‘Trump deal meant to axe final status issues': Expert

ANKARA

The so-called “deal of the century” floated by U.S. President Donald Trump for the Middle East is actually aimed to preempt the Palestinians’ justified right to return and slam the door on all final status issues of the dispute, according to an expert in the region.

If implemented, this “steal of the century” will only trigger more resistance not from only Palestinians but from the entire region, he added.

“The Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] in the presence of Yasser Arafat had signed what was called the [1993] Olso accords, following which they were supposed to negotiate certain conditions what they're called final status issues,” said Sami A. Al-Arian, director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) based in Istanbul, Turkey.

“These final status issues were supposed to have ended in 1999, yet we've [passed] over 20 years now, and they haven't been settled.

So what the Trump administration is trying is to do away with the final status issues,” said Al-Arian, who also serves as Public Affairs professor at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University (IZU), where the center is located.

Trump has invited Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief political rival Benny Gantz to Washington on Tuesday for a reported rollout of the so-called "deal of the century."

Under the Oslo accords, Al-Arian said, Arafat and his party signed away 78% of historical Palestine, with only the remaining 22% “probably” promised to the Palestinian state.

Jerusalem and exiled Palestinians

Al-Arian said that the first of these sticky final status issues concerns the status of the flashpoint city of Jerusalem.

“Jerusalem was supposed to be both Israeli and Palestinian, according to the Oslo accords,” he explained.

“So, going from that position whereby Palestinians would have sovereignty over the holy places, would have the capital in Jerusalem, Trump declared that Jerusalem is the capital -- and he meant both east and west -- that this would be, the eternal, so-called eternal capital of Israel and therefore, Palestinians will have no rights, no sovereignty, and no recourse.”

The second issue concerns the issue of refugees and their right to return, said Al-Arian, a Palestinian himself.

“This was part of that negotiation, or final status negotiation,” he said.

There are about 7 million Palestinians outside Palestine today, both Palestinians who were exiled as well as their descendants across the world in about 80 countries.

However, last August Trump cut off the funds to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), a body that has been in existence since the early 1950s to help the Palestinian refugees.

“Because the U.S. used to give 25% of its budget, he cut off these budgets completely and he's trying to shut it down,” Al-Arian explained.

Trump “declared that there are only 30,000 Palestinian refugees, even falling short of what Israel at one point said that they were willing to take 120,000 back over a dozen years ago or so.”


Attack on ‘right to return’

Al-Arian said that Trump and his so-called deal of the century are trying “to preempt that right of return of Palestinians and final status negotiations.”

This would, he said, “deny the Palestinians the right to go back to their land of their ancestors, land that they lived in for thousands of years. Yet any Jew in the world today, whoever he is truly Jew or not, can simply declare that he is a Jew and can go to Israel and receive citizenship and all kinds of support.”

‘Subjects’ with no sovereignty

The third issue under the so-called final status issues, “which the steal of the century is trying to do away with,” he said, is the issue of borders and sovereignty.

“The whole negotiation was predicated on the so-called two-state solution, one state for Israelis and one state for the Palestinians.

“But during these 25-plus years of negotiations, the Israelis increased the number of people living there illegally, under international law,” the “colonists in colonies, so-called settlements,” he said.

“The number went from about 140,000 in 1993, when the Oslo accord was signed, and today, which is almost 800,000, and they have been placed strategically, so that Palestinians will not have a continuous state.

“So the issue of borders became extremely murky, and became untenable unless you have massive withdrawal from the Palestinian territories that were occupied in 1967,” he explained.

He said in this situation one “cannot have a two-state solution; they will have no sovereignty and no borders.”

So, in effect, he added, “you end up with a Palestinian canton just like South Africa. They are just recognized as people with all kinds of pressure, the Israeli right is hoping that somehow, they will be either moved towards maybe the border to Jordon or at least forced to emigrate, or at least live as subservient as not even second-class citizens, but as subjects who have no rights whatsoever.”


Acceptance of Israel

“The other part was supposed to be the acceptance of Israel; once you have a two-state solution, there will be the acceptance of Israel throughout the region as what is called the normalization process,” said Al-Arian.

“So, part of also the ‘steal of the century’ is trying to impose some kind of acceptance of the not only state but also the people of the region of Israel as a state and as also an accepted member of those states who are trying to confront common threats.”


Backlash

Al-Arian said he expects a “huge backlash" against this plan.

“And that the result is going to be not only at the regional level, but also the international level. And I think in the end, this is going to propel people to accelerate the resistance.

And I believe that with the death of the two-state solution, this is going, in the upcoming year, to affect the whole regional map.