After months of waiting, President Trump finally unveiled his peace plan for Israel and Palestine on 28th January 2020, to the delight of Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, the disgust of the Palestinians, and the bemusement of many. Amid the sound and the fury, most commentators apparently missed the point – or willfully chose to to do so – that it is not a “plan” as such, but a “vision”. The word is used some sixty times in eighty six pages that contain the political and economic framework. The remaining eighty pages, with an executive summary and copious tables and charts, more resemble a business plan, complete with SWOT analysis, than an actual peace proposal.

But a proposal is exactly what it is – not a plan per se, nor a diktat, as some have labelled it ; nor is it a mediation – as some have inaccurately described it. Rather, its authors claim, it is a basis for further negotiation – should anyone ever get around to talking together. In an excellent piece in Times of Israel, When a vision gets clouded (which I strongly recommend reading) blogger Wendy Kalman gets right to the point:

At first glance, the Vision appears solid enough for friends of Palestinian and critics of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu to suggest that it is a start, at least, the end of the beginning, rather than the beginning of the end. It ticks many boxes, holding out hope for lasting peace, a Palestinian State, normalized relations, and economic opportunity. But, considering the resources available to the authors, and the work that seems to have gone into the economic side of things, it is surprising for its lack of historical and political depth and indeed, accuracy, and for the number of elephants lurking mischievously and maliciously under the worn carpet. And it is these elephants that are disturbing – they whisper that all is not quite what it seems.

The Vision has a black heart insofar as it legitimizes Israel’s past actions, entrenches it’s control, and actually rewards its ongoing bad behaviour whilst giving Netanyahu the green light to commence annexations quicksmart – which he declared he would do until the US  pulled sharply at his reins, demanding that he wait the outcome of Israel’s elections in March – its third poll in a year.

The President has called his Vision a “win win”, but Israeli human rights watchdog B’Tselem has described the “Deal of the Century” as “more like Swiss cheese, with the cheese being offered to the Israelis and the holes to the Palestinians”, encapsulating a world view that sees Palestinians as perennial subjects rather than free, autonomous human beings.

On Al Jazeera on the evening of the White House presentation, Daniel Levy, President of the US/Middle East Project, former Israeli diplomat and veteran of past peace plans, pulled few punches:

“It is not an attempt to be viable or fair”, he said. “This is America taking an Israeli proposal and translating it into an American position. But it’s worse than that. It takes what ostensibly looks like what a model peace agreement might look like, and wraps into that an act of aggression, close to a declaration of war, on the Palestinians. It is not intended to advance peace. It’s intended to force the Palestinians to say no, to depict Palestinians as rejectionists, and to allow Israel to pursue, with greater pace and greater support, Israel’s unilateral plans. It’s a very dangerous, cynical and aggressive move”.

Regarding contentious but critical issues, like prisoners, refugees, and settlements , Levy continued, “Instead of putting it in the language of a peace agreement, they’ve put it through this supremacist, extremist and exclusivist grinder where there’s only one side that has to be paid attention to. It turns the entire logic of what peace should be on its head. Israel retains control everywhere. Israel agrees to take on itself not to do things it didn’t intend to do anyway, like this  question of Jerusalem … The Palestinians will be under increasing pressure. But bludgeoning them into negotiating won’t achieve peace. It’s taking a sledgehammer to peace efforts”.

He elaborated further 30th January in Don’t call it a peace plan in American Prospect magazine, adding: “In its outward appearance, the plan had such a familiar feel to it, like returning to a place of one’s childhood. But as I absorbed the words, nostalgia gave way to a feeling of having entered a topsy-turvy Alice in Wonderland. The language of peace had been cut and pasted, then put through a grinder, delivering an act of aggression dripping with the coarse syntax of racism. A hate plan, not a peace plan“ … A peace plan has to be predicated on both sides saving face, on both sides being able to declare some kind of victory. The plan announced is a 180-page hate letter from the Americans (and by extension the Israelis) to the Palestinians. Until one reads the entire document (and unless one knows the history of the conflict), it is hard to convey the depth of contempt and scorn this text displays toward Palestinians. It oozes colonialist supremacism”.

There has been commentary aplenty from pundits and partisans on all sides of the argument, many of whom will not have read the document but rather “take their instructions” from their various positions and paymasters. But anyone with a serious interest in the matter, whether by position, profession, or amateur passion, and certainly all with skin in the game, ought to read it, faithfully translated and unredacted. Because It is illuminating – and possibly even hallucinating.

One thing is for sure, it is humiliating. For the Israelis who been promised all they they could wish for – they should by embarrassed by its bias. For the Palestinians who are invited to drop their longtime demands – some of them perfectly reasonable and others, unattainable shibboleths – in return for buckets of cash and international good will. For America’s allies – including its Arab “partners in freedom”, who, reluctant to upset the truculent Trump, gingerly but optimistically posit the that the “vision” is a perfectly good springboard, opening offer, ambit claim or whatever to get long-stalled negotiations going (meanwhile, they are ever wary of a hostile backlash from their sullen, captive citizenry). And for America, so blatantly and cynically giving the thumbs up to what amounts to the occupation and dominion of a powerful country over a weaker one.

Many outside and within the Middle East condemn it because it is one-sided, supremacist and exclusivist – and just plain unfair. And for all it’s worthwhile bits and pieces, it is all of these. Saying that Palestinians should grab a good deal because there won’t be a better one, that they have only themselves to blame for their leaders, and that they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, is to occupy the low moral ground whilst simultaneously eyeing the exit.

It has also been condemned as actually endangering Israelis. The US President has given his blessing to a potentially explosive policy that is not even popular with the Israeli public: polls show that most Israelis are not interested in annexation. This ostensible Israeli “win” offers Israel control over areas of the West Bank that most Israelis have never heard of, let alone lived in (according to the Israeli NGO Peace Now, less than 5% of Israelis live beyond the Green Line). And the price will be paid by the Israeli exchequer, the Palestinians, assorted NGOs, and the soldier boys and girls who will have to maintain order and carry the scars for the rest of town lives.

Reading the Vision, I identified contradictions and cul de sacs that appear to signal it’s true intent – that dark heart I referred to above. David Levy and  Yossi Klein Halevi touch on most of them and well merit close reading – but here are my own thoughts.

Distorted Vision

The first pages set the scene. Whilst careful not to spook the horses from get-go, they are anodyne and, indeed, simplistic in recounting the origins and the contemporary status of one of the most intractable international conflicts since World War 2 – very much Arab-Israeli Conflict 101 from  a moderately informed albeit partisan and pro-Israel American perspective. But as it gets down to the nuts and bolts, and formulates proposals for a just, equitable and lasting solution (or I assume that this is the intent of all this), it is as if the authors have got all the words and got all the notes but haven’t quite got the song. Put more bluntly, to quote Daenerys Targaryen they have come not to stop the wheel but to break it.

A Capital Idea

An immutable Palestinian demand since the Six Day War of 1967 has been that Jerusalem be the capital of an independent Palestinian State. Notwithstanding the US recognition as Israel’s capital, there was an understanding that if and when such a state eventuates, its capital would be in East Jerusalem. The Vision now proposes that the run-down town of Abu Dis, on the Eastern side of the Separation Barrier (the proposed border between Israel and Palestine) should be the Palestinian capital – in “eastern” but not “East” Jerusalem. It suggests also that the Palestinians can rename it Al Quds and then continues thereafter to refer to the prospective capital as Al Quds, as if saying it makes it so.

This demonstrates either an ignorance of history and of Jerusalem’s significance in both the political and spiritual space, or, worse, a contempt for it. Or both. Al Quds means “The Holy” in Arabic. It has been used to describe Jerusalem for centuries, and indeed, by all Palestinians today and by Muslims the world over. It is not some made-up moniker that can just be attached to Abu Dis like some clever #tag. If it was merely just a location for an administration, Ramallah already boasts a modern parliament building, multi-million dollar presidential palace, and the mausoleum of Abu Amar (Yasser Arafat to us), not to mention a burgeoning middle class and an accompanying building boom.

Soul searching

The casual treatment of the idea al Quds is more than lazy etymology. It is indicative of how the Vision skirts the reality of the deep spiritual belonging and the atavistic yearning that lies at the root of the two competing historical and political narratives: the millennia-old connection with The Land, Ha’Aretz, that is held by religious and secular Jews, Zionist and nationalist alike; and the deep, centuries-old – roots of Arab, Islamic and Christian history and culture in the land of Christianity’s birth. These can’t be distilled down to real estate deals, the involvement of disconnected outside parties, be these brokers honest or dishonest, the chialistic urgings of American evangelicals yearning for ”the End of Days”, and Iran hawks pushing for a Grand Alliance against Shiah Iran and its Arab proxies.

No Going Home

This shallowness is evident also respect to its treatment of refugees, and its cursory dismissal of the Right of Return of the refugees of 1948 and 1967 and their successors. It is not so much that this perspective is a false one. The Right of Return is a chimera, a dream dangled before their eyes by their leaders like a hypnotist’s show. And UN refugee status is a tired old delusion perpetuated by UNRWA to justify its existence and well-paid salaries, and the Arab League as a fig leaf for their pusillanimity. UNWRA’s definition was at fault from day one and whilst creating generational refugeedom, engendered false hope, unrealisable dreams, and a road-block to subsequent peace efforts. But it ought to be addressed sympathetically and not summarily swept off the table in like manner to the matter of Jerusalem.  “The Return” (al Awda) is deeply implanted in the Palestinian collective memory – as is “the key’, a a symbol, of a memory, of one day returning – to homes, villages, suburbs, towns, lives and livelihoods lost in al Nakba. These are rooted in the Palestinian conscience like a faith that cannot be denied, because denying it would mean uprooting the lynch-pin upon which modern Palestinian history and identity depends.

According to the Vision, Israel does not deem it justified to foot the bill for the refugees of al Nakba and al Naksa, the generation and their successors who are also registered as refugees in perpetuity under UNRWA’s questionable criteria. The onus will be upon Palestine and neighbouring Arab countries who have refused to recognize their own Palestinian refugees as citizens to sort this one out – with some goodwill and financial assistance from the international community. For, why indeed should the world continue to pay for Palestinian refugees? By way of explanation, the Vision notes that the international community is struggling to find sufficient funds to address the needs of the over 70 million refugees and displaced persons in the world today. And what’s more: “the State of Israel deserves compensation for the costs of absorbing Jewish refugees from those countries. A just, fair and realistic solution for the issues relating to Jewish refugees must be implemented through an appropriate international mechanism separate from the Israel-Palestinian Peace Agreement”. So, “upon the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Agreement, Palestinian refugee status will cease to exist, and UNWRA will be terminated and its responsibilities transitioned to the relevant governments”. End of story.

Let My People Go

All prisoners in Israel jails will be released on signature of a peace agreement commencing straightaway with minors, women, and seniors, then all others who meet Israel’s release criteria – but all must first sign an undertaking not to say or do anything that annoys Israel. Then there are those who Israel won’t and will never release. There is no mention in the Vision, neither in the historical preamble nor the detail, of a policy of indefinite detention that has seen tens of thousands of minors incarcerated. It is as if the fifty year old occupation and its punitive system of passes and checkpoints, of demolitions and administrative detention, and the civilian population’s continuing resistance to it have occurred in some parallel dimension.

Moreover, the refusal to acknowledge the emotional and psychological influence of the prisoners issue – which has impacted on the loves of thousands upon thousands of people who have passed through the penal system or are still enmeshed within it, and their families and friends, much like the dismissal of al Quds and al Awda, could be interpreted as negligence bordering on contempt.

Borderlines

A territorial swap gives Israel what is already controls – the fertile, strategic Jordan valley in return for two arid and barren strips of land at the fag end of the Negev Desert, bordering on the bleak and unforgiving Sinai, and a chunk of unutilized desert south-east of Hebron. Sure, Israel has a well justified reputation for “making the deserts bloom”, and the many towns, farms and vineyards of the Negev is testament to that. But chucking a bunch of money and technology at a brace of “development” zones strung along a dangerous and well guarded border hardly seems like a fair swap. Nor does a neat new network of highways between scattered Palestinian towns and villages, and segregated access to two Israeli ports (Gaza’s historically famous harbour will not be resurrected). Meanwhile, international boarders are the sole business of Israel, with the compliant assistance Egypt and Jordan.

The Triangle

This is an area originally designated as Jordanian in 1949, but were retained by Israel for military reasons. These communities largely self-identify as Palestinians, and they can now be Palestinians. – notwithstanding the fact that very, very few Israel Arabs would want to live in an Arab state, even if that state was Palestine. And indeed, residents commenced their protests immediately the proposal was mooted.

Freebie

“Every country spends a very significant sum of money on its defense from external threats. The State of Palestine will not be burdened with such costs, because it will be shouldered by the State of Israel. This is a significant benefit for the economy of the State of Palestine since funds that would otherwise be spent on defense can instead be directed towards healthcare, education, infrastructure and other matters to improve Palestinians’ well-being”. So, “don’t  worry, be happy,”

Gonna Build a Lego House

The US and Israel will not accept the establishment of a state of Palestine until the Palestinians attain certain standards of good governance. These include a constitution or another system for establishing the rule of law that provides for freedom of press, free and fair elections, respect for human rights for its citizens, protections for religious freedom and for religious minorities to observe their faith, uniform and fair enforcement of law and contractual rights, due process under law, and an independent judiciary with appropriate legal consequences and punishment established for violations of the law. They include also: transparent, independent, and credit-worthy financial institutions capable of engaging in international market transactions in the same manner as financial institutions of western democracies with appropriate governance to prevent corruption and ensure the proper use of such funds, a legal system to protect investments and to address market-based commercial expectations, and meet the independent objective criteria to join the International Monetary Fund. Palestine must establish civilian and law enforcement control over all of its territory and demilitarize its population. And it must also end all programs, including school curricula and textbooks, that serve to incite or promote hatred or antagonism towards its neighbours, or which compensate or incentivise criminal or violent activity.

Once these fortuitous conditions are established to the satisfaction of the US and Israel, “The United States will encourage other countries to welcome the State of Palestine as a full member in international organizations”. Whilst there is absolutely nothing wrong and indeed everything right with this wish-list, this world’s best practice if you will, of good governance – and as the Vision indeed states, no country, least of all Israel wants a failed state on its doorstep – the sad fact is that most countries in the world would fail these worthy and worthwhile criteria, including the Arab countries the US is looking to for support for its project.

Lucky Old Jordan

Whilst matters of borders and security are to be managed by Israel and the US, in close cooperation with Egypt and Jordan, Jordan cops much of the burden of the nation building project: “By virtue of territorial proximity, cultural affinity and family ties, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is well placed to play a distinctive role in providing this assistance in fields such as law, medicine, education, municipal services, historic preservation and institution building. In a manner consistent with the dignity and autonomy of a future State of Palestine, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan will offer long-term, on-the-ground assistance in designing relevant institutions and procedures and training of relevant personnel. The objective of such assistance will be to help the Palestinians build strong and well governed institutions”. As noted above, the irony is that cash-strapped, authoritarian  Jordan – and indeed most nations in the Middle East – would find it hard to reach the standards of good governance now demanded by the US and Israel.

The Company We Keep

On the subject of less than perfect enablers and abettors, we’d like to thank … “Much appreciation is owed to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for its role in the creation of the Arab Peace Initiative, which inspired some of the ideas contemplated by this “Vision”. And acknowledgment too to Egypt, Jordan, and the UAE without whose cooperation and input, this “Vision” would not have been possible”. And yet, as the risk of bearing on a dead horse, none of these would seriously subscribe those qualities and qualifiers that would in the US and Israeli eyes render the prospective state of Palestine suitable to be admitted to the community of nations.

Who’s Country Is This Anyway?

And finally, after the prospective state of Palestine has met all the standards, criteria, qualifies and metrics (I did say the Vision read like a business plan), after neigbouring Arabs states have shouldered their various designated burdens, and the international community have coughed up much of the cash to pave the path to prosperity, all matters related to security and demilitarization, and based upon its own interpretation, Israel has the right to intrude, intervene, interfere, interdict, and otherwise involve itself in the affairs, interests, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the ostensibly independent State of Palestine.

I am reminded of what Hannibal Lecter says to FBI  Agent Starling when asking her what motivates serial killer ‘Buffalo Bill’: “He covets”, Lecter says. “That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? … We begin by coveting what we see every day … And don’t your eyes seek out the things you want?”

So, what now? 

A month has passed since that coopted corroboree in the Oval Room. To quote Rudyard Kipling, “The tumult and the shouting dies; the Captains and the Kings depart”. Israel’s elections are fast approaching, and are expected to be as inconclusive as the previous two, raising the prospect of a fourth – and continuing political paralysis. The world’s fickle focus has shifted to the coronavirus, China’s Belt and Road tilt at global  aggrandisement,  the bitterest of US elections, and Syrian Idlib’s cruelest of winters. The “deal of the century” has receded into the background noise. But it will not go away, nor will it’s apparent absence make hearts grow fonder.

Ha’Aretz nailed it with a headline: “Trump’s unreal deal: No peace, no plan, no Palestinians, no point”. And in Canada’s Globe and Mail, Israeli author and journalist Yossi Klein Halevi wrote’: “The Trump plan for Palestinian-Israeli peace will almost certainly go the way of all the other failed blueprints to resolve our 100-year conflict. With leaders across the Arab world backing Palestinian opposition, the plan will likely remain an American-Israeli conversation about peace – a wedding without the bride. And yet the release of the plan has had one bracing consequence: It has exposed deeply held myths among both Israelis and Palestinians”.

Some say that this deeply flawed, one-sided and duplicitous Vision was designed to fail, and peevishly contemptuous and prejudiced comments about the Palestinians by Jarred Kushner immediately after their immediate repudiation of his Vision appear to hammer home that conclusion. But should it indeed join previous plans on the garbage tip of barren and broken hopes, it doesn’t warrant or deserve a second coming. Presently, with the status quo effectively frozen, the Israel determines the rules of play. But it does put a ball in the Palestinians’ court. They really do need to get something happening outside the dominant and dominating US-Israeli paradigm that doesn’t involve violence, useless rhetoric and impotent willy-wagging as this just plays into their detractors’ hands. If they, the Palestinians, were able to get their act together (including acquiring half-decent leaders and achieving some of the governance performance indicators highlights in the Vision), they could do what Hawkeye and Trapper did in the uneven football game in Mash, the movie : steal the ball – and throw in a new one.

© Paul Hemphill 2020.  All rights reserved

In That Howling Infinite, see also:  Jerusalem, and A Middle East Miscellany

Author’s Note

Whenever I pen commentaries such as this, people ask why I rarely forward my own opinion on the issues I am presenting or discussing. On the contrary, I would argue that my views are fairly transparent in the subjects I chose to engage with, the words I use, and the vein in which I use them.

With respect to my numerous posts about Israel and Palestine, and the Middle East in general, I  come to my conclusions from a political science and sociology perspective – that’s where my academic experience came from – and a background in conflict resolution, supported by study and travel. If I do on occasions display any particular bias, it. originates in my longtime interest, understanding and affection for the history, politics and culture of the region, of its geography and archaeology, and  of its people of all faiths and nationalities that I make my observations.

I am presently working on a piece that encapsulates my thoughts on this complex and controversial subject. But meanwhile, here is a brief exposition.

I do believe that the systematic dispossession of almost a million Palestinians and the destruction of half of their towns and villages in 1948 is Israel’s original sin. It is the primal stain that colours and corrupts all that followed. And yet, if not for the actions, often daring, often brave, often questionable, and often deplorable, of the politicians and soldiers of 1948 – and of the generations that folllowed –  Israel would not exist today. This paradox is addressed sympathetically by Avi Shalit in My Promised Land, referred to above, and scathingly by ‘new history’ scholar Ilan Pappe in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.   

The Occupation, fifty years old this year, which grew out of the unexpectedly total victory of June 1967, has taken on strategic, ideological and indeed messianic dimensions by many in the  Israeli government and political elite. It compounded the original sin, deepened the primal stain, released the demons of messianic fervour, and wounded Israel’s soul. The settlements locked the nation into the the colonialist project. With the close-call of the Yom Kippur War, the violence and murder of the first and second Intifadat, and present Palestinian jaquerie, Israel’s heart has not just hardened, it has become sclerotic.

I admit that I have always been sympathetic towards Israel – from my first visit in 1972. But it is not a blinkered viewpoint. I am deeply critical of Israeli politics and policies, and have no respect for many of its leaders.

Ayelet Shaked, the nationalist’s La Passionaria, and her boss Naftali Bennett do not not represent ALL Israelis! They hold extremist views just like we in UK, US, and Australia have parties and individuals with extremist views. But there are hundreds of thousands of Israelis who oppose the present government and long for justice and peace. And if – a very big “if” – Arab Israelis and the Israeli left could work together, they could obtain a majority in the Knesset and change Israel’s politics.

Yet meanwhile, Binyamin Netanyahu and his nationalist allies call all the shots, the Israelis continue to control and exploit the land, its people, and its resources, whilst varying degrees of annexation are on the cards. The settlements are an abomination, as are the policies and practices of the state and its occupying army, as described by Lyons and others. There’s no escaping these facts.

But I am likewise critical of Palestinian governance, politics and politicians. Hamas and the PA are on the nose in their respective fiefdoms, and if a moderate “third force” were to arise – and survive, because sure as hell, they would risk being murdered – Palestinians who just want a quiet, normal life, adequate services, and opportunities for their children, and Israelis who want likewise, might – just might – reject their extremist, dogmatic, entrenched leaders and reach some form of modus vivendi.

Palestinians themselves have to take control of their own lives, kick out their corrupt leaders, cease inculcating their children with hatred and jihadism, and use all that international good will and dollars to build a viable economy that can provide jobs, opportunities, and security, economic and physical to the people. Only this way will they be inoculated against cronyism, corruption and extremism. And yet, the dead hand of a moribund, patriarchal, conservative and ethnocentric culture holds them back –  but that is the subject of another, future discussion for In That Howling Infinite.

Today, the ‘powers that be’, defenders and beneficiaries of a status quo that looks more like a cul de sac, predominate over a dispiriting array of competing, clamouring factions, left, right, nationalist, secular, tribal, Haredi, and Islamist alike. New, young, brace, local voices in both Israel and Palestine, are not heard.

So what happens next?

I get that question too. And I am perennially reluctant to venture an answer beyond one that runs like “on the one hand…but then on the other”.  I inevitably fall back on Robert Fisk’s response to the same question with regard to the calamitous freezing over of the Arab Spring and the fall and rise again of the same old autocrats and tyrants: “my crystal ball is broken”. It’s a cop out, really, but just as cogent as that famous line in that UK spy drama Spooks: “What’s gong to happen to me?” “Bad things!”

One thing is for sure: as songwriter Warren Zevon sang, “the hurt gets worse, and the heart get harder”.

October 8th 2017

For more posts on Jerusalem, Israel and the Middle East, visit:
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See also, my collection of posts about Jerusalem, and A Middle East Micellany