Trumps Middle East Peace Plan: Palestine Rejects saying ‘slap of the century’
US President Donald Trump unveiled his ambitious Middle East Peace Plan in the White House in the presence of ‘smiling’ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He later lauded the plan as ‘Great for Israel’. But the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rejected it as a ‘slap of the century’.
In short the below listed main points in the ‘peace plan’ has everything that Israel wanted for a long time and Palastine with restricted ‘State’.
- Establish Jerusalem as Israel’s “undivided” capital, with a potential Palestinian capital to the east and north of the city.
- Recognize the vast majority of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territory as part of the country. A Palestinian state would receive territory, mostly desert, near Gaza to compensate for the loss of about 30% of the West Bank. Gaza and the West Bank would be linked by high-speed rail.
- Recognize the Jordan valley, which makes up about a third of the occupied West Bank, as part of Israel.
- Offer a path to some form of Palestinian statehood but with no army, and overarching Israeli security control in some areas, including over the sea. The plan also sets a series of conditions the Palestinians have to meet before receiving independence including the “complete dismantling of Hamas”, which governs Gaza.
- The possibility of stripping Israeli citizenship from tens of thousands of Arab Israelis who live in 10 border towns, with those towns and their residents being included in any future state of Palestine.
- Recognize sections of the desert bordering Egypt as part of any future Palestinian state.
- Refuse Palestinian refugees the “right of return” to homes lost to Israel in previous conflicts.
