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<div class="header reader-header" style="display: block;"
dir="ltr"> <font size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/05/deal-of-the-century-is-not-new-and-the-pa-leadership-is-not-a-victim/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/05/deal-of-the-century-is-not-new-and-the-pa-leadership-is-not-a-victim/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">‘Deal of the Century’ is Not New and
the PA Leadership is Not a Victim</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/cet6s/"
rel="nofollow">Ramzy Baroud</a> - July 5, 2018</span></div>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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’.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Palestinians will still have a ‘Jerusalem’, albeit an
invented one, where the neighborhood of Abu Dis will
simply be called Jerusalem.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>It is hardly surprising that as of March 2018, 68% of
all Palestinians want PA President Mahmoud Abbas to
resign.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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’.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<p> <em><strong>Dr. Ramzy Baroud</strong> 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</em> </p>
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