The communiqué, while largely symbolic, was nonetheless a major victory for Abbas’ beleaguered leadership.
Khaled Elgindy and Michael Koplow join host Alistair Taylor to discuss the long-awaited “deal of the century” Middle East peace plan. President Trump rolled the plan out at the White House on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in attendance, while the Palestinians, who have refused to deal with the administration since it recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital at the end of 2017, were not there – and not invited. How has it been received so far, and where might things go from here?
The administration’s goal is not peace but the normalization of Israel’s military rule over millions of Palestinians.
The notion that an American president, in consultation with two Israeli leaders, could decide on the future of Palestinians without any Palestinian involvement seems to epitomize Trump’s overall approach to the conflict.
The upcoming visit to the White House by Israel’s caretaker prime minister has nothing to do with the Middle East conflict and everything to do with giving yet another political favor to Benyamin Netanyahu. While the Jan. 28 visit may be all about the Israeli elections, it is shameful and dangerous for American officials to be giving time and space for discussions that affect the Palestinian people without their involvement.
Holding long overdue elections for the Palestinian presidency and the legislative arm of the Palestinian Authority could be a step toward redressing the Fatah-Hamas conflict.
Since 2017 three separate blocs have emerged within the Gulf. Driven by the region’s divisions, rival power centers, and conflicting interests, the Gulf states are playing an ever-greater role in Palestinian affairs.
A Nov. 12 Israeli airstrike on the Gaza Strip killed Baha Abu al-Ata, a commander with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) militant group. Over the ensuring 48 hours, the PIJ launched some 450 rockets from Gaza into southern and central Israel. Hamas, the Palestinian political party/militant group that acts as the de facto government of Gaza, stayed out of the fighting — despite relatively high civilian casualties and the killing of one of its fighters.
Reports of a secret war being waged by Hamas against Salafi-jihadist groups in the Gaza Strip are indicative of increasing challenges to the former’s security control within the enclave. Hamas’ current approach to violent Salafist cells in Gaza is equally demonstrative of an ongoing warming of relations between Cairo and Hamas, and one that has afforded Hamas international legitimacy and an ease in border restrictions.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains a destabilizing element in an already volatile Middle East. The Palestinians are too weak to wrest their independence from Israel. But as long as their right to self-determination is denied, they are likely to engage in regular violence targeting Israel. Absent outside intervention, Israel is powerful enough that it can suppress Palestinian demands for freedom — but it is not able to completely pacify the Palestinians. Thus, the conflict continues, punctuated every few years by rounds of more significant violence.
Autonomy is normally given to a specific cultural or national group as part of a political agreement. For Palestinians, the idea that autonomy is the goal of talks is unhelpful because they already have autonomy.
The news came eight months after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a visit to the Omani capital for surprise talks with Sultan Qaboos in October 2018, and four months after Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah met with Netanyahu in Poland during the Trump administration’s “Peace and Security in the Middle East” summit.
