Nothing about the scheme surprised, an affront to millions of long-suffering Palestinians and international law — a document with no legitimacy.
One observer compared Trump’s unveiling to a wedding attended by the bride, not the groom.
Palestinians were excluded from drafting the scheme put together by the Trump and Netanyahu regimes — serving US/Israeli interests exclusively, ignoring fundamental Palestinian rights and the rule of law.
Their representatives were absent from Tuesday’s unveiling. No self-respecting Palestinians would touch a scheme that legitimizes permanent bondage of their people under Israel’s repressive boot.
The Trump/Netanyahu scheme recognizes illegal Israeli control over most of the Occupied Territories — including settlements, most Jordan Valley land, military bases, free-fire zones, commercial locations, tourist sites, nature reserves, no-go areas, Jews-only roads, checkpoints, the separation wall, and other exclusive Jewish areas — along with water, hydrocarbon reserves, and other resources rightfully belonging to Palestinians.
The scheme of the century recognizes Israeli land theft, dispossession of its indigenous occupants, loss of their possessions, and Jewish state control over historic Palestine’s borders and airspace.
It illegally legitimizes Israeli control over all valued parts of Judea and Samaria, including Jerusalem as an undivided Jewish state capital.
Palestine’s “capital” is to be located “east and north of the existing security barrier, including Kafr Aqab, the eastern part of Shuafat and Abu Dis, and could be named” whatever its officials wish — a capital in name only.
Democratically elected Hamas, Palestine’s legitimate government, is called “repressive.”
Illegal Israeli blockade of the Strip was unmentioned in the Trump/Netanyahu scheme, demanding it be demilitarized, defenseless against Israeli rapaciousness, and controlled by a Palestinian entity recognized by Israel.
Diaspora Palestinians are prohibited from returning to their homeland. No settlements will be uprooted. They’ll be mostly “incorporate(d) into contiguous Israeli territory (to) become part of the state of Israel” — in violation of international law, what the US and Israel disrespect and breach at their discretion.
A dubious Palestinian state in name only is conditional on its leadership’s subservience to Israeli demands.
They include renouncing the right of self-defense the US and Israel call terrorism, Jewish state aggression considered self-defense.
The scheme prevents regional peace and stability, making it more unattainable by adoption of what it stipulates — an unacceptable master/vassal arrangement, legitimizing Palestinian subjugation, offering the illusion of self-determination.
Israel is to retain control over everything related to security, assuring no change in the unacceptable status quo.
The Trump/Netanyahu scheme is a flagrant violation of international law, demanding world community rejection and condemnation.
Palestinian officials rejected it long before release. It has nothing to do with “peace to prosperity,” nothing “improv(ing) the lives of the Palestinian people,” just the opposite.
Palestinian authorities and activists vowed to fight against the scheme, one activist calling it a “new Balfour Declaration, (Trump) giving away what he does not own to people who have no right to it.”
Tuesday’s unveiling was a “historic” sellout day, exclusively serving US/Israeli interests at the expense of Palestinian rights.
The economic part of the scheme unveiled last June has nothing to do with aiding millions of long-suffering Palestinians.
It includes a global investment fund of $50 billion for 179 infrastructure and business projects — benefitting corporate interests exclusively in the West and Israel, neoliberal harshness for ordinary Palestinians.
The Trump regime wants wealthy Arab Gulf states to provide the money.
Around $28 billion is earmarked for the occupied West Bank and Gaza — intending greater exploitation of the Palestinian people, the way the US and other Western states exploit their own people, only worse in mind for Palestinians.
Jordan will receive a $7.5 billion bribe, Egypt $9 billion, and Lebanon $6 billion.
Around $15 billion is to come from grants, $25 billion from subsidized loans, and $11 billion from private capital.
Another $5 billion is for a transportation corridor to connect the West Bank and Gaza by a tunnel and/or high-speed rail link.
The economic part of the scheme has nothing to do with lifting Palestinians out of poverty, everything to do with continued exploitation under militarized control.
Trump’s scheme of the century is a categorical rejection of fundamental Palestinian rights while pretending to respect them — benefitting US/Israeli interests exclusively at their expense.
On Sunday, Israel’s Knesset will vote on annexing settlements, approval virtually certain.
According to Netanyahu, Knesset approval isn’t needed, just cabinet members signing off on it, a rubber-stamp procedure.
A Final Comment
Security Council resolutions are automatically international and US constitutional law under its Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2).
By illegally giving Israel control of Jerusalem, the scheme breaches unanimously adopted Security Council Res. 476.
It declared “all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, which purport to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal validity and constitute a flagrant (Fourth Geneva) violation.”
The scheme ignored Fourth Geneva’s Article 49 stating:
“Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”
“The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
Settlements are flagrantly illegal under international law.
The Trump/Netanyahu scheme breached Security Council Resolution 2334 (December 2016), stating the following:
Settlements have “no legal validity and constitute a flagrant violation under international law.”
The resolution demands “Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”
It recognizes no territorial changes “to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations.”
It “(c)alls upon all States, to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.”
It “(c)alls for immediate steps to prevent all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror, as well as all acts of provocation and destruction, calls for accountability in this regard…”
In nearly half a century of no-peace/peace plans, one-sidedly serving Israeli interests at the expense of Palestinian rights, Trump’s scheme exceeds the worst of earlier ones.
With no Palestinian or world community say about what’s in it, the Trump and Netanyahu regimes want the scheme’s demands force-fed on a long-suffering people — an act of war by other means.
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Featured image is from NDTV
