Published: 13 February 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
With Israeli elections scheduled for March 2, and American elections coming up in November, it would appear that publication of the American administration’s long-awaited peace plan was, at least in part, intended to divert attention from the legal proceedings and promote both Trump’s and Netanyahu’s re-election campaigns.
Based on the plan, Trump would be able to present himself as a creative and dynamic peacemaker, who, in the first change in American foreign policy towards the conflict since President Lyndon B. Johnson in the late 1960s, was abandoning concepts such as “land for peace” and presenting an economically-driven deal.
And Netanyahu would be able to present himself as the once-in-a-lifetime statesman who was able to make it happen. Trump would play to his Jewish and Evangelical base, and Netanyahu would reinforce his support among his right-wing base.
But the plan, which had no input from the Palestinians, was so obviously tilted towards Netanyahu’s right wing policies, that it had no realistic chances of being implemented. As New York Times columnist David Sanger wrote, “the plan unveiled by President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sounds more like a road map for their own futures than for the Middle East.”
Netanyahu followed that map enthusiastically. “Today, I depart for Washington to stand alongside an American president who is bringing a plan that, I believe, promotes our most essential interests,” he told reporters as he boarded the plane to meet with Trump. “Together with him, we will make history.”
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Yet now, less than a month after it was presented, it is clear that the Trump plan is hardly the game-changer that Netanyahu was hoping for – and may even have created negative consequences that neither Trump nor Netanyahu foresaw.
Ignoring the parts of the plan that were not to his, or his constituencies’ liking, which include the eventual establishment of a Palestinian State, Netanyahu accentuated what, for him, was the positive: Trump’s support for an undivided Jerusalem as Israel’s capital (with the establishment of an insignificant Palestinian capital in a suburb) and recognition of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
By January 29, an emboldened Netanyahu, hoping to galvanise his electoral base, had already announced that he would bring up the possibility of annexation of parts of the West Bank at the upcoming cabinet meeting.
An emboldened Netanyahu announced he would bring up the possibility of annexation at the next cabinet meeting. This is not what Trump expected. The White House began sending out messages that immediate annexation was not part of the plan.
But despite their long-standing and mutually helpful bromance, this is not what Trump and his administration had expected. The White House and State Department began sending out messages that immediate annexation was not part of the plan, intimating that Netanyahu hadn’t even coordinated his intentions with them.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said "unilateral action" by Israel to annex parts of the West Bank ahead of the completion of a process highlighted in the Trump administration's Mideast peace plan would result in the withdrawal of American support for Israeli sovereignty on West Bank settlements
And in an interview with Gzero media, a website focused on global affairs, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, and the key author of the plan, stated that, “the hope is that they [the Israelis] will wait until after the election and we’ll work with them to try to come up with something.”
Asked directly if the Trump administration would support a unilateral Israeli annexation before the Israeli elections, Kushner replied definitively. “No. What the administration is doing is we’ve agreed with them on forming a technical team to start studying taking the conceptual map...So I think that [Netanyahu] will hopefully wait...I think we’d need an Israeli government in place in order to move forward.”
Nor did the plan bring the hoped-for electoral results. No fewer than six election polls published within 48 hours after the plan’s release showed no significant change in the predicted distribution of Knesset seats, with Netanyahu still lacking a majority for Likud and the religious parties that support him.
But at the same time, the “Deal of the Century” has provided an opportunity for Netanyahu’s opponents to outflank him from the right.
Noting that Netanyahu had not commented on Trump’s plan for a Palestinian state, Ayelet Shaked added, 'We will never support a plan that includes a Palestinian state.'
Right-wing party Yamina leader and former justice minister Ayelet Shaked, seemingly hoping to pull in votes from Netanyahu’s base, pointedly said in an interview that the “brave step” would be to apply Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank. “Our job is to push Netanyahu to do it now even if it doesn’t match all the voices within the [US] administration.”
Further noting that Netanyahu had not commented on Trump’s plan for a Palestinian state, she added, “We will never support a plan that includes a Palestinian state."
Writing in the Jewish News Syndicate, right-wing columnist Caroline Glick argued that the Netanyahu government should pass a government decision to apply Israeli law to all Israeli cities, towns, and villages in the West Bank without waiting for US approval.
“If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fails to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Judea and Samaria communities before the election, not only will he almost certainly lose the elections, his defeat will bury Trump’s peace plan and harm Trump’s re-elections chances,” she warned.
Settler leader David Alhaini told Haaretz that after Trump had published the conceptual map, the settlement leadership had prepared an alternate map that does not include a Palestinian state. Netanyahu, he said, has refused to see it.
And just hours after the discussion of the plan at the cabinet meeting was cancelled, Defence Minister and Yamina Party head Naftali Bennett told an audience at the Institute for National Security Studies, “history knocked on our door and granted us a one-time opportunity to apply Israeli law on all of the settlements...it’s an opportunity that will pass if not grasped and implemented.”
In a telling gesture, settlers welcomed Netanyahu’s arch nemesis, Avigdor Lieberman, to Havat Gilad, a strongly ideological settlement, where Lieberman declared that Netanyahu should “stop telling stories and extend sovereignty over Israeli settlements immediately.”
Even more paradoxically and inadvertently, the proposal, included in the plan, to subject Arab towns within Israel to the Palestinian Authority” could galvanise Arab voters, and further damage Netanyahu’s chances to gain a majority in the elections, which are based on proportional representation.
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And so election rhetoric has crawled back to its previous positions, as Netanyahu continues to present the elections as a campaign for the Israel’s soul, a battle against deep state and the corrupt legal systems that have persecuted him, and to delegitimise the left and the Arabs, while the centre and left continue to run an essentially “anybody-but-Netanyahu” campaign.
The issue of the indictments is slowly creeping back in. On February 11, 120 professors and recipients of the Israel Prize, Israel’s highest civil honour, sent a letter to Israeli president Reuven Rivlin and all 120 members of Knesset asking them to refrain from giving Netanyahu the mandate to form a government, even if his party receives the largest number of votes, because, they write, “he is facing serious criminal charges”.
These elections are most notable for their sleepiness, which stems from voter fatigue. The unusually cold and stormy weather, a few run-of-the-mill local corruption scandals, and the corona virus all attract more daily headlines than unrequited peace deals or this, the third election campaign in less than a year.
Cartoon: Avi Katz
