Not long after he was elected President of the US in 2017, newly-elected President Trump questioned the legitimacy of the US civil war. “The Civil War,” he said, “if you think about it, why? People don’t ask the question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one have not been worked out?” Unfortunately, Trump is not an avid fan of history not even American history. As he himself admits, he depends on ‘Fox News’ to enlighten him on events both local and foreign.
Today this same President Trump is attempting pontificate the Israel - Palestinian peace process. His plan calls for the recognition of an “undivided” Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. This despite the fact that the annexation of East Jerusalem by Israel, violates International Humanitarian Law (IHL). Annexation amounts to an act of aggression, forbidden by international law! The peace plan introduces a ‘Conceptual Map’, as a basis for negotiations. This map for a future Palestinian State envisioned by the US President is worse than the Bantustans of the defunct South African apartheid system.
They in fact resemble more the Ghettos where the Jewish people were confined to, under Nazi Germany. In Poland’s urban centres these ghettos -walled-off prison islands- have been described by historians as little more than instruments of “slow, passive murder”. The proposal also eliminates the question of the Palestinian refugees’ right of return, as per UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which affirms the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes of origin -from which they were driven out by Israeli terrorist gangs. The right to return of Palestinians was marked for discussion at a later period within the Oslo peace negotiations in the 1990s.
Trump also envisions giving Palestinians power to govern themselves. But any Palestinian state would have to be fully demilitarized. It would also be barred from any sort of security or diplomatic arrangements with other countries without Israeli consent. Israel would retain the right to dismantle and destroy any facility in the State of Palestine that it (Israel) believes is used for the production of weapons or hostile purposes. Israel would also maintain control over all international crossings into the State of Palestine.
An addendum to the precondition for recognition of the State of Palestine adds, that the Palestinian Authority or so-called state, must drop all pending or planned legal action against Israel, the US and their citizens before the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and all other tribunals!
"Today, I come bearing an olive branch in one hand, and the freedom fighter’s gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand"
To accept these slave-like conditions, the ‘Trumpian peace plan’ promises Palestinians new jobs, US investment, a state they can call their own, which will be subordinate to Israel; recognize Israel as a Jewish state and abandon all claims to the occupied Palestinian lands the Jewish state has annexed and or occupied.
For Palestinians, the plan ends hopes for an independent state alongside Israel and Palestinian options are highly limited, as Israel has said it would be legislating to legitimise its takeover of Palestinian lands on Sunday. It appears Palestinians have hardly any non violent options left in the event the US peace proposal is implemented.
With their backs to the wall, Palestinians may be forced into carrying out the implied threat in Yasser Arafat’s 1974 speech to the UN General Assembly... “Those who call us terrorists wish to prevent world public opinion from discovering the truth about us and from seeing the justice on our faces. They seek to hide the terrorism and tyranny of their acts, and our own posture of self-defence.
“The difference between the revolutionary and the terrorist lies in the reason for which each fights. For whoever stands by a just cause and fights for the freedom and liberation of his land from the invaders, the settlers and the colonialists cannot possibly be called terrorist.
“Otherwise the American people in their struggle for liberation from the British colonialists would have been terrorists; the European resistance against the Nazis would be terrorism, the struggle of the Asian, African and Latin American peoples would also be terrorism, and many of you who are in this Assembly hall were considered terrorists.
‘‘Today, I come bearing an olive branch in one hand, and the freedom fighter’s gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat, do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. Will the world stand by and watch the olive branch drop? As, today the Palestinians are fast running out of non-violent options.
