The Wall Street Journal