The Communist Party USA expresses its firm rejection of the so-called deal of the century announced by U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week. Far from being, as Trump says, a “win-win” situation for all sides in the Israel-Palestine conflict, it is deeply unjust to the Palestinian people and a formula for continued violent strife in the Middle East.

The political context is that there are elections approaching in both the United States and Israel this year. Trump has been impeached, and Netanyahu has been indicted for corruption. This has caused many observers to suspect that electoral demagoguery is part of the motive of both these leaders; that is, they are proposing an extreme and unworkable solution to the long-running Israel-Palestine conflict so as to stir up their extremist electoral bases and bolster their chances for re-election.

Be that as it may, the proposed plan, cooked up between the U.S. and Israeli governments without any Palestinian participation, is a big step backward:

*It would not do anything meaningful about the completely illegal proliferation of Jewish settlements on land needed for the eventual creation of an independent Palestinian state. Instead, the existing settlements would come under Israeli sovereignty, as would the West Bank of the Jordan River.

*The so-called Palestinian state envisioned in the plan resembles nothing so much as the ill-famed system of “homelands” or “Bantustans” that the racist apartheid regime set up in South Africa. It would consist of noncontiguous bits and pieces of territory which would not be economically viable. It would not control many functions that are an inherent feature of all genuine sovereign states, such as foreign and security policy.

*Israel would take over complete, not joint, control of sites sacred to Muslim people, namely, the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque atop the Haram esh-Sharif (Temple Mount) in Jerusalem, though Muslims would be allowed to pray there with Israeli permission.  We should not forget that there are extremist elements in Israel who have created provocations at those places and have even called for the demolition of those two edifices.

*The long-standing Palestinian demand that East Jerusalem be the capital of the new Palestinian state is fobbed off with the idea of giving the Palestinians a piece of land outside the city instead.

*The plan requires that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, with the implication that Muslims, Christians, and others living there are somehow not first-class citizens. Given existing discrimination against Arabs in Israel, this is not just a matter of words.

*The issue of the right to return of Palestinian families who have been exiled since Israel’s independence in 1948, some of whom still live in squalid refugee camps, is dropped completely.

*The $50 billion in investment offered to Palestine would not be given directly to the Palestinian government or even to private-sector firms. Instead, it would be placed in a fund at a financial institution charged with generating returns for investors. Disbursements would be conditional upon the Palestinian state’s adoption of the classic neoliberal framework of enhanced private property rights, low taxes, deregulation, and a judiciary friendly to foreign investors.

No wonder that all sectors of Palestinian leadership have indignantly rejected this destructive plan. It is gratifying that so many world leaders and organizations have denounced it already. We note that, in the United States, Jewish organizations such as J Street, civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, and numerous political leaders including several presidential candidates have been emphatic and forthright in denouncing this “deal.”

The Communist Party USA calls on all our members and allies to actively work to block the Trump-Netanyahu plan by speaking out against it in public meetings, on social media, or in letters to the editor; by contacting elected representatives to demand that they oppose it; and by making sure that Trump and his extremist allies are defeated in our November elections.

Image: Hossam el-Hamalawy, Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0.

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