With much fanfare, and after three years of diligent work, President Donald Trump announced his long-awaited “deal of the century,” his vision for “a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians,” officially named the “Peace to Prosperity” plan (hereafter referred to as “the plan”).
The plan is rational and logical in that it genuinely seeks a compromise solution to meet the stated needs of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and also to rally both Arab and European support. It envisions four years of direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
The plan’s six key positives are very apparent:
1) The U.S. government is now on record as immediately accepting Israeli sovereignty over 30 percent of Judea and Samaria, aka “The West Bank,” including eastern Jerusalem.
2) It agrees that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) must remain in control of security in Judea and Samaria.
3) No Jewish or Arab communities are to be uprooted.
4) No “right of return“ to Israel is to be granted for any Arab refugee.
5) The P.A. is expected to renounce terrorism.
6) Both the P.A. and Hamas are expected to disarm.
However, the plan also has five clear negatives:
1) Israel must give up 50 percent of Area C in Judea and Samaria, which it was granted under the Oslo Accords.
2) A building freeze is proposed for 15 Jewish communities.
3) Despite Israel’s sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, Hamas (the Muslim Brotherhood) would maintain de facto control of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) schools in eastern Jerusalem, which are notorious for inciting hate and glorifying terrorists who murder the most Jews.
4) The plan irrationally envisions Israeli land swaps near Gaza, and in Israel’s “Northern Triangle.”
5) The eventual Palestinian state (or entity) would be left vulnerable to the influence of external Islamist terrorist entities, including primarily Iran, Hamas and Islamic State (unless all three are neutralized or destroyed by the United States).
Further, no matter what the P.A. agrees to now, the plan does not address the fact that for decades, P.A. leaders, and the imams and media personalities they hire and control, have:
- Repeatedly said that they will never settle for anything less than all of the land on which Israel sits—while lying to Western audiences.
- Been indoctrinating Palestinian children for generations to not only hate Jews, but believe their life’s mission should be to expel them from “Palestine,” which they are shown on maps contains all of the land.
- Worked closely with anti-Israel BDS groups, to cause both Muslim and non-Muslim teens and college students from throughout the Western world to chant, “From the (Jordan) river to the Sea, Palestine will be free”—explicitly advocating that Israel be wiped off the face of the Earth (which is also Iran’s official policy). Here, for example, are non-Muslim LGBTQ students in Chicago, using this chant—while apparently not knowing, or being in denial of, the cultural and institutional terror and murder enforced against the LGBTQ community in P.A. and Hamas territories, or the fact that many seek to escape to Israel.
- Rejected every proposed peace deal, or to negotiate a compromise, over the past 73 years.
Then, there’s P.A. leader Abbas’s consistent refusals to accept any Jewish state of Israel, ever—while also saying he will never allow any “filthy Jew” anywhere in the future, Muslim-only state of Palestine, and especially Jerusalem. Abbas has already announced he is cutting off all ties with the U.S. and Israel in the wake of President Trump’s submission of this plan for his consideration.
Conclusion
The plan is a positive for Israel mainly because it enables the Jewish nation to take legal control over 150 communities in Judea and Samaria.
If the past is any indication, however, the plan’s proposed four-year negotiation period will prove as futile as in previous plans. Until and unless the P.A. leadership completely reverse course philosophically and acknowledge that Israel is a legitimate Jewish nation, which is entitled to secure borders and to employ appropriate defensive measures, there cannot and never will be a sustainable peace agreement—least of all one imposed or framed by an external entity.
Ken Abramowitz is the president and founder of SaveTheWest.
