Trump's Peace Plan Leaves Palestinians Few Nonviolent Options - Bloomberg

image: Kobi - Bloomberg
Trump's Peace Plan Leaves Palestinians Few Nonviolent Options - Bloomberg
by Hussein Ibish

When the Camp David summit in July 2000 failed, my father asked me what I thought. I said Israelis would eventually enforce the highly circumscribed “statehood” Palestinians had just rejected. They would try to use their overwhelming power to gobble up large parts of the occupied territories, without absorbing the Palestinian population or allowing genuine Palestinian independence.

Until this week, they were blocked from doing this because the U.S. was a third signatory to the 1993 Declaration of Principles that prohibits unilateral annexation. Now David Friedman, the American ambassador to Israel is openly encouraging Israel to annex big chunks of Palestinian territory.

The Palestine Liberation Organization for decades sought to negotiate a two-state agreement with Israel. If the Israelis go ahead with this annexation and Washington perseveres with the new Trump policies, they will look like the biggest dupes imaginable. Hamas, which insists on armed struggle, will appear vindicated despite the continuous disasters their violence have wrought on Palestinian lives and fortunes.

How should Palestinians respond?

The clever move would be to thank Trump for his ideas, and welcome the opportunity to sit down with the other parties to discuss how, if at all, these new proposals fit with the formal and binding framework signed and agreed to in 1993. (Spoiler: they don’t.)

If life were a debating society or courtroom, all Palestinians need do is hold up the signature page of the Declaration of Principles and win the argument every time.

But life isn’t like that. For years Palestinians were harangued and punished by Israelis and Americans for supposedly violating the spirit of the Oslo agreements by “unilaterally” seeking greater international recognition. Now Israel and the U.S. have blithely wrecked those agreements, which evidently aren’t sacred after all.

Besides, Palestinian politics won’t allow the PLO to play that game. Their constituents are too outraged to be satisfied with debate-hall arguments, and Hamas will capitalize on any perceived PLO weakness.

Palestinians might be able to recuperate their diplomatic position if Israel doesn't go ahead with annexations in the coming weeks and Trump is defeated in November. Then it would be up to the Democrats to urgently restore sanity to U.S. policy. That is not impossible, but it requires Palestinians to simply wait and see what happens.

Beyond that, Palestinian options are highly limited. Unless the international community ***