What’s in Trump’s ‘Middle East peace plan’?

More than two years after he first proposed a plan to revive the long-moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process, US President Donald Trump, on Tuesday, released details of his proposal to solve a conflict that has frustrated peacemakers for decades.

What are the key issues?

* The status of Jerusalem, including historical sites sacred to Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

* Establishing mutually agreed borders.

* Finding security arrangements to satisfy Israeli fears of attacks by Palestinians and hostile neighbours.

* The Palestinian demand for statehood in territory — the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem — captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War.

* Finding a solution to the plight of millions of Palestinian refugees.

* Arrangements to share natural resources, such as water.

* Palestinian demands that Israel remove its settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. More than 4,00,000 Israelis now live among about 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank, with a further 2,00,000 settlers in East Jerusalem.

What does the plan say?

Under Trump's proposals, the United States will recognise Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The White House released a statement immediately after Trump’s televised address outlining the main points:

* A map to set out borders for “a realistic two-state solution, offering a viable path to Palestinian statehood.”

* A demilitarised Palestinian state to live peacefully alongside Israel, but with strict conditions that Palestinians are likely to balk at.

* Israel agreed to a four-year “land freeze” to secure the possibility of a two-state solution. But a senior Israeli official later played down the notion of a settlement freeze.

* The status quo to be preserved at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif complex — which lies in the eastern part of the city captured by Israel in a 1967 war. Israel to “continue to safeguard” Jerusalem’s holy sites and to guarantee freedom of worship to Jews, Christians, Muslims and other faiths.

* Jerusalem to stay united and remain the capital of Israel.

* The capital of the State of Palestine to include areas of East Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said later the capital would be in Abu Dis, which lies 1.6 km east of Jerusalem's Old City.

* An earlier economic part of the plan announced last June called for a $50 billion investment fund to boost the Palestinian and neighbouring Arab state economies.

Why was it released now?

Critics say both Trump and Netanyahu are intent on diverting attention away from domestic troubles. Trump has been impeached and is on trial in the US Senate, while Netanyahu was indicted on corruption charges in November. Both deny wrongdoing.

They also face re-election campaigns Netanyahu in March and Trump in November. Netanyahu twice tried and failed to secure a majority in the Israeli parliament last year.

Trump repeatedly delayed the launch of his plan to avoid causing election problems for Netanyahu because of the likelihood that any concessions on settlements or Palestinian statehood would create problems for him among his right-wing voter base.

However, Trump faces his own political clock and could ill-afford to wait for months for Israel to decide its next prime minister, according to a source familiar with the peace team's thinking.

What are its chances?

The last Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014. The enduring obstacles include the expansion of Israeli settlements on occupied land over decades, and generations of mutual suspicion.

In November, the US reversed decades of policy when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington no longer regarded Israeli settlements in the West Bank as a breach of international law. Palestinians, and most of the international community, view the settlements as illegal under international law. Israel disputes that claim.

The past two decades have also seen the rise to power in Gaza of the armed Islamist movement Hamas, which is formally committed to Israel’s destruction and is in the midst of a decades-long power struggle with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas.

What was the reaction?

Speaking after Trump in Washington, Netanyahu described the announcement as “a historic day”. He compared Trump's plan to US President Harry Truman's 1948 recognition of the state of Israel.

“On this day, you became the first world leader to recognise Israel's sovereignty over areas in Judea and Samaria that are vital to our security and central to our heritage,” he added, using the Biblical names for the West Bank.

Abbas called Trump's plan the “slap of the century”.

“I say to Trump and Netanyahu: Jerusalem is not for sale, all our rights are not for sale and are not for bargain. And your deal, the conspiracy, will not pass,” Abbas said in a televised address in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The Islamist militant group Hamas, whose stronghold is in Gaza, was scathing.“Trump’s statement is aggressive and it will spark a lot of anger,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters . “Trump’s statement about Jerusalem is nonsense and Jerusalem will always be a land for the Palestinians.”

The Palestinian leadership has argued that Washington can no longer be regarded as a mediator after a series of Trump decisions that delighted Israel but infuriated Palestinians. Those included recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, moving the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, and slashing hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.

The cuts were widely seen as a means of pressuring the Palestinian leadership to come back to the negotiating table. So far, that has failed.

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