[News] ‘Deal of the Century’ is Not New and the PA Leadership is Not a Victim

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/05/deal-of-the-century-is-not-new-and-the-pa-leadership-is-not-a-victim/ 



  ‘Deal of the Century’ is Not New and the PA Leadership is Not a Victim

by Ramzy Baroud <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/cet6s/> - July 5, 2018
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Donald Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ will fail. Palestinians will not 
exchange their 70-year long struggle for freedom for Jared Kushner’s 
cash; nor will Israel accept even if there is a demilitarized 
Palestinian state in the West Bank.

The order of that anticipated failure is likely to go something like 
this: the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah is likely to reject the 
deal once the full details of the US administration’s plan are revealed; 
Israel is likely to withhold its decision till Palestinians rejection is 
exploited thoroughly by pro-Israel US media.

The reality is that, considering the massive surge of the Right and 
ultra-nationalist forces in Israel, an independent Palestinian state 
even on one percent of historic Palestine will not be acceptable by 
Israel’s current political standards.

There is more to consider: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 
troubled career as a long-serving leader is being dogged by accusations 
of corruption and several police investigations. His position is too 
weak to even guarantee his own survival until the next general 
elections, let alone champion a ‘deal of the century.’

However, the embattled Israeli leader is expected to play along to win 
more favor with his American allies, distract the Israeli public from 
his own corruption, and hold Palestinians accountable for the political 
fiasco that this is sure to unleash.

It is Bill Clinton’s Camp David II and George W. Bush’s ‘Road Map for 
Peace’ all over again. Both initiatives, as unfair as they were to 
Palestinians, were never accepted by Israel in the first place, yet in 
many history books, it is written that the ungrateful Palestinian 
leadership had torpedoed US-Israeli peace efforts. Netanyahu is keen on 
maintaining this misconception.

The Israel leader, who has received the ultimate American gift of the 
relocation of US embassy to Jerusalem, knows how important this ‘deal’ 
is to the Trump Administration.

Before assuming his role as President, Trump spoke early on of his 
‘ultimate deal’ in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on November 
1, 2016. He offered no details, aside from the claim that he is able “to 
do … the deal that cannot be made … for humanity’s sake’.

Since then, we have relied on occasional leaks, starting in November 
2017, up to recently. We learned that a demilitarized Palestinian state 
would be established on a small part of the West Bank, without Occupied 
East Jerusalem as its capital; that Israel will keep all of Jerusalem 
and will annex illegal Jewish settlements and even keep control of the 
Jordan Valley, and so on.

Palestinians will still have a ‘Jerusalem’, albeit an invented one, 
where the neighborhood of Abu Dis will simply be called Jerusalem.

Despite the hype, nothing is truly new here. The ‘deal of the century’ 
promises to be a rehash of previous American proposals that catered to 
Israel’s needs and interests.

Remarks by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in an interview with the 
Palestinian newspaper ‘Al-Quds’, corroborate this view. He claimed that 
the Palestinian people are “less invested in the politician’s talking 
points than they are in seeking how a deal will give them and their 
future generations new opportunities, more and better paying jobs.”

Where did we hear this before? Oh, yes, Netanyahu’s so-called ‘economic 
peace’ which he has been peddling for over a decade. Certainly, the 
Palestinian Authority (PA) has proven that its political will is a 
commodity to be bought and sold, but to expect the Palestinian people to 
follow suit is an illusion without historical precedent.

Indeed, the PA has grown to be an obstacle to Palestinian freedom. A 
recent survey conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey 
indicated that the majority of Palestinians put the blame mostly on 
Israel and the PA for the Gaza siege, and that they mostly believe that 
the PA has “become a burden on the Palestinian people.”

It is hardly surprising that as of March 2018, 68% of all Palestinians 
want PA President Mahmoud Abbas to resign.

While Israel deserves most of the blame for its decades-long military 
Occupation, successive wars and lethal sieges, the US too stands 
accountable for backing and financing Israel’s colonial endeavors. 
However, the PA cannot play the role of the hapless victim.

What makes the ‘deal of the century’ particularity dangerous is the 
truth that the PA cannot be trusted. It has played its role, assigned by 
Israel and the US, so well and for so long. PA policy served as the 
local arm in the subjugation of Palestinians, thwarting their protests 
and ensuring the demise of any political initiative that does not 
revolve around the glorifying of Abbas and his goons.

It is hardly an achievement when much of PA foreign policy in recent 
years was invested to ensure the complete economic and political 
isolation of impoverished Gaza, as opposed to unifying the Palestinian 
people around a collective fight to end the horrific Israeli Occupation.

For PA officials to decry the ‘deal of the century’ as an infringement 
on Palestinian rights, while they have done little to respect these 
rights in the first place, is the very definition of hypocrisy. No 
wonder Kushner thinks the US can simply buy Palestinians with money in a 
“cash-in-your-chips, go-for-broke, take-it-or-leave-it (type of) deal’,” 
in the words of Robert Fisk.

What can the PA do now? It is trapped in its own imprudence. On the one 
hand, the PA’s financial sponsor in DC is turning off the money source, 
while on the other, the Palestinian people have lost the last iota of 
respect for its so-called ‘leadership’.

Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ may inadvertently mix up the cards leading 
to a “much-needed reckoning for all other parties involved”, argued 
Anders Persson. One option available for the Palestinian people is the 
expansion of the popular mobilization model which has been manifesting 
itself at the Gaza-Israel fence for many weeks.

The US-PA fallout and the looming destruction of the status quo might be 
the chance the Palestinian people need to unleash their power through 
mass mobilization and popular resistance at home, coupled with an active 
role for Palestinian communities in the diaspora.

/*Dr. Ramzy Baroud* has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 
years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media 
consultant, an author of several books and the founder of 
PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom 
Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London). His website is: 
ramzybaroud.net/

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