Palestinians reject Trump’s Mideast peace plan, saying proposal offers little that’s new
Washington — President Donald Trump on Tuesday presented his long-promised plan to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, giving Israel virtually everything it wanted, including control over an undivided Jerusalem, no right of return for Palestinian refugees, full sovereignty over the Jordan River valley and no evacuations of any Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Palestinians, under the plan, would receive up to $50 billion in financial investments and the promise of eventually receiving sovereignty in a demilitarized state, surrounded by Israeli territory and broken up into non-contiguous parcels in the West Bank and Gaza.
Speaking to a heavily pro-Israeli audience at the White House, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump vowed unrelenting support for Israel while urging Palestinians to accept what “may be the last opportunity” to build an independent state.
Palestinian representatives said they were not invited to Tuesday’s White House ceremony and were not consulted in the plan. They have declared it dead on arrival, noting it consists largely of ideas they have rejected repeatedly in the past.
Describing what he said was an 80-page document drafted over nearly three years, Trump said the plan gave Palestinians four years to meet a list of demands that would then qualify them to negotiate a state. Some of the demands, such as reining in the Hamas group that controls the Gaza Strip and ending payments to the families of militants slain by Israelis, have either been rejected by the Palestinian Authority in its past or are beyond its capability.
During that four-year period, Trump said, the expansion of Israeli settlements, which has turned the West Bank into something akin to Swiss cheese and far from a contiguous state, would be suspended in those areas that the plan envisions would one day become part of a Palestinian state. But no settlements would be evacuated, and presumably settlements in areas not envisioned by the plan to become part of Palestine could continue to expand.
Trump said the U.S. would recognize a Palestinian capital in “Eastern Jerusalem,” something the Palestinians have long desired. But he also said Israel would be guaranteed permanent control over its “undivided capital” in Jerusalem. The two seem irreconcilable.
Hours before Trump was unveiled his plan, Netanyahu suffered a major political setback when prosecutors in his own country proceeded with a three-count indictment against him for alleged bribery, fraud and the coercing of favorable coverage from Israeli media outlets.