President Trump's peace plan is reigniting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Matthew Williams/The Conflict Archives: Two girls walk home through a military checkpoint. Bethlehem has been under military occupation for decades.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is hardly a forgotten crisis when compared to the humanitarian disasters in the Sahel region and the Democratic Republic of Congo which get scant coverage. It is one of the most toxic conflicts to cover in the world with pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli lobbyists and activists at war in cyberspace and in lobbies across the world. This has only been exacerbated by Donald Trump who unveiled his contentious peace plan this week. It is a plan which is fanning the flames of one of the world’s longest conflicts.
The international community has been transfixed by the interwoven relationships and struggles which have defined the modern Middle East, and the Arab-Israeli wars have continued to be covered in a lane parallel to uprisings, conflicts and civil wars across the region. While the Arab-Jewish confrontation has often played second fiddle over the last decade to the tumultuous Arab Revolutions, it has remained threaded throughout the region’s turbulent equivalent of a Thirty Years War and the Middle East’s political maelstrom.
When peace is mentioned, bloodshed usually follows in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The most serious outbreak of violence between the Israelis and Palestinians came in the second intifada between 2000 and 2005 after the collapse of talks at Camp David between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. In the last decade, outbreaks of serious violence have taken place with the 2014 Gaza War a stark reminder of how swiftly ceasefires can deteriorate, and conflict can escalate between Israel and its neighbours. Israel and Iran’s proxy war has also contributed to deepening the regional crisis and ratcheting up the confrontation between Tehran and Washington under both President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump. Several high-profile incidents between Hezbollah and the IDF on the Israeli occupied Shebaa Farms in January 2015 and Maroun al-Ras in September 2019 raised fears of a Third Lebanon War breaking out in a region already overflowing with refugees displaced by conflicts in Syria and Iraq. Palestinian protesters along Gaza’s border with Israel were mowed down by sniper-fire, killing over a hundred and wounded even more in both 2018 and 2019.
Gaza 2020
“Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are desperate,” said Ian Black, the former Middle East editor for The Guardian. “Their lives under blockade are intolerable, as is the sense that they have been abandoned to their fate by an indifferent world.” The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is severe. One million people inside the enclave faced hunger in May 2019 almost a year after President Trump’s administration slashed the U.S aid budget for Palestinian refugees. Alongside the lingering threat of malnutrition and widespread hunger, issues surrounding water, sanitation and hygiene and the deepening crisis of mental health remain profound everyday challenges for people in the Gaza Strip. These crises have been turbo-charged by unemployment which - according to a World Bank report was at nearly 47 per cent in the second quarter of 2019 (4 per cent increase from 2018).
With the slow-motion collapse of humanitarian conditions in Gaza came a crisis of legitimacy for Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah (commonly known as Hamas) who have governed the Gaza Strip since 2006. In March last year, protests broke out across cities such as Gaza City. The cause of these outbreaks of social dissent is synonymous with the factors influencing similar protests across the Middle East in Iraq and Lebanon raging into 2020. Youth unemployment stood at 70 per cent in 2018, which has been catalysed by war, isolation, and internal division in Palestinian politics. As with other parts of the Middle East and North Africa, protests have thrown the authorities in the Gaza Strip, and the Israelis controlling its borders, off-balance.
Four consecutive days of social unrest gripped Gaza with protesters taking to the streets and cyberspace to express their discontent under the slogan “We Want to Live!” The response of Hamas’ security forces was swift and brutal. Over 1,000 arbitrary arrests were made and over a dozen journalists were detained, and social media footage emerged of security forces systematically beating civilians. Such a vicious response to political and social dissent did not occur in a vacuum.
Hamas’ security cells across the Strip, and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, have routinely detained and tortured political dissidents and activists. In October 2018, Human Rights Watch published a 149-page report revealing detailed accounts of security agencies and government authorities carrying out torture and arrests with impunity over a two year period. The violations of international law - some amounting to crimes against humanity - which were conducted by the authorities were mainly attributed to Hamas’ Internal Security and the Palestinian Authority’s Intelligence, Preventive Security, and Joint Security Committee. In several parts of Gaza, including Jabalia Refugee Camp, Khan Younis and al-Bureij Refugee Camp, testimonies to the human rights group paint a picture of widespread corruption and impunity, including intimidation and bribery while beating have been meted out on activists and journalists alike within the Strip raising concerns about Gaza’s politics or basic needs such as electricity and the right to employment.
During times of war, the Internal Security’s cruelty can escalate into widespread killings akin to a transnational criminal organisation. In the 2014 conflicts, at locations such as Katiba Prison and Al-Shifa hospital, suspected “collaborators” and “informers” in custody were targeted for extrajudicial executed by Hamas’ military courts, with many “confessions” being extracted under duress and prolonged torture. As with the cases of torture and arbitrary arrests reported in 2018, no one was held to account for the crimes perpetrated within the Internal Security and Al-Qassam Brigades during the Gaza Wars, opportunities by Hamas to liquidate their political opponents already in prison and kill and intimidate those opposed to their rule in Gaza. The use of repression as a policy tool by Palestinian political groups tussling for power mirrors that of other regimes across the Middle East and North Africa.
The Israeli military and security forces have been little better in their treatment of Palestinian civilians, a constant thread through the rivalry over the last century. With President Donald Trump at the helm, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government stepped up their agenda of settlement expansion in the occupied territories. Prime Minister Netanyahu has sabre-rattled repeatedly on the crisis in Gaza, and on several occasions, there have been fears of open war returning to the blockaded Strip. Parallel to his belligerent rhetoric on Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah, Netanyahu has shown restraint when it comes to escalating military conflict.
With the exception of the 2014 Gaza War, Netanyahu has been hesitant to go to war, preferring instead to primarily utilise airstrikes, drones and assassinations to contain Hamas. The killing of Baha Abu al-Ata in November was the latest high-profile assassination carried out by the Israelis - who had pursued Al-Ata and his circle in both Damascus and Gaza. Al-Ata, a senior commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, was killed in the early hours of Tuesday morning in on 12th November along with his wife (two of his children, according to local sources, were also injured in the airstrike). The children received treatment at the same hospital (Al-Shifa) where Internal Security had tortured dissidents for years. Al-Ata had been deputy commander to Daniel Mansour who commanded Al-Quds Brigades in northern Gaza (he was killed in August 2014 during the Gaza conflict).
Netanyahu’s policies have been effective, however civilians, frequently coined as ‘collateral damage’ - as exemplified by Al-Ata’s children - have often been caught between the Israelis and their targets. In January 2019, a report published by The Lancet focused on military drones being used to strike Gaza and how the technology - as with battlegrounds in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen - is terrorising the population.
‘We found drone strikes were associated with more proximal amputations that needed more surgical operations after initial life-saving emergency surgery than traumatic amputations caused by other types of explosive weapons. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show the frequent use of armed drone strikes on the Palestinian population in Gaza and that armed drone strikes are the most frequent cause of traumatic extremity amputations in this population.’ (The Lancet)
The side effects also demonstrated that ‘drone strikes caused amputations that added substantially to the almost insurmountable burdens on the already overstretched local health-care system in Gaza.’ The impact on the mental health of civilians, with drones buzzing in sky, is well-known in the studies conducted on drone warfare. Gaza is no exception to this rule that the use of drones traumatises civilians, physically and psychologically.
Furthermore, the assassination programme, and Hamas’ retaliation to the killings, have brought Israel and Hamas to the brink of a third Gaza War on several occasions in 2018 and 2019. In both March and November, as protests continued along the Israel-Gaza border, the IDF and Hamas exchanged airstrikes and rocket-fire, some of the most ferocious exchanges since fighting in 2014. The Israeli hit hundreds of targets with air-power and dozens of civilians were wounded on both sides. In the November stand-off, over one hundred rockets were fired into Israel in response to the killing of Al-Ata - a demonstration of the risks that come with the killing of top leaders (as Donald Trump discovered on a larger scale with the killing of Iranian commander Qassem Sulieimani in January 2020).
Despite refraining from expanding operations into a full-blown military campaign as seen in 2014, the red-lines drawn by Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government have at times been drawn ruthlessly. The response of the Israeli military to protests, most notoriously the ‘Great March of Return’ in 2018 and 2019, demonstrated the worst excesses of the Israelis draconian policies in containing Gaza.
The use of live ammunition and sniper fire to disperse the protests and the killing and maiming of men, women and children (including journalists, healthcare workers and children) drew substantial and deserved international criticism. A report published by the United Nations stated that Israel ‘may have committed war crimes’ based upon ‘325 interviews and meetings with victims, witnesses, government officials and members of civil society, from all sides, and gathered more than 8,000 documents, including affidavits, medical reports, open-source reports, social media content, written submissions and expert legal opinions, video and drone footage, and photographs.’ Similarly, the human rights group, Amnesty International, also asserted in its 2018 annual report on the situation on in Israel and the Palestinian Territories that in regards to the use of live-ammunition on protesters it was clear that ‘some of these unlawful killings appeared to be wilful, which would constitute war crimes.’ Human Rights Watch also joined the chorus of criticism, also condemning the IDF’s repeated use of lethal force in the Gaza Strip as potential war crimes. In May 2018, the UN Human Rights Council received 29 votes in favour of dispatching an international war crimes investigators team to probe for alleged war crimes committed at the protests.
More significantly, as the decade came to a close, the International Criminal Court (ICC) published a statement that conditions had been met for an investigation into war crimes committed by the Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza. “The preliminary examination into the Situation in Palestine has concluded with the determination that all the statutory criteria under the Rome Statute for the opening of an investigation have been met,” wrote the court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda. “I am satisfied that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.” The findings of the ICC’s preliminary investigation were based upon events which took place in the Gaza which was subjected to fierce bombardment in 2014 during the conflict, and the use of live ammunition on protesters along the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip.
The accusations were categorically rejected by the Israeli government and condemned the UN’s decision with officials citing bias in “factual and legal analysis” conducted. In January 2020 - a month after accusing the ICC of antisemitism - Netanyahu went as far as to suggest that sanctions be applied against the ICC and its staff. Chief Prosecutor Bensouda had already had her visa to the United States revoked after investigations were conducted into alleged U.S war crimes in the Afghan War. While 123 countries are signatories to the court, neither Israel nor the United States are members of the ICC, and it is unclear whether ICC staff would be able to conduct it investigation without being blocked by the Israeli authorities, or pressured by the Trump administration to back down.
Peace Out, Annexation In
Parallel to the crisis in Gaza, low-level violence in the West Bank has been prevalent, with stabbings, vehicles being used as weapons and extra-judicial killings a common occurrence across the Palestinian Territories which have been under military occupation since 1967. Dozens of Israeli civilians and soldiers have killed while 410 Palestinians have followed with them over the last decade in an ugly tit-for-tat cycle of violence between Israeli soldiers, settlers and Palestinian civilians which has no clear ending.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has effectively frozen the peace process, and the Israelis have extended their grip on the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Under the Trump administration, Netanyahu has been given a carte blanche to construct new settlements in territories under military occupation. In 2019, nearly 10,000 settlements have been pledged or advanced for construction, with the longest serving prime minister shifting the West Bank and Golan Heights annexation to the heart of his 2019 election pitch to hard-right voters.
The advancement of settlement construction inside the West Bank, the shift of the U.S embassy to Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the recognition of the city as Israel’s capital poured fuel on protests and the slashing of the U.S aid budget to the Palestinians has precipitated the collapse of the peace talks. The naked deferrence of the Trump administration to the Israeli government including the president himself and his family since entering the White House has alienated the Palestinian Authority. This was encapsulated by juxtaposing images on social media and television of the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner with Prime Minister Netanyahu leading the U.S embassy opening in Jerusalem as Israeli soldiers committed potential war crimes against protesters along Gaza’s border. Though the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and Trump’s announcement to move the U.S embassy were unrelated, the images spoke volumes of what the “deal of century” entailed. It demonstrated a willingness on the part of the Trump administration to turn a blind-eye to Israel’s turgid human rights record and stall the peace process in perpetuity for short-term political gains.
The Bahrain Prosperity to Peace workshop, a plan drummed up by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt - the Trump administration’s special envoy for Middle East peace and with no experience in international diplomacy - fell flat and was boycotted by Palestinian businessmen in the West Bank. Financial incentives, including a supposed $50 billion economic plan to invest in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the wider region, have been rejected. Dr Ahron Bregman, author of Cursed Victory: A History of Israel and the Occupied Territories and lecturer in the Department of War Studies at Kings College explained, the offer is arbitrary, one given from a position where the Israelis hold all the cards.
For the PA and Hamas, it would be an act of political suicide to succumb to the Trump administration’s plans, particularly given the domestic pressures Hamas and PA are already under due to economic and social woes catalysed by occupation and war. The Palestinian leadership smell a diplomatic bribe, an attempt to ‘bully them to relinquish long-held demands for a state and a resolution for Palestinian refugees’ spanning back to 1947.
The offer on Jerusalem (a capital in Abu Dis) is nothing but a humiliation and cancelling what the Palestinians regard as their Right of Return without offering anything in return is unfair on them. Without the Jordan Valley (which was offered to the Palestinians in the past) the future Palestinian state will become an isolated island surrounded by Israel. The Palestinians have rightly rejected the humiliating Trump offer. It makes sense for them to reject it. But would I say so in 10 or 20 years time? I'm not sure. In 1937, the Palestinians were offered 80 per cent of Palestine which they rejected. In 1947 they were offered 45 per cent of Palestine which they rejected. By the time of Camp David in 2000, only 22 per cent of historic Palestine was on the negotiating table, as Israel was by then firmly built on 78 per cent of Palestine. When most of the remaining 22 per cent was offered to them in Camp David 2000 the Palestinians rejected it again. Even when President Clinton offered them in 2001 at Camp David - which included Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem - they rejected it. It seems that the Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Although the current Trump Plan doesn't seem at all to be an opportunity, in rejecting it - as they often do with offers made to them - the Palestinians might in fact miss yet another opportunity.
It is unlikely that the Palestinians could accept a deal which offers them way less than Israeli leaders like Barak and Olmert and American Presidents, notably Clinton has offered the Palestinians in the past. That the Palestinian Authority was not invited to the latest peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians in Washington is indicative of the scale of President Trump’s failure to present himself as an impartial broker of peace. For President Trump, it matters little whether the Palestinian leadership accepts or rejects the “deal of the century”. President Trump understands little about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In the midst of a historic impeachment process in Congress, the prescriptive peace deal on offer is an opportunity for him to shore up support among his donors, evangelical Christians, far-right pro-Israeli lobbies and Jewish communities in the United States in the build-up to the 2020 election and show that he is pursuing peace in the Middle East and that the U.S remains a committed ally to Israeli security in the region. As with the assassinations of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and Qassem Soleimani, Donald Trump is playing domestic politics on the world stage with little idea of the long-term consequences.
Beset by indictments of corruption and bribery, President Trump’s support is also invaluable to Prime Minister Netanyahu after a turbulent year where he is struggling to cling onto power after the collapse and subsequent failure to form a new coalition government. For Netanyahu, he could shore up further support in his waning power base by demonstrating that he has secured the most favourable ‘peace plan’ for the Israelis in history which includes sovereignty over all Jerusalem, and a further 30% of the West Bank. Such a plan all but destroys the Oslo Accords established in the 1990s.
As Israeli politics remains paralysed and facing its third election in a year, the peace process has slid further and further down the domestic agenda, and after decades of stalemate, many Israelis have become apathetic to the Palestinian cause. In-turn, after many years of stalling, broken promises on the part of successive Israeli governments, perpetual war and occupation and the unmitigated failure of their own leaders, ordinary Palestinians have become sceptical about peace. “Hopeless” has become a term regularly used by men and women in Israeli and Palestinian society on the conflict between them over the past few years. A recent survey in January 2020 by the UN found that 65 per cent of Israeli millennials thought the conflict would “never end”, making them the least optimistic people. In Palestinian territories, this was mirrored by Palestinian youth at 52 per cent.
The survey results should elicit little surprise. With Netanyahu and Trump in power, the bankruptcy of the PA evident and Hamas’ leadership leading to nowhere but confrontation in Gaza and beyond, this attitude of pessimism will continue to linger in the halls of power and distil across the Holy Land. Until leadership changes at the top, a trajectory that may only be broken by another major intifada or a seismic shift in Israeli politics and society, little will change for Israeli Arabs, Palestinians in Israel, East Jerusalem and the West Bank bound to the Israelis at the hip.