There was deep disappointment among the Palestinian leaders with the initial response of the Arabs to the Trump peace-and-prosperity plan. Their complaint can be read here.
A senior official in the Palestinian Authority has spoken of Ramallah’s disappointment in Arab nations’ muted and sometimes-supportive response to the contentious US proposal for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying the PA had been hoping “for much better.”
Anyone who has read the 181-page (179 pages of text, two pages of maps) document – the Trump peace initiative — which sets out, in great detail, every possible benefit that is to be lavished on the “Palestinians” if they agree to make an enforceable peace, will find it hard to imagine anything more generous. Fifty billion dollars in aid are to spent on the Palestinians. Billions will go to new infrastructure — roads, bridges, tunnels – to increase the mobility of people and goods. Other billions will be spent on hospitals to provide the Palestinians with health care meeting Western standards. Schools at all levels will be built, with $500 million to be spent on one university alone. The educational system will have a curriculum that emphasizes STEM subjects. New electric plants will be constructed to ensure continual availability of affordable electricity in the West Bank and Gaza. A doubling of the potable water supply per capita will be made available to the Palestinians. More investments will enable all Palestinians access to high-speed data services. Money will be made available for vocational and technical training. Civil service jobs will be filled based on merit rather than political connections, as has happened under the PA and Hamas. A legal regime providing transparency and security for investors, while strictly punishing corruption, will be established, in order to attract foreign investors.
The end result, according to the plan, would be a decrease in the Palestinian unemployment rate from above 30% to below 10%, a halving of the poverty rate for Palestinians, and at least a doubling of the Palestinian GDP. This prosperity for the new State of Palestine would have further benefits, as an engine of economic growth within a regional system that would include Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon.
Mahmoud Abbas claims not to have bothered to read the 181-page plan. How can he be sure he needs to reject it out of hand? Because he knows that Israel will be able to hold onto the Jordan Valley and its West Bank settlements. But he hasn’t been asked to accede to everything laid out in the plan. He’s been asked to study the plan, to take it seriously, and then not to accede to everything it lays out, but to use the plan as the basis for good faith negotiations, which is a different thing. But he won’t do even that. Abbas wants to be assured of the final disposition of the West Bank before entering into negotiations on, among other things, the final disposition of the West Bank.
If the PA had been hoping for “much better,” given all the careful thought that went into this plan whose primary purpose is to bring not just peace, but prosperity to the Palestinians, it must be disabused, by the Trump Administration, of any such hope. Anyone who studies the plan, downloadable at www.whitehouse.gov, will see how it has been so carefully crafted, to lift the Palestinians from their wretched state of relying on incessant handouts from others, to genuine prosperity, generated by their own enterprise and hard work.
Hussein al-Sheikh, PA Civil Affairs Minister, member of the Fatah Central Committee and a close confidant of President Mahmoud Abbas, said there was concern that Arab nations, who the PA had hoped would back their position, may become a “dagger in [the] Palestinian people’s side.”
He needn’t have worried. After initially seeming to give approval to the Trump Plan, the Arab states met in Cairo and, as a body, rejected the Trump Plan. Bahrain, the UAE, and Oman, whose ambassadors had attended the roll-out of the plan at the White House, a way of giving it their approval, changed their minds in Cairo. Those Arab countries that had initially issued statements of mild praise for the plan, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco, similarly voted to reject it at the Arab League meeting on February 1. No need for Hussein al-Sheikh to worry about the Arab states becoming “a dagger in [the] Palestinian people.” In Cairo, the Arab foreign ministers collectively allowed themselves to be bullied by the hysterics of Mahmoud Abbas, even though it is he who has to go hat in hand to beg for alms from these very countries. And even though many of these countries are becoming increasingly weary of the Palestinian conflict that once seemed so central but now, in light of the threat from Iran, has been reduced in importance, they still voted to uphold the rejectionist stance of the Palestinians. The Arab states most alarmed by Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait, have their own reasons for wanting Israel, as Iran’s most potent enemy in the region, to remain strong, and not to be squeezed back within something like the 1967 armistice lines, as the Palestinians demand. They want Israeli deterrence to remain effective against Iran. Yet they too, having previously issued encouraging statements about the Trump Plan, as a valuable basis for negotiations, voted to reject it in Cairo. Were they all so afraid of the Arab Street? Was there a fear of being painted as collaborators of Trump and Netanyahu? Were they afraid of being accused by Iran of being “collaborators” with the Big and Little Satans? Why, within three days, did a half-dozen Arab states completely change their public attitude from Yes to No?
The Palestinians, who even before the release said they would reject the plan, have firmly maintained that position.
If any of those Palestinian rejectionists bothered to read the whole plan, they would see that 80% of it is devoted to ways to improve the lives of Palestinians, from education and health care to provision of electricity and water, to infrastructure (roads, bridges, tunnels) that would speed up commuter and delivery times, to bringing data services up to Western (i.e., Israeli) standards, to supplying vocational training to Palestinians for jobs in high tech. The aim is to decrease unemployment by at least two-thirds, to cut the numbers of Palestinians living in poverty by half, and to double the Palestinian GDP, all within ten years.
“We were hoping that the Arab position would be much better than that,” Sheikh told Al Jazeera Thursday night. “But the real test is on Saturday at the Arab League meeting.
“In every meeting with our Arab brothers, we did not demand that the Arabs fight America or Israel on our behalf,” Sheikh said. “We asked them for the minimum position…We asked them to tell the Americans: ‘What the Palestinians accept, we accept. And what the Palestinians reject, we reject.’
“We hope that our whole Arab nation will be a supportive force for us and not a dagger in the Palestinian people’s side,” Sheikh said.
The plan grants Israel much of what it has sought in decades of international diplomacy, namely control over Jerusalem as its “undivided” capital, rather than a city to share with the Palestinians, who would have the capital of a potential state in the East Jerusalem area — but without the coveted Old City and surrounding neighborhoods. The plan also lets Israel annex West Bank settlements, and rules out the return of Palestinian refugees to Israeli territory.
Making provision for the Palestinian capital to be just on the outskirts of Jerusalem, most likely in the suburb of Abu Dis, would still allow the Palestinians to describe their capital as being in “Al Quds” (Jerusalem).
As for not permitting the return of refugees, the Palestinian “refugees” are unique in the world, for out of the hundreds of millions of refugees since the beginning of World War II, only the Palestinians have been allowed to describe the children and grandchildren (and so on through the generations) of refugees as “refugees” themselves. If these refugees, as so capaciously defined, were permitted to return to Israel, that would mean more than 5 million Arabs would arrive, thus swamping the Jews of Israel. That would be the end of the Jewish state. And that is something Israel, understandably, cannot accept.