Trump outlines a Mideast peace plan that strongly favors Israel
■ President Donald Trump unveiled his long-awaited Mideast peace plan alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, presenting a vision that matched the Israeli leader’s nationalist views while falling far short of Palestinian ambitions.
President Donald Trump unveiled his long-awaited Middle East peace plan with a flourish Tuesday, outlining a proposal that would give Israel most of what it has sought over decades of conflict while creating what he called a Palestinian state with limited sovereignty.
Trump’s plan would guarantee that Israel would control a unified Jerusalem as its capital and not require it to uproot any of the settlements in the West Bank that have provoked Palestinian outrage and alienated much of the outside world. He promised to provide $50 billion in international investment to build the new Palestinian entity and open an embassy in its new state.
“My vision presents a win-win opportunity for both sides, a realistic two-state solution that resolves the risk of Palestinian statehood to Israel’s security,” the president said at a White House ceremony that demonstrated the one-sided state of
affairs as he was flanked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel but no counterpart from the Palestinian leadership, which is not on speaking terms with the Trump administration.
Trump insisted his plan would be good for the Palestinians and in his speech reached out to President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, calling on him to join talks to advance the proposal. “President Abbas,” he said,”I want you to know that if you choose the path to peace, America and many other countries, we will be there; we will be there to help you in so many different ways.”
The event in the East Room of the White House had a Kabuki-theater quality to it as the president ended years of suspense over a highly touted peace plan that was widely considered dead on arrival. Rather than a serious blueprint for peace, analysts called it a political document by a president in the middle of an impeachment trial working in tandem with a prime minister under criminal indictment and about to face his third election in the span of a year.
Nearly three years in the making and overseen by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the plan is the latest of numerous U.S. efforts to settle the 70-plus year conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. But it marked a sharp turn in the U.S. approach, dropping decades of U.S. support for only modest adjustments to Israeli borders drawn in a 1967 armistice and discarding the longtime goal of granting the Palestinians a full-fledged state.
The proposal imagines new Israeli borders that cut far into the West Bank, and, at least in the short term, calls for what Netanyahu has described as a Palestinian “state-minus,” lacking an army or air force.
The White House called it “a demilitarized Palestinian state” with Israel retaining security responsibility west of the Jordan River, although over time the Palestinians would assume more security responsibility.
Trump said it was the first time that Israel had authorized the release of such a conceptual map illustrating territorial compromises it would make. He said it would “more than double Palestinian territory” while ensuring that “no Palestinians or Israelis will be uprooted from their homes.” The White House said in a fact sheet that Israel had agreed to “a four-year land freeze” to preserve the viability of a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu welcomed the plan, describing it as “a realistic path to a durable peace” that “strikes the right balance where others have failed.” Calling Trump the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House, Netanyahu added: “It’s a great plan for Israel. It’s a great plan for peace.”
The new Palestinian state would have a capital, which the proposal called Al-Quds, that would include some of the outer portions of East Jerusalem. The plan would preserve the status quo at the sprawling compound that Jews call the Temple Mount and Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary, or Al-Aqsa, which is the name of one of two main Islamic shrines there. The location is the holiest place in Judaism and the thirdholiest place in Islam, and the site of numerous clashes over the years. Muslims would continue to be permitted to visit Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The Trump plan promises a $50 billion economic plan for the new Palestinian state that the White House claimed would create 1 million new jobs over 10 years, double the size of the Palestinian economy, cut poverty in half and reduce unemployment below 10%.
By asking the Palestinians to make far more territorial concessions than past proposals, though, Trump’s plan provided an American imprimatur of support to decades of aggressive Israeli settlement building in Palestinian areas seized in two wars between Israel and Arab states. And it sent a grim message to the Palestinians that they have missed their chance to win the “two-state solution” they long pursued — as least so long as Trump is president.
Kushner and a small circle of Trump officials chose not to pursue the traditional path of brokering talks between the two parties that could lead to a joint proposal, but to hand one down from Washington. Peace-process veterans say that last happened under President Ronald Reagan in 1982.
Working secretively, Kushner and his team — which included the American ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, a strong supporter of Israeli settlement construction — consulted closely with Netanyahu’s government. But their contact with Palestinian officials ended after Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in December 2017.
Rather than court the Palestinians after that, the Trump administration only increased pressure on them, cutting off U.S. funding for Palestinian areas and shuttering the Palestinian diplomatic office in Washington.
That dashed the initial hopes of Palestinians who believed that Trump’s unorthodox approach toward foreign policy, and his love for a grand deal, could lead him to pressure Israel to a degree they felt previous American presidents had not.
In the near term, the 80-page plan is likely to stir up Israeli and American politics. Trump is sure to cite the plan’s pro-Israel slant on the 2020 campaign trail to win support from conservative Jewish Americans in Florida and other key states, along with the Evangelical Christians who are some of his strongest backers and support Israeli expansion in the Holy Land.
While the Palestinians are nearly certain to reject the plan, Trump allies say they will be closely watching other Arab governments with whom Trump has established close relations and who have thawed relations with Israel, to see whether they might give the plan any political cover.
Speaking in Tel Aviv on Monday, Nikki Haley, Trump’s former United Nations ambassador, suggested that such Arab support could force the Palestinians to come to the table. “If the Arab countries respond favorably to the plan, or even if they don’t run to the Palestinian side, that’s going to be a huge, telling lesson to the Palestinians that they may not have the backing they had before,” she said.