Trump peace plan — what happens now?
V THREE YEARS in the making, US President Donald Trump finally unveiled his peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians on Tuesday at the White House. But now that it is out, all 181 pages, no-one is quite clear on how it can ever become reality.
President Trump seemed to be adopting a take-it-or-leave-it attitude when presenting the plan, saying it was the Palestinians’ “last chance” for achieving statehood. Mr Netanyahu, who attended the roll-out at the White House and has enthusiastically endorsed the plan, was already cherrypicking. He was eager to go ahead with annexing parts of the West Bank but, in his own speech, did not mention even once the Palestinian state which is also supposed to part of the plan.
As far as the Palestinians are concerned the plan is a non-starter. They were not even present at the event and rejected any plan by Mr Trump two years ago, after he announced in December 2017 that the US recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Mr Trump is in no hurry. He has given the Palestinians a four-year period to meet the eight conditions for statehood set out in his plan. Whether or not these conditions, such as demilitarising Gaza (Hamas don’t exactly envisage giving up their rocket arsenal and no-one is planning to force them to do so) are realistic, he seems to be content with presenting the plan without any clear mechanism for a follow-up. The four-year period equals his potential second term as president. He has achieved what he set out to do: present a plan that is pro-Israel enough to satisfy his base of “Christian Zionist” Evangelicals in the crucial election year.
But the American presidential election is still over nine months away. Israel’s third Knesset election is just around the corner on March 2 and Mr Netanyahu, struggling to eke out a majority in his third consecutive try, is anxious to use the conveniently timed unveiling to dominate the campaign agenda for the next four and a half weeks. Whether or not he actually intends within this time to actually annex the Israeli settlements and the Jordan Valley, he certainly wants voters to hear about nothing else. But in the first 24 hours after the plan’s presentation, the message was
already mixed-up.
In the first hours after the roll-out, the prime minister’s outriders were promising that annexation would be voted on at Sunday’s cabinet meeting. A few hours later, that was cancelled (Likud’s chief spin-doctor even deleted a tweet) and Tourism Minister Yariv Levin, who accompanied Mr Netanyahu to Washington, said there were various legal procedures that needed to take place first and the cabinet would vote on annexation the following Sunday. This cued an angry speech by right-wing rival, Yamina leader Naftali Bennett, who warned against any delay in annexation. “Whatever will not be annexed before the election will not be annexed at all,” thundered Mr Bennett. Soon after came the message from the prime minister’s inner circle that a special cabinet meeting would take place on Tuesday.
The real problem for Mr Netanyahu is that he is also getting mixed signals from President Trump’s advisers. The US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, said after the president’s presentation that Israel could go right ahead and annex if it wanted. But then the plan’s author, presidential special advisor and sonin-law Jared Kushner, said that the administration did not know about any Israeli plans to immediately annex territory. By the following day, Ambassador Friedman had changed his tune, saying that a special committee would have to be set up between Israel and the US before any annexations.
The lack of clarity surrounding Israel’s next steps strengthens the impression that the entire event had been held simply to help Mr Netanyahu’s electoral prospects and to push his indictments out of the media’s focus. The actual details of the plan were less important than the opportunity for the prime minister to stand by the president in the White House as the plan was unveiled. The only question that is important right now is whether enough Israeli voters were impressed to give him a majority.