‘Take it or leave it’: Trump’s empire-style plan to bring war rather than peace to Middle East

29 Jan, 2020 00:05

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FILE PHOTO: Palestinian demonstrators react to the US President Donald Trump's Middle East peace plan, in the northern Gaza Strip, on January 28, 2020. ©  Reuters / Mohammed Salem

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US President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” has turned out to be nothing but another colonial empire-style plan ignoring not just the interests of the Palestinians but the UN decisions as well, analysts told RT.

The peace plan that Trump said would “greatly benefit” both Israelis and Palestinians was little more than a manifestation of Washington’s arrogance, the experts agree. It shows that the US believes it can single-handedly decide sensitive issues of international politics that usually fall under the jurisdiction of the UN, such as the status of Jerusalem.

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“In going so far as decreeing Jerusalem’s status, the Deal of the Century clearly has echoes of the 19th century’s age of empires which created the current impasse in the Middle East that inspires recurring terrorism,” said Afshin Rattansi, host of RT’s Going Underground.

His guest, former ambassador UK to the Palestinian Authority Sir Richard Dalton, noted that Trump’s unilateral decision on Jerusalem’s status is nothing short of “de facto violation of 2017 emergency UN resolution” and could even be seen by the international body as a “flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

Yet the Trump administration apparently believes that it has “the right to unilaterally defy” all these international norms, since it openly endorses Israel’s illegal annexations, the diplomat added.

The US proposal is extremely unlikely to bring even a hint of peace to the Middle East, since Washington was apparently more concerned about pleasing its allies in Tel Aviv rather than offering a genuinely feasible solution to the decades-old conflict.

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Palestinians “are being presented with a deal that was made exclusively between the US and Israel” and hardly has any regard for their interests at all, said former US diplomat Jim Jatras, adding that the deal looks more like an ultimatum than an agreement.

“Like everything else in this so-called plan, it is ‘take it or leave it’," Jatras said. "That is what the US and Israel will offer you and if you do not take it, they will take more. I think that is why Trump said it was Palestinians’ last chance.”

Either they will settle to the deal offered to them or they will get nothing.

That is precisely why this proposal has been a “non-starter” from the very beginning, believes former Pentagon official Michael Maloof.

“If you are going to have an agreement you will need both sides to go along with it. Right now I do not see Palestinians going along with it,” he told RT.

Jatras believes that getting Palestinians to sign the deal might not be the goal of this proposal, which opens the way for Israel to further annex Palestinian territories in the West Bank like the Jordan Valley, with an approval from Washington.

“I expect that to happen fairly soon. Trump said that the US will then recognize these annexations as they recognized the annexation of the Golan Heights,” he said.

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The pompous unveiling of the peace plan was “the latest act of political theater” by Trump, who has honed his double-speak skills by confusing and manipulating the American people and now hopes to repeat the same trick with the Palestinians, American comedian Lee Camp told RT.

“For decades he has lied, reneged, and stolen – and his 'Two State Solution' is no different. He and Netanyahu were joined at the announcement by ultra-Zionist billionaire Sheldon Adelson and many others who have pushed for and celebrated an endless array of war crimes,” Camp noted, adding that the Palestinians were nowhere to be seen.

The Palestinian people were not a part of this process. They are being asked to surrender what remains of their rights and sovereignty.

The consensus across the board is that this “deal of the century” could actually bring war to the Middle East, not peace. Palestinians already fiercely oppose this proposal and attempts to shove it down their throats would only be met with more resistance, potentially leading to a full-blown conflict.

“Palestinians are already threatening a new Intifada as a result,” Maloof said. “It would create a whole new dimension of violence in the region.”