President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” will probably not produce peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The plan unfreezes the West Bank real estate on which Israel has been building settlements for decades, allowing it to annex some 30% of West Bank territory, and perpetuates the reality of two peoples crowded together on a single piece of land, one of them the ruler, the other the ruled.
There is, however, another way of looking at the Jan. 28 unveiling of Trump’s plan: The Israeli political right under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a resounding “yes” to an American plan that includes the eventual establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, the division of Jerusalem and territorial exchange. Trump’s blueprint is almost identical to the one Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin charted out as the basis for negotiations with the Palestinians on the Oslo Accords (1993).
Rabin talked about a demilitarized “state minus” for the Palestinians on 75% of the West Bank. He pledged to preserve a unified Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, but hinted that under certain circumstances he would agree to cede parts of East Jerusalem to the Palestinians. Rabin did not, however, agree to territorial exchanges that would hand over chunks of sovereign Israeli territory, so in this sense, the Trump-Netanyahu plan to give the Palestinians land in the western Negev is even more far-reaching.
The question therefore arises as to why Rabin “had to be assassinated,” removed from the picture, almost 20 years ago. He was close to President Bill Clinton, almost to the same extent as Netanyahu is to Trump. Presumably, Clinton would not have sought to impose far-reaching concessions on Rabin to which he could not accede. From this perspective, what appears to be the ultimate victory for Netanyahu and the right is in principle a victory for the Israeli left: a solution comprising two states between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean with their capitals in Jerusalem. That said, the facts on the ground undermine the thesis.
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