After seven decades of gross human rights violations with ethnic cleansing, killing, siege, occupation, detention without trial and apartheid, Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have released details of their Middle East peace plan, despite a boycott from Palestinian leaders. Under this White House plan, Jerusalem would be under total Israeli control, which denies Palestinians their aspiration to have the whole of east Jerusalem as their capital.
Why now the announcement of the Middle East plan now?
Ironically Middle East peace plan is hinged on impeachment circus and Netanyahu indicted on charges of bribery and fraud. Both need to win the election and divert attention.
However, almost immediately following Trump’s announcement of his so-called “deal of the century” Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas resoundingly rejected it and calling is “slap of the century”.
Jewish Voice for Peace, called it “an apartheid plan” and “a distraction ploy by two warmongers who are prioritizing their personal election campaigns over any semblance of statecraft.” While other Jewish organizations call the plan “as an annexation roadmap”, “is a green light for Israeli annexation of the West Bank,
and “Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. Gideon Levy of Israeli daily Haaretz, was not so apoplectic. He was apocalyptic. It was “the final nail in the coffin of that walking corpse known as the two-state solution … there is no Palestinian state and there never will be.”
Jewish Voice of Peace and J Street boycotted and condemn the peace plane, while ambassadors from Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates were present to give blessings to the plan. What a sad day for Palestinians!
The grand imam Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb of Egypt’s prestigious Al-Azhar mosque and university lambasted the plan at a conference in Cairo in the presence of many of the Sunni world’s leading religious scholars. He said: “Our identity as Arabs and Muslims is over… I felt totally ashamed watching Trump with the Israeli leader,”
International reactions came swiftly, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the United Nations remained committed to supporting Palestinians and Israelis in resolving their conflict on the basis of UN resolutions, international law and bilateral agreements… He said the UN was also committed to realizing the vision of two states “living side by side in peace and security within recognized borders, on the basis of the pre-1967 borders,”. While UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, “The position of the United Nations on the two-State solution has been defined, throughout the years, by relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions by which the Secretariat is bound”.
UK Labor party leader Jeremy Corbyn said that the proposal “is not a peace plan. It is a plan to lock in illegal Israeli colonization and deny Palestinian rights. It is a threat to peace.”
Mohamed al-Laham Fatah Revolutionary Council said “We are left with no choices but a new Intifada… The unacceptable conditions in the plan and the silence we receive from most of our Arab neighbors tie our hands and promote violence.
While Mohammed Zarif the Iran foreign minister said; “The so-called “Vision for Peace” is simply the dream project of a bankruptcy-ridden real estate developer.” While Turkey slammed the proposal as “stillborn,” calling it an “annexation plan” intended to destroy hopes for a two-state solution.
What does the 181 pages plane include?
Truly, all must read this document which looks like a gift of supernatural revelation of Israel ‘s demand to Washington.
This is a deceitful document – containing ludicrous, and a travesty of any hope of an independent Palestinian state of any kind. Israel’s occupation, the longest in modern history, is described as a “security footprint” and where the Oslo accord and UN Resolution is trashed.
The document is the utter contempt of several UN resolution by carving out a Palestinian state in Gaza and parts of the West Bank but would allow Israel to annex the Jordan Valley and nearly all of its settlements in the occupied territory
With complete control of Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights.
The plan says goodbye to the right to return to homelands lost in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and farewell to the old city of Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital. It strips Palestinians right to freedom; right to justice; right to equality and dignity.
This plan accommodates land theft, settlements, the annexation of Jerusalem – all of these are war crimes and then telling the Palestinians down the road, if you’re good little boys and girls, you may have a hypothetical state. In addition, on page 34 of the document, it says that the State of Palestine may only be approved by the US and Israel and may not join any international organization if such membership would contradict commitments of the State of Palestine. What this means is demilitarization and cessation of political and judicial warfare against the State of Israel”. So goodbye as well to the protection of the International Criminal Court.
No Palestinians would dream of accepting such a crazy and ridiculous set of political demands. This is certainly not a recipe for peace. It’s a recipe for the perpetuation of the occupation and the conflict.
In short, Palestinian people should recognize Israel as the “nation-state of the Jewish people” (albeit almost 21 percent of its people are Arabs), censor its own schoolbooks, arrest and interrogate anyone daring to oppose the Israeli occupier.
Israel is going to be an apartheid state. Trump had created “a world in which the US president’s son-in-law is more powerful than the UN General Assembly. If the settlements are permitted, everything is permitted.”
Persian Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have come to see Iran as the region’s greatest threat, and Israel as a potential ally against it.
Authoritarian regimes in the Arab world are working to undermine the two-state solution with Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar and UAE all welcomed the plan. There is much to say about this. I would say Iran’s enemies are the enemies of Jerusalem and hopefully, it is a wakeup call.
On Feb. 18, 1979, Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader was the first foreign dignitary to visit Tehran after the revolution. He later told reporters “That I felt as if I was landing in Jerusalem…Today, we are witnessing the victory of the Islamic revolution in Iran and tomorrow we shall be the victors in Palestine”.
The support of Iran for the Palestinians is convincing and unquestionable. The actions speak louder. In 1979, Imam Khomeini launched a yearly Jerusalem Day (Al Quds) which is last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan in support for the Palestinians and named the elite expeditionary unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as Al Quds force after the holy city.
Jerusalem still endures. It was once described as “the flower of all cities” in a famous song by the Lebanese Diva Fairouz. Today, when it comes to the holy city Saudi Arabia and the Arab world have abandoned and the Palestinians once again find themselves alone.
Listen to the song: Will make you cry!
The Flower of The Cities, Fairuz زهرة المدائن فيروز
