It’s NOT the economy, stupid

In 1992, political strategist James Carville coined a phrase to capture Bill Clinton’s key campaign message in a nutshell: It’s the economy, stupid. The catchphrase became so entrenched in the American political lexicon that more than a quarter of a century later, the Wall Street Journal suggested that Donald Trump adopt it to raise public awareness of his economic successes. Trump may not have adopted Carville’s slogan, but his worldview that it’s all about the fattest wallet and the strongest fist was obvious during his first term, and it is painfully clear that it continues to drive his approach to foreign policy in general and the Israel-Palestine conflict in particular.

Prosperity Outranks Sovereignty

From the Knesset podium earlier this week, Trump lauded his accomplishments as a dealmaker and boasted about assembling the world’s “wealthiest and most powerful group of nations” to endorse the declaration signed later that day at the “Peace 2025” summit in Sharm al-Sheikh. The declaration, like everything else Trump touches, shamelessly bears his name in the title along with the buzzwords “peace” and “prosperity.” Announcing that “at long last, we have peace in the Middle East,” Trump, like the other world leaders who flocked around him, failed to address the fact that the warring parties were not among the signatories to the “Trump Declaration on Peace and Prosperity,” nor did they sign the president’s 20-point plan. The only document that bears the signatures of Israeli and Hamas representatives is the implementation plan for the first phase of the ceasefire, which deals exclusively with the hostage-prisoner release, troop withdrawals, and humanitarian aid. Nonetheless, as he pointed out in his Sharm remarks, Trump considers peace in the Middle East a “very simple expression,” so why not say it, especially when none of the leaders of the international community have demonstrated the mettle to call him on it.

It is not Trump’s very liberal interpretation and misplaced use of the term peace that is of greatest concern, however. It is far more important to read the signals the president is sending through the Administration’s repeated references to prosperity. Not that prosperity is a bad thing, but in the US policy toward the Israel-Palestine conflict, it has come to replace independence and sovereignty as the benefits to be achieved by the Palestinians if the conflict is resolved. Security for Israel, and financial opportunities for Gaza. And what of the West Bank? I suppose Jared Kushner hasn’t yet identified the piece of land he wants to develop on the banks of the Jordan River, but once he does the territory is likely to feature in future iterations of the Trump plan.

Trump’s Spin on Peace Largely Unchallenged

Trump’s intentions shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that his view of the Palestinian collective was laid out in his 2020 Peace to Prosperity plan, dubbed “the steal of the century” by analysts who recognized that the State of Palestine envisioned by the plan would remain under Israeli domination. Harder to understand without descending into absolute cynicism is the ease with which the signatories to the New York Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, endorsed by the United Nations a few short weeks ago, have accepted the Trump narrative from which “Palestine” and “the two-state solution” are absent. They are desperately trying to square the circle, choosing to highlight those elements of the Trump plan that align with the New York Declaration and ignore the fact that it essentially offers the Palestinians less than the Bush Roadmap for Peace in the Middle East presented in 2003. So far, the only sign of reservations about the plan was the absence of the Saudi and UAE leaders from the Sharm Trump fest, possibly signaling displeasure with the plan’s nebulous allusion to Palestinian statehood and disagreements with Egypt.

Shades of the Disengagement Dilemma

Disputes have arisen within the peace camp over reaction to the plan, reminiscent of the heated arguments within the left sparked by Ari’el Sharon’s presentation of his Disengagement Plan a little over 20 years ago.

Much has been written about what motivated Sharon, once a hero of the settlement movement, to decide to withdraw the Israeli army and evacuate the settlers from the Gaza Strip. US and international pressure, economic concerns, demographics, and shifts in public opinion are among the factors often mentioned. What one won’t find is any relationship between the Disengagement Plan and the pursuit of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Presenting the plan at the Herzliya Conference in December 2003, Sharon said disengagement was a punitive measure which Israel would apply unilaterally in response to what he considered the Palestinians’ failure to implement their obligations under the Bush roadmap. To dispel any doubts, he explicitly said that the plan was a security measure, not a political one, and that it would leave the Palestinians with far less than they would have received through negotiations.

It was difficult for the peace camp to support unilateral measures of any sort, particularly one of such consequence that it threatened to delegitimize the Palestinian Authority (PA). On the other hand, how could one not support the withdrawal of the IDF from the entire Gaza Strip and the dismantlement of all the settlements there? The more the right-wing opposition to disengagement grew, the more the left found itself defending the plan despite its many shortcomings, because it couldn’t oppose settlement evacuation and what looked at the time like the beginning of the end of the occupation of Gaza.

Ultimately, the peace camp chose to support the redeployment of the army and the evacuation of the settlements but protested loudly against the government’s refusal to coordinate with the PA and continued to call for negotiations leading to the end of the occupation of the entire Occupied Palestinian Territory and the realization of the two-state solution.

Refocusing Diplomacy on Palestinian Independence

Trump’s initiative poses a similar dilemma. How can one oppose the return of the hostages, the cessation of the bombing, the flow of humanitarian aid, and, if it holds, the end of the war? As a ceasefire agreement and from a short-term perspective, the plan will save an untold number of lives. In the long term, however, Trump is promising the Palestinians economic peace within a colonial framework – a sure recipe for another failed diplomatic effort that will leave them more embittered and desperate, and we all know where that will lead.

It is therefore vital that the proponents of the two-state solution welcome the Trump plan for what it is and denounce it for what it isn’t. The opportunity created is not in the substance of the plan but rather in the silencing of the guns. In the ensuing quiet, international diplomatic efforts supported by civil society must be recentered on “taking tangible, timebound, and irreversible steps for the peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine and the implementation of the Two-State solution, to achieve, through concrete actions, as rapidly as possible, the realization of an independent, sovereign, economically viable and democratic State of Palestine living side by side, in peace and security with Israel.” This is the commitment undertaken by 18 states, the EU, and the Arab League at the high-level international conference that convened at the United Nations in August. Trump’s rabid pursuit of a Nobel Peace Prize must not divert them from that goal.