BY REBECCA LIANG ’22
On Jan. 28, President Trump proposed his plan for resolving Israeli-Palestininan conflict. He called it the “Deal of the Century.” According to The New York Times, the plan would give control of Jerusalem to Israel as its capital “and not require it to uproot any of the settlements in the West Bank that have provoked Palestinian outrage and alienated much of the world.”
More detailed geographical information was unveiled by the White House, in which the area of the State of Palestine is placed inside the West Bank barrier, with several Israeli enclaves within it.
This plan is advocated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been in office since 2009 but was recently indicted on corruption charges. According to The Jerusalem Post, he said, “We are going to leave open the map in such a way that we will not contradict... the outline that the president put forward. We are going to maintain our policies. Israel will act according to what the plan signals.”
He continued, “Trump is the best friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.”
On the other hand, this proposal is strongly dissented by President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, who considers it a U.S.Israeli conspiracy aiming for tighter control over Palestine. According to The New York Times, President Abbas denounced this “unserious consideration” on the same day.
Since the mid-20th century, the ongoing conflict over Israel and Palestine’s sovereignty and statehood has brought the U.S. attention. Trump is not the first U.S. president who has tried to disentangle the situation. Several previous attempts ended with failure.
Given the fact that the success of this plan requires considerable economic inflow and investment, “it’s hard to imagine anyone investing billions of dollars in big infrastructure and transportation projects for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza while the Israeli government continues to annex more territory,” according to The New York Times