On 28 January, US President Donald Trump finally released the details of his long-awaited ‘peace plan’ to resolve what the bourgeois media call the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at a press conference where he stood alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The ‘deal’ is completely pro-Zionist, effectively cementing the colonial-settler system Israel has established in occupied Palestine. Not a single Palestinian representative attended the announcement, and the Palestinian people have already rejected it. WESAM KHALED reports.
The plan would see Palestinians sacrifice every significant aspect of the liberation for which they have struggled for over 70 years. The list of concessions demanded from the Palestinians is extensive. One third of the occupied Palestinian West Bank will be annexed to Israel. The annexed area will include the Jordan Valley, the eastern border of the West Bank, leaving the remaining Palestinian territory completely encircled by Israel. None of the hundreds of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank will have to be removed; instead, they will also be annexed to Israel. Jerusalem will be Israel’s undivided capital, while the Palestinians will be given the Abu Dis suburb, which is split off from East Jerusalem by the separation wall, to call their capital. Israel will retain full military control over the whole of historic Palestine. The over five million Palestinian refugees who have been expelled over 70 years of Israeli ethnic cleansing will be denied any right to return to their homes within the state of Israel.
What are Palestinians being offered in return for these tremendous sacrifices? Nothing of consequence: the plan contains a vague promise of a future Palestinian statelet, but imposes a list of prerequisites the Palestinians must meet before such a ‘state’ is formed, with Israel and the United States holding the power to decide whether they have been met. These include:
- Complete demilitarisation of the Palestinian territories including the disarming of Hamas;
- Ending ‘political and judicial warfare against the State of Israel’ – meaning an end to even non-violent campaigns against Israeli oppression or attempts to end Israel’s illegal policies through international courts; and
- Removing from Palestinian textbooks and school curricula all things ‘that serve to incite or promote hatred or antagonism towards its neighbours’ – which will undoubtedly include teaching the history of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.
Any future Palestinian statelet would remain demilitarised and under complete Israeli military and security control. In effect, Palestinians must submit to complete military, economic, and ideological control by Israel and the US. Moreover, the areas that would form a Palestinian ‘state’ are not even connected, being divided by a web of Israeli settlements and roads that cover the West Bank. The plan promises ‘access routes’ between these areas across Israeli territory; but with Israel annexing the Jordan Valley, such a ‘state’ would not have free movement or trade either internally or at its own borders. Effectively they would be open jails subject to the sort of inhuman blockade that has reduced Gaza to destitution, with the Zionist state given the right to make military incursions at any time.
The Palestinian statelet will be offered ‘land swaps’ in the Negev desert in exchange for settlement territory but, given that Israeli settlements occupy the most valuable, fertile land, this is a trade Israel is more than happy to make. Israel will supposedly implement a freeze on settlement-building in the few areas that the plan leaves for a Palestinian state – a small price to pay in return for formal annexation of the swathes of land already stolen. And should the Palestinians reject the deal there is nothing preventing Israel from resuming settlement-building in those areas it has not annexed.
The economic section of the plan repeats the promises of the previous Kushner plan we reported on in FRFI 265: a $50bn commercial investment into the new Palestinian state. For a people that will have to sign away their freedom, self-determination and control over their own country, this is insignificant even in economic terms.
The plan makes no mention of the decades-long human rights atrocities Israel has carried out against the Palestinian people. No mention is made of the illegal Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The document says nothing about the crushing 14-year Israeli blockade on Gaza and the devastating humanitarian crisis it has caused. Even the section on Palestinian refugees makes no mention of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine which created the Palestinian refugee problem in the first place, instead focusing on how Palestinian refugees have been mistreated in neighbouring Arab countries.
The Palestinians have a four-year deadline to accept the plan, after which point the settlement freeze will be lifted. Speaking at the press conference announcing the plan, Trump made clear what the consequence of rejection would be: ‘this could be the last opportunity they ever have’. In truth, this is not a plan for peace; this is a plan for the formal surrender of the Palestinians’ liberation struggle, and they must accept surrender on their occupier’s brutal terms. If not, they will be blamed for throwing away their chance at statehood, and Israel will carry on its settler-colonial project with the justification that Palestinians rejected ‘peace’.
The Palestinian people have already shown what their response will be. On the day of the announcement, tens of thousands of Palestinians joined uprisings in the West Bank and Gaza, and the following day saw a general strike across Gaza and in refugee camps in Lebanon. Protesters burned photos of Trump and Netanyahu and carried banners reading ‘Palestine is not for sale’. Hamas and other movements have vehemently rejected the deal, and even the Palestinian Authority has had to take a stand against it; Palestinian political factions have held a joint emergency meeting to form a unified response. The Palestinians have faced tremendous obstacles over the course of their history and have demonstrated the unyielding resilience of their liberation struggle; they will continue to do so in the face of this farcical ‘peace plan’. We must support them.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 274 February/March 2020
