Gaza plan shows limits of Trump’s influence on Netanyahu

On September 25, four days before announcing a peace plan for Gaza, U.S. President Donald Trump made a categorical statement on the issue at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – the future of territory the Palestinians see as a key part of a future state.

“I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. Nope. I will not allow it. It’s not going to happen.”

Trump’s confident assertion implies that he thinks Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unfailingly follows the wishes of Israel’s most important ally. Particularly where the West Bank is concerned, This is not the case.

For decades, the Israeli leader has defied U.S. policy, international law and even U.N. Security Council resolutions opposing Jewish settlements in the West Bank, occupied by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

From the beginning of the peace process that led to the 1993 Oslo accord, the number of Jewish settlers grew from 110,000 to more than half a million.

Right-wing members of Netanyahu’s cabinet have been clamouring for the annexation of the West Bank or, as they call it by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria.

For decades, Israeli leaders shrugged of criticism of the relentless expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank from the United States, which had acted as a facilitator in the Oslo agreement, and most of its allies.

The expansion continues. New construction of bypass roads linking Jewish settlements and isolating Palestinian villages began the day after Netanyahu returned from Washington after announcing, standing alongside Trump, the Gaza peace plan.

Worked out by American and Israeli negotiators, it originally had 21 points. One was removed at the insistence of Netanyahu. It offered amnesty to Hamas members who pledged peaceful coexistence and agreed to lay down their arms. The Israelis argued it would reward terrorism.

Of the remaining 20 points of the plan, number 19 is the most sensitive. It highlighted that Trump and Netanyahu are not on the same page despite the appearance of unanimity conveyed by their joint announcement.

Point 19: “ While Gaza re-development advances and when the PA (Palestinian Authority) reform programme is faithfully carried out, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognise as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.”

Back home, Netanyahu poured ice-cold water on the phrase “Palestinian self-determination and statehood” which in effect means a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel. He asserted that he would “forcibly resist a Palestinian state” and insisted it was not implied in the 20-point plan.

There has been no response so far from Hamas, the militant group which started the war in Gaza two years ago by storming across the border, killing more than 1,200 Israelis in an orgy of butchery, and taking 250 hostages.

Israel responded with devastating force. More than 66,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have died in bombing raids and artillery strikes that laid waste to much of Gaza and prompted one of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, complete with famine, lack of medical services and tens of thousands driven from their homes and forced to live in tents.

Stomach-turning images of dying children operated without anesthesia in the ruins of bombed hospitals have prompted a swing of American attitudes towards Palestinians in a country once solidly pro-Israeli. That appears to have prompted Trump to get involved in efforts to stop the war.

On September 30, Trump set a deadline of ‘three or four days” for a Hamas decision, which would mean this Saturday. But the White House has since said the timeline could be flexible.

Meanwhile, Israel has pressed on with a devastating offensive on Gaza City to eliminate pockets of resistance from Hamas, many of whose leaders have already been killed. Even on the day of the announcement of the 20-point plan, 59 Palestinians died, according to the Health Ministry.

Since then, until October 1, another 429 died. The offensive continues.

The complicated 20-point plan includes an immediate ceasefire and a new international body to manage the administration and reconstruction of Gaza. Trump has said he would be chairman of the “Board of Peace” to oversee a “technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee” charged with reconstructing public services.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been mentioned as the board’s co-

chair. Blair has extensive experience in the Middle East and worked as a peace envoy after leaving office.

No timeline for establishing the New Gaza has been fixed. It is still unclear whether Hamas will agree to the plan but even if it does, don’t expect swift results. Optimists who do might remember that it took more than a decade to end “the troubles,” Ireland’s sectarian conflict which had none of the complex geopolitical dimensions of the war in Gaza.

Also worth remembering: It took two years from then Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s ground-breaking visit to Israel to the 1978 Camp David accords – the first peace pact between an Arab country in Israel.

For the emaciated, exhausted Palestinians in the ruins of Gaza, time is short.