How the Kushner Peace Plan Overturned Israeli Strategy
How the Kushner Peace Plan Overturned Israeli Strategy
Author: Paul R. Pillar
The Kushner plan will encourage people, both inside and outside Palestine, to think and act less in terms of two states and more in terms of advocating for the rights of Palestinian Arabs within a binational state. That shift will make it harder than ever to avoid comparisons between the Israeli version of apartheid and the South African one.
The Trump administration plan for Israel and the Palestinians, spearheaded by Donald Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, has been widely recognized as a plan that lacks “peace.” Real peace plans entail compromises between the two parties that have been feuding; these plans can be modified through further negotiation between those parties and aimed at satisfying the minimum requirements of both parties. They are not an endorsement of nearly everything that one party to the dispute wants while shoving aside the other party and its interests, which is what the Trump White House’s proposal does.
Just as “peace” is a misnomer for the plan, so, too, is “state” an inaccurate label for the Palestinian entity that the plan describes. Rather, it would be a fractured Bantustan, not much more empowered than today’s Palestinian Authority, remaining under the security yoke of the conquering power that surrounds it. And even that entity probably would never come into existence, since it is predicated on the Palestinians meeting numerous conditions almost impossible to meet and with Israel the judge of whether those conditions have been met.
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