Israeli officials pointed to past commitments by the George W. Bush administration, including a letter Bush sent to then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon shifting the U.S. position on so-called natural growth of existing settlement blocs.
The Obama administration’s efforts to retract that promise generated harsh criticism from Israel’s allies in the United States, including current State Department official Elliott Abrams. The blowup over settlements deepened the mistrust between Obama’s team and Netanyahu’s, and in some ways the relationship never recovered.
Last year, the Trump administration reversed decades of policy by deciding that the U.S. no longer views Israel’s West Bank settlements as inconsistent with international law.
Trump’s defenders argue he is making hard calls that past presidents have dodged and stripping away illusions that have long prevented the conflict from being resolved.
“Mere opposition to this vision is simply a declaration of support for the hopeless status quo that is the product of decades of stale thinking,” the White House said in a document released Tuesday that echoes past remarks by Kushner.
Danielle Pletka of the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute acknowledged that Trump “forces some hard questions for the Palestinians” but said he also is pushing some hard choices on the Israelis.
“Look at Bibi talking about a Palestinian state — that’s important,” Pletka said, using Netanyahu’s nickname. The Israeli prime minister has long downplayed the possibility that such a state could exist.
In comments reported by the Israeli press, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said this week the top priority of the plan’s architects “was always the national security of Israel. We knew that we couldn’t do anything that was going to compromise the security of Israel. But we also knew that the Palestinians deserve a better way of life.”
To that end, the Trump plan tries to coax the Palestinians to the table by promising them billions of dollars in economic assistance. And while it recognizes many existing Israeli settlements in Palestinian-claimed land as part of Israel, it also calls for a four-year freeze on settlement construction, though it was not quite clear when that freeze would take effect.
Trump’s plan also insists that Jerusalem will be the undivided capital of Israel, but at the same time, it calls for a future Palestinian state with a capital in parts of East Jerusalem. Former U.S. officials said Trump is engaging in word play that could in the long run undermine talks.
“There are a lot of parts that Israel calls ‘Jerusalem’ that Palestinians don’t consider ‘Jerusalem,’” Goldenberg noted. He added that “many key Arab neighborhoods” of the city may not wind up in a future Palestinian state as envisioned by Trump.
That state, as envisioned by a map included in the plan, would for the most part be encircled by Israel, and is not contiguous. The plan also appears to give Israel control over security affairs in that state, noting: “A realistic solution would give the Palestinians all the power to govern themselves but not the powers to threaten Israel.”
The White House’s peace plan envisions the Gaza Strip as a part of a future Palestinian state. That area remains under the control of the militant group Hamas, however, and is the source of rocket fire and other attacks on Israel. Israel also worries about aggression from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group in nearby Lebanon.
The White House has said the Palestinians can assume more security responsibility over time, but analysts say it’s unlikely Israel will allow for Palestinian control of security anytime soon.
The plan repeatedly talks about giving the Palestinians a better life and creating more prosperity in the region. But Palestinian leaders say they cannot be bribed into accepting an agreement that does not offer them genuine political autonomy.
“After the nonsense that we heard today we say a thousand ‘nos’ to the Deal of The Century,” Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, said Tuesday in the West Bank city of Ramallah, mocking past descriptions of the plan.
The Palestinians have support from some U.S. lawmakers, including Democrats who say they are mindful of Israel’s security needs.
“Any claim that this plan envisions a Palestinian state is just false,” tweeted U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “The plan allows Israel to control all security matters inside the Palestinian ‘state’, and thus it’s not a state at all.”
But the fraught topic of Israel has often divided Democrats in recent years, with some in the party pushing for a more critical line toward Israel.
The emergence of loudly pro-Palestinian voices in Congress, including Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), has led at times to open clashes on Capitol Hill, with House leaders rebuking Omar for her comments on Israel.
The fault lines also have emerged in the 2020 presidential campaign trail, with one front-runner for the Democratic nomination — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — defending Omar.
The cracks in once-solid Democratic support for Israel are one reason that some former U.S. officials and analysts argue that Trump’s moves now may give more space for Democrats to maneuver on the Israeli-Palestinian issue by making it clear past playbooks are not binding.
For example, some Democrats say the U.S. should go ahead and open a U.S. diplomatic mission – perhaps an embassy – in parts of East Jerusalem claimed by the Palestinians. And some Democratic presidential candidates have expressed openness to the idea of conditioning U.S. military aid to Israel on whether it keeps building settlements.
Palestinian leaders have avoided contact with the Trump team for many months and none were present for Tuesday’s announcement. On Monday, during a separate appearance with Netanyahu, Trump alluded to the seeming oddity of announcing a peace plan where only one side was on board.
“So people have been working on this for many, many years, and I think we’re relatively close,” he said, “but we have to get other people to agree with it also.”
There were, however, a handful of officials from Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, at Tuesday’s event — underscoring how much the region’s dynamics have changed over the past decade.
The Palestinian cause is not the motivating issue it once was for Arab leaders.
Many of those leaders now view Iran’s rise and aggression in the region a more pressing concern, and they’re willing to stay quieter about the Palestinians if it means they can get cooperation from the United States — and Israel — in containing the Islamist regime in Tehran.
But notably, in a sign that Trump’s team still had more diplomatic spadework to do, neither of the region’s two Arab heavyweights — Egypt and Saudi Arabia — sent officials to the White House rollout. Another key player, Jordan, also stayed away.
And those Arab countries present made it clear the road to Mideast peace remains a long one.
“This plan is a serious initiative that addresses many issues raised over the years,” the UAE Ambassador to Washington, Yousef Al Otaiba said on Twitter. He added, however, that the plan “offers an important starting point for a return to negotiations within a U.S.-led international framework.”
Source: politico.com
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