The Arab-Israeli Conflict is Essentially Over

If the Palestinians Reject the Peace Plan, What's Their Alternative?
- David Ignatius 
    
Throughout the dense text of the peace plan that President Trump announced is a stark but unstated question to the Palestinians: If you reject this deal, as bad as you think it may be, what are you going to get instead?
    
He is telling the Palestinians that after three decades of rejecting better offers than this one, they're in danger of being abandoned by the Arabs, who will decide to move on and normalize relations with Israel even if the Palestinians say no.
    
Trump's leverage is that many leading Arab states are giving what's close to tacit support to the proposal and its promise of eventual normalization between the Arabs and Israel.
(Washington Post)


For Palestinians, the Landscape Has Shifted
- David M. Halbfinger and Isabel Kershner 

[The] Arab world that has largely moved on. With only muted reaction from Arab neighbors and little apparent appetite among Palestinians for a violent response, a peace proposal that might have been considered outlandish a decade ago landed with little serious opposition.
(New York Times)

See also:Saudi Arabia Backs U.S.-Israel Efforts to Achieve Mideast Peace
(Saudi Press Agency)
Egypt Urges Israel, Palestinians to "Carefully Study" U.S. Peace Proposal
(i24News)


Palestinians Show Limited Reaction to U.S. Peace Plan 
- Pinhas Inbari 

Palestinian sources in Ramallah said the city's tradesmen have refused to engage in the trade strike that the PA sought to initiate, and the parents of schoolchildren have refused to involve their children in PA demonstrations.
(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)


Arab Leaders' Support for Plan Marks a Regional Shift
- Dion Nissenbaum

Officials in Arab capitals have been frustrated by Palestinian leaders' reluctance to compromise, which has prevented them from strengthening ties with Israel. The U.S. has wooed officials from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, Bahrain, and other nations in the region in an effort to transcend the political impasse, and to some extent they are responding. Saudi Arabia and the UAE both urged Palestinian leaders to accept the U.S. plan as a basis for new talks with Israel.
    
"It's the first time, I think since the start of the conflict, that the Arab position has not been a replica of the Palestinian position," said David Makovsky, director of the Project on Arab-Israel Relations at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "That speaks to a wider sense of regional priorities that the Arab countries have." The modified tone in Arab capitals is a reflection of the shifting relationships in the region, where nations officially at war with Israel are strengthening ties with its companies and leading figures. 
(Wall Street Journal)

Where Once There Was Fury, Palestinian Issue Now Stirs Up Apathy
- Martin Chulov

For much of the last 70 years the cause of Palestine stirred the Arab street. Wars were fought and lost in their name. By the time Iran became the preoccupation of the U.S. and its allies in the region, the Palestinians were cast into the unfamiliar role of playing second fiddle. The unveiling of the U.S. Middle East peace plan has generated neither enthusiasm nor anger - only apathy.
    
Ambassadors from Oman, Bahrain and the UAE were present when Trump unveiled the plan in the White House, marking a very public endorsement. Riyadh, which once drew much of its regional clout from defending the Palestinians, was mute. The Palestinians had become a burden, financially and politically, and were no longer worth the investment, the Saudi crown prince had concluded. There were bigger fish to fry in Iran, after all, and Israel could help them do that. 
(Guardian-UK)

U.S. Plan Will Double the Size of the PA - Omri Nahmias

Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday that the Palestinians "have a perfect track record of missing opportunities. If they screw this up, I think that they will have a very hard time looking at the international community in the face saying they're the victim, saying they have rights. This is a great deal for them. If they come to the table and negotiate, I think they can get something excellent." Kushner stressed that the plan will double the size of the territory the Palestinians have now.
    
Kushner told Al-Arabiya that the Palestinians are not going to get a state "by doing a day of rage. All doing a day of rage shows is that they're not ready to have a state. That's not what people with states do." 
(Jerusalem Post)


U.S. Peace Plan Is Fair and Just - Eugene Kontorovich

The Palestinians are perhaps the only national independence movement in the modern era that has ever rejected a genuine offer of internationally recognized statehood, even if it falls short of all the territory they had sought. Hundreds of groups seek statehood, and some - like the Kurds - seem to deserve it. But almost none get it.
    
For Palestinian leaders to reject such an offer of statehood from a U.S. administration best poised to deliver it - along with $50 billion in promised international investment in a new Palestinian state - shows that the Palestinians and their allies still see undermining Israel as their primary goal.
    
The U.S. plan also crucially inverts the paradigm in which the Palestinians keep getting offered more for saying "no." In the new plan, if the Palestinians do not agree to the peace deal - and do not meet minimal conditions - Israel can proceed to secure its interests without them.
The writer, a professor and director of the Center for International Law in the Middle East at George Mason University Law School, is also a scholar at the Kohelet Policy Forum in Jerusalem.
(Fox News)
*

UPDATES:

Fatah's official Facebook page had this lovely ditty in response to the deal

 

 

See Jared Kushner's PowerPoint Presentation HERE