The American peace plan for the Middle East, unveiled by Donald Trump on Tuesday January 28, has hardly appeased the spirits in the region. The Israeli army, which had already deployed infantry reinforcements before the plan even unfolded, announced Wednesday evening the dispatch of "additional combat troops" to the West Bank but also near the Gaza Strip.
Shortly after the announcement of these new reinforcements, a first rocket "was fired from the Gaza Strip" on Israel. In response, the Israeli military announced that "(Israeli) fighters have struck a number of Hamas terrorist targets in the southern Gaza Strip."
Earlier on Wednesday, demonstrations took place in the Palestinian Territories against the American peace plan, leaving some wounded.
The plan, deemed too pro-Israeli, "will not pass", assured for its part Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has refused for several months any offer of dialogue from the United States. It is intended for "the dustbins of history", he added.
Mahmoud Abbas to plead at the UN
The Palestinian leader is expected within 15 days before the UN Security Council to plead his rejection of the plan, announced Wednesday the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour. For his part, the American secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, asked the Palestinians to make him a "counter offer".
Among the project's many sensitive points is the annexation by Israel of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, in particular in the Jordan Valley, which is to become the eastern border of Israel. The text ensures that Jerusalem will remain "the indivisible capital of Israel" and proposes to create a capital of the Palestinian state quartered in the outskirts of East Jerusalem.
"It is impossible for any child, Arab or Palestinian, to accept not having Jerusalem" as the capital of a Palestinian state, said Mahmoud Abbas, a position shared by Hamas. "The so-called American peace team only copied and pasted the plan of Netanyahu and the settlers," lambasted Saeb Erakat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
"This plan will not bring any solution and will encourage more tensions, and probably more violence and bloodshed," the Catholic Churches in the Holy Land said in a joint statement.
Knesset vote
On the Israeli side, the reactions are quite different. "History knocked on our doors last night to give us a unique opportunity to apply Israeli law in settlements in Judea and Samaria," the name given to the West Bank by Israeli authorities, said the Minister of Defense, Naftali Bennett, also leader of a radical right-wing party.
But elements of the radical right allied with Benjamin Netanyahu oppose the part of the American plan proposing the creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state. "We will not let the security of localities in Judea and Samaria be threatened," said Yisrael Gantz, one of the settlement leaders in the Ramallah area.
In this context, and in the run-up to the elections of March 2, the leader of the Blue-white party of Benny Gantz, main rival of Benjamin Netanyahu, asked for a vote of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, "on the whole" of the American plan.
The UN has stressed that it sticks to the borders defined in 1967, like Jordan.
With AFP and Reuters
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