Foreign Policy: For these six reasons, the Trump peace plan will not end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

As two former members of the US negotiating team on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Hadi Omar and Ilan Goldenberg questioned the peace plan that US President Donald Trump intends to present to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today.

Omar and Goldenberg see in their article in Foreign Policy magazine that this plan came at a time when Trump needs to divert attention from accountability measures, and Netanyahu is grappling with accusations of corruption; thus the timing of this road map is questionable.

They add that what also makes the plan "farce" is that one of the parties to the conflict (meaning the Palestinians) was not involved in the content of the proposal, but rather refused to meet with the Trump administration for more than two years. It is illogical to expect them to agree to a deal written by someone who tried to compel them to give up their capital, close the Palestinian mission in Washington, and cut off all financial ties, and this is not a way to create the climate for a serious diplomatic process.

And they said that despite their strong doubts about the Trump administration process, they still believe that there is a path to Israeli-Palestinian peace and that any plan - including the Trump plan - must include some of the basic elements that every person in the Holy Land - whether Israeli or Palestinian - can: Understand it easily, and any successful plan should address some of the following key technical points:

First - Jews and Palestinians alike have deep ties to the Holy Land, and any plan that does not recognize this fact is doomed to failure.

Second - The two peoples have endured profound levels of collective and individual shocks that make their personal safety and collective security vital to the national spirit.

Third - Any peace agreement must recognize that the two peoples will relentlessly confront any violation of their personal or collective freedoms.

Fourth - Both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples - whether Christian or Muslim - have emotional attachments to the holy sites in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the Holy Land that must be preserved and accessible.

Fifth - Both peoples have enormous aspirations and expectations for the well-being of their children.

Finally - the international community was deeply involved in the shirk of the Holy Land from the start, and it was the United Nations - including the United States - that supported in 1947 a plan that called for the creation of both the State of Israel and the State of Palestine.

The State of Israel arose - and it is now one of the most powerful and wealthiest nations on earth - but the State of Palestine has never born and its people are largely stateless refugees, not only in the Holy Land, but are also dispersed throughout the Middle East and the world.

These basic milestones - as Omar and Goldenberg say - are very clear, and whatever plan anyone proposes can be evaluated based on them, these principles also indicate six technical solutions that will need to be part of any agreement:

1- There must be mutual official recognition of the Jewish people's attachment to the land of Israel and the Palestinian people's attachment to the land of Palestine. Without this recognition on both sides, neither of them will truly believe that the other side abandons the conflict.

2- It must also include agreeing on two states: Israel and Palestine, ensuring the full rights of the 1.7 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, and any Jewish settler who chooses to remain in an independent Palestinian state.

3- The state will need clear borders based on the armistice lines that existed before 1967, which end the Israeli military occupation.
And there can be a land swap that is mutually agreed upon, since in exchange for Israel acquiring land inside the West Bank, it gives Palestine unoccupied land on its side of the armistice line.

This would allow for the integration of most of the Jewish settlers in Israel, but only if the Palestinian state is able to remain coherent and viable.

4- Any agreement must include security arrangements that make Israel able to defend itself, and enable Palestine to have the security measure it needs for its independence and dignity.

5- There must be two capitals in Jerusalem - one for Israel and one for Palestine - with free access to places holy to all; this is still quite possible.

One of the options is for the ghettos to remain under Israeli control, for the Arab neighborhoods to be part of Palestine, and for there to be a common arrangement for the old city. Another option is to have a common, unified capital for the two countries.

6- There must also be a just, agreed, and realistic solution for the millions of Palestinian refugees who live outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip, whether it is citizenship in their countries of residence or citizenship in the new state of Palestine or compensation or the return of a small number agreed upon or resettlement in a third country.

The authors concluded their article that these elements should be used to judge the Trump team’s proposal, and whatever Trump does and whatever plan he launches: if he does not strive to achieve a degree of equality of freedom, security, and prosperity for Jews and Palestinians in the Holy Land, and he has the political will to combine The two parties to this end; he is doomed to failure, he or any future president.