Jun 14, 2018

Shortly after President Donald Trump bid farewell to his new buddy, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, on June 12, Israel’s Channel 10 reported that the president’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner and US Mideast envoy Jason Greenblatt would travel to the Middle East next week to discuss the administration’s peace plan for the region. Their itinerary includes stops in Jerusalem, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. The Palestinian Authority seat in the West Bank city of Ramallah is not on their schedule. For now, there is no mention of the Palestinians on the tour. An alien landing on Earth would be certain that Trump’s promised “ultimate deal” is a peace plan between Israel, the Saudis and the oil-rich Gulf states.

The alien would not be far from the truth. The prevailing view among Israeli and Palestinian officials who spoke this week with Al-Monitor is that the Trump administration views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a mere hurdle on the way to forging a strategic US-Israeli-Arab alliance against Iran and its proxies. According to these officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, a stalwart supporter of the West Bank settlements, has ascertained that the deal Trump promised soon after he took office would be tailored to fit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and too tight to the point of constricting for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

In this situation, Israel and Saudi Arabia would welcome the US plan and urge the Palestinians to resume negotiations with Israel based on the new blueprint. The Palestinians would flatly reject the plan, claiming that it disregards understandings reached over years of negotiations with Israel. The crisis would result in the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority and abrogation of the 1993 Oslo Accord. The Saudis would blame the Palestinians for the collapse of the deal and would renounce the 2002 Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative that conditions normalization of Arab ties with Israel on its withdrawal from the occupied territories.

The June 10 speech Netanyahu delivered in Jerusalem to representatives of the American Jewish Congress lends credence to this scenario. “If President Abbas wants to make peace, recognize the Jewish state, for God’s sake. That will bring peace once and for all,” he said. He subsequently repeated his demand for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the Jewish state, and demanded that the PA “stop paying terrorists.” The White House is strongly on board with both these conditions, but they do not stand a chance in Ramallah. A Palestinian leader who adopts the Zionist ethos and abandons the families of the Palestinian ethos regards as freedom fighters against Israel’s occupation would likely be signing his own death warrant. At best, he would be engineering his political demise.

In an unusually harsh op-ed in Haaretz on June 9, Greenblatt laid the groundwork for another round of the “there’s no Palestinian partner” campaign. He accused the Palestinian leadership of being solely responsible for undermining the peace process by disseminating lies and engaging in “overwrought rhetoric.” There was not a single word about 51 years of Israeli military occupation and violation of Palestinian human rights. Writing in response, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat lambasted Greenblatt for repeatedly avoiding substantive issues during the dozens of meetings they held. He declined to discuss future borders and Israeli settlements and even a two-state solution, Erekat said. “Mr. Greenblatt, Mr. Friedman, and [US Ambassador to the UN Nikki] Haley, among others, won’t be satisfied until Palestinians endorse Zionism, renounce their political rights and sign on to apartheid,” he concluded.