Trump's Middle East plan offers rallying cry for Netanyahu
Proposal also seen as welcome distraction for both leaders from political, legal woes
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NEW YORK • US President Donald Trump made sure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was standing alongside him at the White House on Tuesday as he presented his long-delayed "deal of the century" for Middle East peace.
It was a welcome distraction for two leaders fighting for their political futures.
Yet, the proposal - which makes far more demands of Palestinian than Israeli leaders - generated little enthusiasm, prompting an emergency meeting of the Arab League, scheduled for Saturday, and criticism from some key United States allies, including Jordan and Turkey.
Palestinian officials, who refused to take part in talks after Mr Trump alienated them early in his term, denounced it outright.
The plan gives Israel tacit approval to annex a swathe of established settlements immediately, while offering Palestinians the possibility of a fragmented nation-like state years in the future: An offer they see as worse than what they had received in previous negotiation efforts that broke down.
Yet, Palestinian approval may have been a secondary goal at best.
For Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu, who both face mounting legal troubles and re-election campaigns this year, the 80-page plan was an opportunity to show their core supporters that they are bold leaders willing to skirt failed conventional wisdom in the pursuit of peace.
The hastily arranged White House event came as Mr Trump's impeachment trial continued in the US Senate.
Mr Netanyahu, at the same time, is looking for any advantage heading into an early March election, and is confronting multiple indictments on bribery and corruption charges in Israel.
"Mr Trump gets a distraction from impeachment and another opportunity to boost his support from Christian evangelicals and others who favour whatever the Israeli government wants," said Mr Paul Pillar, a former US Central Intelligence Agency officer and a non-resident senior fellow at Georgetown University in Washington.
"Mr Netanyahu gets another chance to show that it is he, and not Mr Benny Gantz, who can get the US administration to do whatever Israel wants," he said, referring to the main political rival of Mr Netanyahu.
Moving quickly to capitalise on Mr Trump's proposal, Mr Netanyahu said his Cabinet would meet in the coming days to authorise the annexation of portions of the West Bank that Palestinians say is illegally occupied.
Israeli Defence Minister Naftali Bennett said yesterday that Israel should move to establish sovereignty over nearly a third of the occupied West Bank.
The remarks by the hawkish Mr Bennett, a partner in Mr Netanyahu's right-wing governing coalition, fuelled accusations by Palestinians that Mr Trump's plan paves the way for Israel to formally annex large areas of the West Bank that it has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War.
For decades, US diplomats walked a tightrope in the region, seeking to appear impartial as they proposed ideas intended to somehow nudge both the Israelis and Palestinians towards some sort of consensus while also winning broader Arab support.
But in a radical shift, Mr Trump has dispensed with that approach altogether, aligning US policy decisively with Israel in a way few in Jerusalem could have imagined just years ago.
At one point, as Mr Trump promised the deal would benefit the Palestinians as well, he told his audience, which included pro-Israel casino magnate and Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, not to clap.
"Today, Israel takes a big step towards peace," Mr Trump said. "My vision presents a win-win opportunity for both sides. There's nothing tougher than this one, but we have to get it done."
He added: "President Abbas, I want you to know that if you choose the path to peace, America and many other countries - we will be there." Mr Trump also said: "We will be there to help you in so many different ways."
But the pomp of the ceremony belied the widespread view outside the White House that the plan is probably dead on arrival.
Speaking after Mr Trump's presentation, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said "we say 'no', and a thousand times 'no'", to the Trump vision.
In a televised address from his headquarters in Ramallah, Mr Abbas vowed to begin dissolving the Palestinian Authority, leaving a void in the region and transferring responsibility for providing services to Palestinians to Israel.
BLOOMBERG
THE PROPOSAL
WHAT ARE THE KEY ISSUES?
• The status of Jerusalem, including historical sites sacred to Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
• Establishing mutually agreed borders.
• Finding security arrangements to ease Israeli fears of attacks by Palestinians and hostile neighbours.
• Palestinian demand for statehood in territory - the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem - captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War.
• Finding a solution to the plight of millions of Palestinian refugees.
• Arrangements to share natural resources like water.
• Palestinian demands that Israel remove its settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. More than 400,000 Israelis now live among an estimated three million Palestinians in the West Bank, with a further 200,000 settlers in East Jerusalem.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN POINTS OF THE PLAN?
• The United States will recognise Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
• A map to set out borders for "a realistic two-state solution, offering a viable path to Palestinian statehood".
• A demilitarised Palestinian state to live peacefully alongside Israel, but with strict conditions.
• Israel agrees to a four-year "land freeze" to secure the possibility of a two-state solution.
• Status quo to be preserved at Jerusalem's Temple Mount/ al-Haram al-Sharif complex - which lies in the eastern part of the city captured by Israel in a 1967 war.
• Israel to "continue to safeguard" Jerusalem's holy sites and to guarantee freedom of worship to Jews, Christians, Muslims and other faiths.
• Jerusalem to stay united and remain the capital of Israel.
• The capital of the state of Palestine to include areas of East Jerusalem.
• An earlier - economic - part of the plan announced last June called for a US$50 billion (S$68 billion) investment fund to boost the Palestinian and neighbouring Arab state economies.
WHY WAS IT RELEASED NOW?
Critics say President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are intent on diverting attention away from domestic troubles. They also face re-election campaigns - Mr Netanyahu in March and Mr Trump in November.
WHAT ARE ITS CHANCES?
The last Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014.
Longstanding obstacles include the expansion of Israeli settlements on occupied land over decades, and generations of mutual suspicion.
The past two decades have also seen the rise to power in Gaza of the armed Islamist movement Hamas, which is formally committed to Israel's destruction and is in the midst of a decades-long power struggle with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, who called Mr Trump's plan the "slap of the century".
REUTERS
