[rad-green] The Trump plan is just a cover for Israel's final land grab

*https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/trump-plan-isnt-peace-process-its-red-herring
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/trump-plan-isnt-peace-process-its-red-herring>Middle
East Eye          4 February 2020The Trump plan is just a cover for
Israel's final land grabIsrael needed a fresh pretext to justify seizing
the last fragments of historic Palestine after the expiry of its Oslo
alibiBy Jonathan Cook*

A Palestinian protester holds a banner with the slogan ‘Down with the Deal
of the Century’ in Gaza on 31 January (AFP)

The Trump "Vision for Peace"
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/tags/deal-century> will never be implemented
- and not because the Palestinians reject it. Prime Minister Benjamin
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/tags/benjamin-netanyahu>Netanyahu
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/tags/benjamin-netanyahu>’s enthusiastic
public embrace of the plan belies the fact that the Israeli right detest it
too.

The headlines are that, with US blessing, Israel's dream is about to be
realised: it will be able to annex its dozens of illegal settlements in the
West Bank and the vast agricultural basin of the Jordan Valley. In return,
the Palestinians can have a state on 15 per cent of their homeland.
The real aim

But that is not the real aim of this obviously one-sided "peace" plan.
Rather, it is intended as the prelude to something far worse for the
Palestinians: the final eradication of the last traces of their political
project for national liberation.

The current plan follows a tried and tested tradition of US-dominated
'peacemaking' that has utterly failed to bring peace

US President Donald Trump’s plan is neither a blueprint for peace nor a
decree from the heart of the US empire. Rather it is a decoy, an enormous
red herring created in Tel Aviv and then marketed by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared
Kushner, <https://www.middleeasteye.net/tags/jared-kushner> the glorified
used-car salesman who currently occupies the White House.

Trump may think his vision could lead to a "realistic" two-state solution.
Even many critics assume it envisions the establishment of a highly
circumscribed, enfeebled Palestinian state. But for Israeli leaders it
serves another purpose entirely: it provides diplomatic cover while they
put the finishing touches to their version of a one-state solution inside
Greater Israel.

Netanyhau has crafted a "deal of the century" designed to fail from the
outset - and managed it through deeply partisan White House intermediaries
like David Friedman <https://www.middleeasteye.net/tags/david-friedman>,
the US ambassador to Israel, and Kushner. For all of them, its purpose is
to provide a fresh alibi for Israel and Washington to continue disappearing
the Palestinians more than two decades after the illusions of the earlier
Oslo Accords "peace" process can no longer be sustained.
Israeli bad faith

That this is intended as a grand deception should not surprise us. The
current plan follows a tried and tested tradition of US-dominated
"peacemaking" that has utterly failed to bring peace but has succeeded
triumphantly in smothering and erasing historic Palestine, gradually
transforming it into Greater Israel.

Trump’s deal is, in fact, the third major framework - after the 1947 United
Nations Partition Plan and the Oslo accords initiated in 1993 - supposedly
offering territorial partition between Israelis and Palestinians. The
lesson of each has been that Israel and the US have returned after each
inevitable and intended failure to offer the Palestinians even less of
their homeland.

On each occasion, Israel (and before its creation, the Zionist leadership)
has signed up to these peacemaking initiatives in bad faith, forcing
Palestinians, as the weaker party, to reject them. And each time, that
rejection has been weaponised by Israel - used as a pretext to steal more
territory.

This plan is no different from the others. It is simply the latest
iteration of a pattern of settler-colonial expansion sponsored by Western
powers. But this time, if Israel succeeds, there will be nothing left of
Palestine even to pretend to negotiate over.
UN partition rejected

The idea of division first took substantive form with the United Nations
Partition Plan of late 1947. It proposed creating two states: a Jewish one
on 55 percent
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/palestinians-have-indeed-missed-opportunity-surrender-zionism>
of
Palestine would supposedly serve as compensation for Europe’s recent
genocide; and an Arab one, on the remaining 45 percent, would be for the
native Palestinian population.
[image: A man walks along the wall dividing East Jerusalem from the
Palestinian village of Abu Dis on 29 January (AFP)]
*A man walks along the wall dividing East Jerusalem from the Palestinian
village of Abu Dis on 29 January (AFP)*

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father, knew that the Palestinians were
bound to reject a plan premised on their dispossession. That was the very
reason he signed on. He hated the limitations imposed by the UN on his
emerging Jewish state - he wanted all of Palestine – but was only too aware
that Palestinians hated the partition proposal
<https://www.jpost.com/Christian-News/Comment-Partition-Plan-was-just-the-first-step-515395>even
more than he did. He knew his good faith would never be put to the test.

Under cover of the ensuing, year-long war, Ben-Gurion sent his troops way
beyond the partition lines, seizing 78 percent
<https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/06/50-years-israeli-occupation-longest-modern-history-170604111317533.html>
of
historic Palestine and transforming the area into a Jewish state. In 1967,
his successors would grab the rest, as part of a surprise strike against
Egypt and other Arab states. And so, the 53-year-long occupation was born.
Oslo's separation logic

Just as now with the Trump plan, the Oslo process of the 1990s was not
rooted in the idea of establishing a sovereign Palestinian state – only of
pretending to offer one. In fact, statehood wasn’t mentioned in the Oslo
accords, only implied by a series of intended Israeli withdrawals
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-oslo-accords/twenty-five-years-on-oslo-accords-peace-hopes-a-fading-memory-idUSKCN1LS2MP>
from
the occupied territories over a five-year period that Israel reneged on.

Instead, Oslo was seen
<https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3754407,00.html> by the Israeli
side, led then by Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, chiefly in terms of an
"economic peace". The new rallying cry of "separation" was intended to
transform fragments of the occupied territories into free-trade zones to
exploit a captive Palestinian labour force, and then to normalise
<https://books.google.co.il/books?id=_AhjDgAAQBAJ&pg=PT87&lpg=PT87&dq=oslo+peres+economic+peace+industrial+zones&source=bl&ots=N0XHegvmNd&sig=ACfU3U1JZeJqMG1UX7bOrb3y5qZqSTCKxQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj-rceIr6vnAhXUXRUIHUF4BsoQ6AEwCHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=oslo%20peres%20economic%20peace%20industrial%20zones&f=false>
relations
with the Arab world.

Oslo’s only meaningful legacy - the Palestinian Authority, today led by
Mahmoud Abbas - still clings to its primary role
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/cutting-israel-pa-coordination-ace-sleeve-abbas-cant-use>:
as prison guard overseeing Palestinians' confinement in ever-shrinking
fragments of the occupied territories
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-oslo-accords/twenty-five-years-on-oslo-accords-peace-hopes-a-fading-memory-idUSKCN1LS2MP>
.

Palestinians rapidly found themselves in ghettoes, trapped behind
checkpoints, a draconian permit regime, and finally walls and fences

The Trump plan recognises that Oslo is now more an obstacle than a vehicle
for further Palestinian dispossession. Israel has absolute control of East
Jerusalem, the planned capital of a Palestinian state. The army and
settlers have cemented Israeli rule over 62 percent of the West Bank –
territory Oslo declared as Area C – that includes
<https://www.btselem.org/topic/area_c> its best agricultural land, water
sources and mineral wealth. Gaza, isolated from the rest of the occupied
territories, is besieged.

The only thing left for Israel to do now is formalise that control and
ensure it is irreversible. That requires making permanent the current
apartheid system in the West Bank, which enforces one set of laws for
Jewish settlers and another for Palestinians.
Palestinian obligations

Trump’s "Vision for Peace" is needed only because Oslo has outlived its
usefulness. The Trump plan radically overhauls the Oslo process formula:
instead of a supposed sharing of obligations - “land in return for peace” –
those obligations are now imposed exclusively on the Palestinian side.

Under Oslo, Israel was supposed to withdraw from the occupied territories
as a precondition for achieving Palestinian statehood and an end to
hostilities.

In reality, Israel did the exact opposite.

Under the Trump plan, Israel gets the land it wants immediately - by
annexing its illegal settlements and the Jordan Valley - and it gets more
land later, unless Palestinians agree to a long list of impossible
preconditions.

Even then, Palestinians would only be entitled to a demilitarised,
non-sovereign state on less than 15 percent of historic Palestine,
amounting to a patchwork of enclaves connected by a warren of tunnels and
bridges, surrounded by armed, fortress-like Israeli communities.

But even this vision of pseudo-Palestinian statehood will never come to
fruition – something Netanyahu has made sure of. The Trump plan is a
catalogue of the most unacceptable, humiliating concessions that could ever
be demanded of the Palestinian people.
Impossible preconditions

It offers them a state that would be unlike any state ever envisaged. Not
only would it have no army, but it would have to permanently accommodate a
foreign army, the Israeli one. Palestine would have no control over its
borders, and therefore its foreign relations and trade. It would be
deprived of key resources, such as its offshore waters, which include large
deposits of natural gas; its airspace; and its electromagnetic spectrum.

It would be deprived of its most fertile land, its quarries, its water
sources, and access to the Dead Sea and its related mineral and cosmetics
industries. As a result, the Palestinian economy would continue to be
entirely aid dependent. Proposed industrial zones in the Negev, accessible
only through Israeli territory, could be closed off by Israel at a whim.

East Jerusalem, including its holy sites and tourism industry, would be
sealed off from the Palestinian state, which would have its capital instead
outside the city, in Abu Dis. That village would be renamed Al-Quds, the
Holy, although the deception would satisfy outsiders only, not Palestinians.

Intentionally lacking specifics for the time being, the Trump vision
suggests Israel and Jordan would eventually share sovereignty over
Jerusalem’s most important holy site, Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

The US appears ready to let Israel forcibly divide the site so that Jewish
extremists, who want to blow up the mosque and replace it with a temple, can
pray
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/trumps-envoys-enable-israels-worst-extremists/24636>
there
- in a repetition of what happened earlier to the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.
No legal redress

There would be no Palestinian right of return. Abbas would need to
recognise Israel as a Jewish state, retrospectively sanctioning
Palestinians’ dispossession and colonisation.

The Trump plan demands that the PA strip the families of political
prisoners and martyrs killed by the Israeli army - the Palestinian
equivalents of Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko - of their welfare payments.

In an interview with CNN this week, Kushner made clear quite how
intentionally contradictory his demands of Palestinians are. Before it can
be recognised as a state, the Palestinian Authority is expected to enforce
the disarmament of the Palestinian factions, including its militant rival
Hamas.

But it will have to do so while behaving like some kind of idealised
Switzerland, according to Kushner, who insists that it uphold the most
stringent democratic standards and absolute respect for human rights.

He indicated that the PA would fail such tests. It was, he said, a “police
state” and “not exactly a thriving democracy”.
[image: The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque compound is
pictured on 31 January (AFP)]
*The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is pictured on
31 January (AFP)*

The Trump plan’s proposed democratic Palestine, it should be noted, would
not be eligible to partake of international justice. Should Israel commit
atrocities against Palestinians, the PA would have to forgo any appeals to
the International Criminal Court in the Hague, which adjudicates on war
crimes.

And in a final proof of its determination to ensure Palestinians reject the
deal, the Trump administration has dusted off a forcible transfer plan
<https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-a-campaign-of-transfer-and-expulsion-1.5629250>
long
promoted by the former far-right defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman.
Israel could then redraw the borders to strip potentially hundreds of
thousands of Palestinians living in Israel of their citizenship. Such a
move would constitute a war crime.
Nightmare scenario

The Trump plan’s secret weapon is hidden in the "four-year clause", as
Kushner’s CNN interview makes explicit. He said: "If they [the PA] don't
think that they can uphold these standards, then I don't think we can get
Israel to take the risk to recognise them as a state, to allow them to take
control of themselves, because the only thing more dangerous than what we
have now is a failed state.”

Israel and the US know that not only will Abbas or his successor never
consent to the White House’s nightmare scenario, but that they could never
meet these preconditions even if they wished to. But if the Palestinians
don’t concede everything demanded of them within four years, Israel will be
free to start grabbing and annexing yet more Palestinian land.

And worse still, Israel, the US and Europe will seek to blame Palestinians
for choosing apartheid over statehood. Apologists will say once again that
the Palestinians “never miss an opportunity
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/palestinians-never-missin_b_215789> to miss
an opportunity”.

In other words, if Palestinians refuse to disappear themselves in line with
the Trump vision, it will be assumed that they consent to Israel’s
permanent apartheid rule. Palestinians will have forfeited their right to
any kind of state on their historic homeland, ever.

That is the real Trump vision, designed in Israel and soon to be rolled out
in Palestine.
*Jonathan Cook, a British journalist based in Nazareth since 2001, is the
the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is a past
winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and
blog can be found at: www.jonathan-cook.net <http://www.jonathan-cook.net>*

-- 

--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sid-l" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sid-l/CACKppcxQ%2B2DuvQNqtDSOo%3DERtf8-93hpbKNG1s4fhrM7_%2BOCwg%40mail.gmail.com.

---
To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]>
List help: <https://riseup.net/lists>