North-Press Agency
Dr. Mouhib Salha
The controversy over Trump Peace Plan ‘the deal of the century’ is renewed after the United States President Donald Trump officially announced it at the White House on January 27, with the presence of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the ambassadors of three Arab countries, the UAE, Bahrain and Oman.
This timing comes on the eve of the presidential elections in the United States and the parliamentarian elections in Israel. There is no doubt that such an important event means a lot in the U.S. and Israeli domestic politics, as the race to the White House and to the power in Israel may be decided, apart from their importance in relation to upcoming legal entitlements which may affect Trump and Netanyahu.
The first, whose trial began on January 22 in the U.S. Senate on charges of abusing the presidential power and obstructing the work of the Congress, and the second relates to his accusation of three corruption cases, and the Knesset will deliberate on his immunity in these charges or not. On the other hand, this timing allows Russia and China, as joint friends of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, to play an important role in any negotiations between them.
Each case or cause has two timings. The first is periodic and temporal, and is related to an event or a special circumstance associated with it. The second is strategic which is consisting of a continuous series of timings of events, circumstances and situations related to the issue or the situation.
The timing of the announcement of Trump Peace Plan is regular or temporal, but it is part of a more important timing. It is the strategic timing of the Palestinian issue, which began with the Balfour Declaration in November 1917, declaring the right of the Jews for a national homeland in Palestine, with the Europe's salvation from the Jewish question, which was bedeviling its political classes, and Britain's occupation of Palestine, a month after this declaration.
The second timing is the United Nations recommendation in November 1947 to divide Palestine into two states, 43% for the Arabs and 57% for the Jews. The second timing is the end of the British Mandate of Palestine and the declaration of the State of Israel in May 1948 over a part of the historical Palestinian territory.
The third timing is the June 1967 war, and Israel's occupation of what remained of Palestine. The fourth timing is the peace talks between Egypt and Israel in the aftermath of October War 1973, and the launch of the land-for-peace equation.
The fifth timing is Oslo Accords between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Israel in September 1993, which ended with the establishment of a Palestinian Authority with limited sovereignty over a part of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The sixth timing is Washington's announcement in December 2017 that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the State of Israel.
The last timing is the announcement of Trump Peace Plan, which requires the establishment of a Palestinian state on 17% on the historic Palestine, with limited sovereignty and demilitarized, with its capital as a suburb outside the Israeli wall of Jerusalem, with the existence of more than 140 settlements and 121 settlement outposts being inhabited by more than 600,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Among these stations, there are incidents, situations and opportunities which weren't invested with political skill to serve the Palestinian Cause, most notably was the late Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba's speech in the city of Jericho 1965, in which he called on the Arab countries to make peace with Israel and to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank which was, with Jerusalem under the Jordanian tutelage, and Gaza Strip was under the Egyptian tutelage, in addition to the first Intifada in 1987-1993 and the second in 2000.
The Palestinian Cause has been drowned throughout the years of the conflict with Israel in and around deep and crude contradictions and intractable internal diseases till it has become forgotten in the circle of the devastation which plagues the Arab region, so with Trump Peace Plan, the world may witness a new birth for the Palestinian cause after both the Palestinians and the Arabs killed it since the fateful Balfour Declaration, where either they will kill it again or they will live with it.
Trump Peace Plan is Palestinians' last chance to build a civilized peace, where a generation of the Palestinians and the Israelis may come to transform this civilized peace into a single, multi-spectrum federal state. This Plan is a state which its borders and capital are negotiable, while if the Palestinians reject it, this means that there will be no Palestinian state, and the Palestinians would not enjoy life and prosperity.
For the first time, the Palestinian Cause is seen as the issue of the Palestinians who have the right of life, after it was a commodity for trading in both the Arab and the Islamic Nations market for a hundred years of the strategic timing, and Trump Peace Plan will be its reference instead of the international one.
Therefore, it is in the interest of the Palestinians to accept Trump Peace Plan and go through its difficult negotiations, especially since Israel hopes that the Palestinians to refuse to negotiate the Plan in order to implement its strategy, based on emptying the Palestinian lands from the Palestinians and ensuring complete completion of its annexation.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of North-Press Agency