By Denis Korkodinov
The peace plan proposed by Washington to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict will be probably never implemented. Almost surely Israel will not, under any circumstances, give up its claims to the biblical Sacred land, within whose borders the territory of present-day Palestine, part of Syria, Egypt and Jordan. So the “peace plan” could provoke even more brutality, as a result of which the conflict may become uncontrollable.
The American “peace plan” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has been defined by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with a team of lawyers close to the White House administration (Greenblatt and David Friedman). During the last two two years they developed a strategy which, in their opinion, should contribute to the normalization of Arab-Israeli relations.
According an official statements of Washington, the “peace plan” will be published in June 2019. Such terms has been fixed taking in accounting the need to await for the formal settlement of the new Israel cabinet and the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
It would seem that peace between Israel and Palestine is very important, but few among the parties to the conflict seems interested in it. Probably for this reason, the plan has been repeatedly postponed, and now almost no one thinks that it will be implemented. In addition, even US President Donald Trump seems not to believe on it. In his opinion, peace between the warring parties is not needed at all, because with this peacemaking initiative, Washington could lose influence on the parties in the conflict. So, the “peace plan” in itself seems just a screen in order to push through other interests, which have nothing in common with peace in the Middle East.
In this regard, there is an extremely high probability that the “peace plan”, will be equally rejected both by the authors of this plan and those for whom this plan was intended. And it will not make positive changes in the Arab-Israeli conflict, which on the contrary is going to develop in a geometric progression . This has already happened in the history between Israel and Palestine. For example, in June 2000, the confrontation between the parties erupted with a new force almost immediately after the unsuccessful round of negotiations at Camp David.
The “Peace Plan” proposed by Jared Kushner and his team was initially doomed to a complete fiasco. And the blame for this rests not only on Israel and Palestine. The problem also exists in the politics of Donald Trump.
The head of the White House officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in December 2017. However, he refused to understand that the Arabs traditionally claim the eastern part of this city. At the same time, he was aware that the “Jerusalem Campaign” would provoke an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East. May be Donald Trump also counted on it, wishing to pit the two opposing sides so that in the end the whole world would ask him to put an end the conflict. Also after such a decision, American are not loved in Palestine. And, moreover, the Palestinians will probably not accept any plan for resolving the conflict proposed by the United States.
For surplus, Donald Trump stopped the Washington financing of the UN programs aimed at assisting Palestinian refugees. So among Palestinians the conviction grew that henceforth their worst enemy is not the Israel, but the United States. As a consequence Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused the head of the White House of pro-Israel policies, and meetings between Palestinian and American diplomats were kept to a minimum.
Under such circumstances, it is obvious that the plan of Jared Kushner is not fully feasible. This could mean “green light” for Israeli expansion, which is unlikely to be limited to the territory of the West Bank. Moreover, the new government of Benjamin Netanyahu, which is almost entirely composed of representatives of extremely nationalist parties, probably will not limit itself to the possibilities of unleashing a new war. Therefore, they could not need the Kouchner plan.
It is worth noting that the slogan on the need for annexation of the West Bank was adopted by the majority of Israelis who voted for the Likud party, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. So the new Israel government could be considers it its duty if necessary to begin military actions against Palestine, since without the annexations, Benjamin Netanyahu could be overthrown.
Thus, the American plan to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict is unlikely to bring peace. However, war is quite possible.
(The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights)