Published: 11 January 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
We support an Israel that promised in its Declaration of Establishment of the State to be a democratic state for all its citizens and we support the right of Israelis to a safe and secure future. We also recognise that the establishment of Israel, and ensuing wars, have caused on-going suffering, including for many non-Jews living west of the Jordan, and we support the right of those who now identify as the Palestinian people to freedom and collective self-determination.
We therefore condemn president Trump’s so-called peace plan.
This is NOT a plan that will lead to peace.
It gives unquestioning priority to the most exaggerated assertions of Israeli extremists about Israel’s security needs and ignores the warnings of many high-ranking officers in Israel’s intelligence and defence establishments about serious threats posed by the Trump plan itself.
It in effect assents to unilateral Israeli annexation of all West Bank settlements and the Jordan Valley, ignoring the prohibition of acquisition of territory by force under modern international law and provisions of many Security Council resolutions that are legally binding on Israel under Article 25 of the UN Charter.
Its reference to two states is rendered hollow by its actual stipulations.
- The Palestinian state it envisages would consist of a patchwork of disconnected islands of territory and lack key aspects of sovereignty, giving Israel for all time control of its external borders and security and the ability to continue to control the movement of its citizens.
- Areas of East Jerusalem overwhelmingly populated by non-citizen Palestinians are excluded from the proposed Palestinian capital in Jerusalem.
- Equal and genuine recognition is not given to Palestinians’ legitimate historical claims to land and nationhood of their people, including those who became refugees, with the same right to some negotiated form of recognition and compensation as Jewish refugees from Arab lands.
- It countenances the transfer to a Palestinian state of some Israeli cities predominantly inhabited by Arabs and Palestinians, which utterly disrespects the status and rights of those people as non-Jewish citizens of Israel, breaches express assurances given in Israel’s Declaration of Establishment of the State and is discriminatory and racist.
A peace treaty based on the pre-967 war ‘Green Line’, with agreed land swaps – which remains the official Palestinian goal – would mean Palestinian recognition of the principle of partition and of the territorial gains made by Israel during the 1948-49 war.
The plan announced in Washington threatens to deliver a fatal blow to this approach. By endorsing unilateral annexation by Israel of large portions of the West Bank and the creation of a series of disjointed Palestinian cantons, dominated inside and out by Israel, the Trump plan – if implemented – would make a just and viable two-state solution completely impossible. The plan has been rejected by the Palestinians and by all members of the Arab League, including those who were present at its announcement.
If Israel declares sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and every single one of the scattered 121 West Bank settlements, the Palestinian people, already chafing over having to accept only 22 percent of historic Palestine as part of a two-state deal, are more than likely to conclude that their two-state strategy is dead.
This is not a true peace plan. It is heavily biased in favour of Israeli extreme right-wing assertions and demands and was announced at a time and in a way clearly intended to serve the personal and electoral interests of an impeached US president and an Israeli prime minister under indictment for criminal conduct.
We support, encourage and promote any pathway freely negotiated by Israelis and Palestinians that can lead to the just, equitable and practical fulfilment of the rights of both peoples.
