Jared Kushner has excluded the Palestinians and produced a one-state solution couched in two-state lingo
President Trump's recently announced peace deal might be dead on arrival, but it may still create facts on the ground that make the two-state solution impossible. Jen talks to Marwan Muasher about what Jared Kushner's "deal of the century" means for Israel, Palestine, and the United States.
Jen Psaki: 00:00 I'm Jen Psaki, welcome to The World Unpacked.
News Audio: 00:08 It has been an elusive goal for decades to end generations of conflict in the Middle East. The deal of the century. The deal of the century. Will Trump's deal of the century actually bring peace to the Middle East? Together we can bring about a new dawn in the Middle East. Israel will apply its laws to the Jordan Valley, to all the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and to other areas that your plan designates as part of Israel. Palestinian authority. President Mahmoud Abbas rejected it outright. [Arabic] After the nonsense that we heard today, we say 1000 times, no, no, no to the deal of the century.
Jen Psaki: 00:49 Marwan Muasher is the former foreign minister and former deputy prime minister to Jordan and now a colleague at the Carnegie Endowment. He's also a veteran of many rounds of Israel-Palestine peace talks. And we've talked about this issue before, Marwan, it turns out it continues to be a hot topic in the world, but just earlier this week there was a proposal put out, or the deal of the century as it was being framed by the Trump administration, of what a peace plan might look like. What did we learn from that unveiling?
Marwan Muasher: 01:21 That it's not the deal of the century, it's more like a farce, I would say. Let's look at the details. So the plan offers Israel immediately annexation of the Jordan Valley, annexation of all of Jerusalem, all the settlement blocs. They get to get all of this now. And if the Palestinians accept all of this, then they are offered to negotiate over the rest of the West Bank.
Marwan Muasher: 01:47 And you know, somehow it is called the deal of the century. It's precisely like going to a wedding where the bride is not there, I mean, it was an odd scene to say the least yesterday to see a president - Prime Minister Netanyahu and that's it. Well, if you're having a deal of the century, then you would assume that the other party, the Palestinians would be there. The fact that they were not there says, you know, a lot about a plan that just doesn't offer the Palestinians even the minimum of any viable solution to the conflict.
Jen Psaki: 02:25 And I want to just dive into some of the pieces you've referenced because you've lived through this. You can shorthand what a peace deal would look like. Let's, let's walk through them. So one of the pieces you referenced was kind of the territory and settlement blocks. Tell us a little bit more about what that is and why that's so important to the Palestinians.
Marwan Muasher: 02:46 The very concept behind the two state solution is separation of the two communities. Today you have 650,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They constitute about 20% of the population of the West Bank. Any viable solution, if you go back, let's say to the Clinton parameters, then they talked about a territory in most of the West Bank and Gaza, you're talking 97, 98% with land swaps between the two sides to amount for, you know, small changes here in there, you're talking about evacuation of all the sett- or at least most of the settlement blocs, those that are not on the green line between the two sides. And you're talking about a shared Jerusalem in which the city remains open to all, but it will be shared as both the capital of the Palestinians and the capital of the Israelis. And of course you're talking about also an agreed solution to the refugee problem. This plan takes all of this off the negotiations. So no right of return, no evacuation of settlers, annexation of 30% of the West Bank, and somehow expects that the Palestinians will just go along.
Jen Psaki: 04:06 And was there anything in hearing and listening to this presentation yesterday that would be a give by the Israelis? Would they be giving anything up in these discussions?
Marwan Muasher: 04:17 Nothing. The Israelis, basically in this plan, got everything and they got it now and the Palestinians got nothing.
Jen Psaki: 04:24 Part of this was presented as a deal that was done. And as you referenced, I mean, when we saw the response from Abbas and other leaders was, this is a terrible deal. There's nowhere to go from here. Who were they negotiating with? Was there somebody who was agreeing to anything from the Palestinian side?
Marwan Muasher: 04:44 They're basically negotiating with themselves. I mean, truly, I don't say this lightly. There is no country in the international community, forget the Arab world, there's no country in the international community that can accept such a plan because it's so lopsided. It's so biased in support of one side over the other that there is simply no way that the Palestinians can accept it. This is not a two-state plan. This is a one-state solution couched in state lingo. That's what it is.
Jen Psaki: 05:18 Now, one of the elections that's coming up that everybody isn't fully paying attention to, maybe they are after yesterday, is the Israeli election coming up in March and both Netanyahu and his opponent Benny Gantz came and met with President Trump, presumably because it's good for their own politics, right? Or why would they both come?
Marwan Muasher: 05:38 Of course. I mean, again,the scene yesterday was strange. You know, you have a president who is impeached, talking to a prime minister who is indicted and accusing the other side of corruption and bad governance. I mean, there's something wrong with that picture. But for sure, the two sides came, in order to help them with the elections. If Israel goes ahead and annexes, for example, the Jordan Valley or the settlement blocs, this is not going to be accepted by almost any country on earth other than the United States.
Jen Psaki: 06:19 And I asked that question because Trump is not popular most places in the world, but he's quite popular in Israel. So for these two competing leaders, it's good to stand with him.
Marwan Muasher: 06:33 Yes, I mean the timing of the plan is suspicious at best. Why didn't the plan wait until the result of the Israeli elections when we would know which government to deal with? The timing of the plan suggests that Mr. Netanyahu wants to use that plan to bolster his chances and that Mr. Trump also is trying to support Netanyahu through doing this. Netanyahu has been indicted yesterday. There is no way to tell whether he will even remain, not just at the head of the government, but whether he will remain in politics, if he goes to prison. So the whole timing is suspicious. And just because the United States announces the plan doesn't mean that it is going to be a done deal. You know, you're still dealing with an overwhelming international law resolutions. You're dealing with the international community that will simply not accept this.
Jen Psaki: 07:46 And just so people understand, and I know that you touched on this, is there anything that the Israeli government, whoever is leading it, can do to implement this "plan" by themselves without agreement from the other side?
Marwan Muasher: 07:59 Well, I think there is a danger that at least they can annex the Jordan Valley. They can annex the settlement blocs. And if they do nothing else, they would have created facts on the ground being the power on the ground. That will be difficult to reverse should any future U.S. Administration come, even if it wants to. That's the danger behind the plan. But let me say this, what this plan has actually done is killed the two-state solution if it was not dead already. What that means is we are dealing today with a one-state reality. A one state reality in which the Palestinians already are a majority. There are more Palestinians today in areas in under Israel's control than there are Israelis, or Israeli Jews let's say. If the United States and Israel hope to be able to create facts on the ground, it's not clear that these facts are going to be in the favor of Israel in the future or that of the United States. We are dealing with a one-state reality in which we either have an apartheid system or Palestinians are going to ask for equal rights in this state they live in. If they cannot have their own state as looks to be the case. That is the reality that Israel and the United States will have to face in the future if there isn't a two state solution.
Jen Psaki: 09:40 And when we come back, we'll talk a little bit about how we got here.
Jen Psaki: 09:55 Marwan is a veteran of many rounds of peace talks, and I've sat through a few on my own as well. But how has the Trump administration approached these talks in a different way from the past?
Marwan Muasher: 10:08 Well, they've approached this through, first, not negotiating or helping negotiate between the two sides. So the Palestinians are completely out of the picture. All the negotiations, all the discussions are done with one side and one side only, which is the Israelis. They are approaching this through breaching international law that they themselves, that the United States itself has agreed to. So resolutions like 242, 338, all the previous positions of the United States regarding the conflict have been put aside. Simply put aside. And this administration is trying to create facts on the ground by brute force, which is not going to work, obviously, I mean the Palestinians have not left the land. They are not going to sign on to any plan that does not meet the minimum requirements. And what we are seeing in the West Bank today and Gaza is a shift among the new generation of Palestinians from focusing on the shape of a solution to actually starting to talk about a rights-based approach. If they cannot get their own state, then the next best thing for them is to, as I said before, call for equal rights within the state they live in. And that, of course, in the long term is going to be anathema to Israel.
Jen Psaki: 11:48 So, not to put too fine a point on kind of how you just laid that out, but there's a real question here as to whether the U.S. has any helpful role to play in negotiations between two parties in the region. But how it traditionally played a role was going back and forth between parties who didn't talk to each other and wouldn't sit in a room and talk to each other. And that was historically how it went, obviously never successfully, completely, but that was not a part of this. So I wanted to ask you just about, not that you're a U.S. political expert, you're an expert on many other things, but there is some politics on this side of the globe as well. In that support for Israel used to be pretty universal and pretty bipartisan in the U.S. And now there's been some rifts, a lot of them along partisan lines, not to oversimplify. How has that been digested in the region? Does it matter? What do people see as the impact of that?
Marwan Muasher: 12:56 Well, there's certainly a shift. You have a number of Democratic presidential candidates, for example, that have not gone to the APAC conference this year, which is probably a first. The American Jewish community, I would say, is extremely alarmed by the death of the two-state solution for the reasons that I outlined before. Israel is going to cease to be, even by its own definition, a Jewish and democratic state if there is no two-state solution. The international community, which has looked the other way sometimes about Israeli violations in the hope that there will be a two-state solution, will not be able to look the other way if we end up with a formalized apartheid system. So yes, these are changes that are happening in the United States. Whether they will be enough to resurrect a two-state solution I'm not sure. You know, we're dealing with a situation in which I keep saying two sides are arguing over a piece of pizza while one of them is eating it. It doesn't work.
Jen Psaki: 14:09 [Laughter.] You have a lot of good analogies. When we come back, we'll talk about where we go from here.
Jen Psaki: 14:16 So, Marwan, you have long before this written that the two-state solution is really over, or there wasn't really a path forward. Ss there a role that the United States can play moving forward, maybe post-Trump, that would be useful in resolving this decades if not longer old conflict?
Marwan Muasher: 14:46 There are things that can be reversed. There are things that cannot reversed, I think, in any post-Trump U.S. administration. The decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem, for example, probably will never be reversed. Even if the United States acknowledged the annexation of Israel, of the Jordan Valley, it's going to be difficult for any post-Trump administration to reverse it. So I'm afraid that regardless of a future U.S. Administration, I'm afraid that facts have been created on the ground that will make the resurrection of a two-state solution almost impossible. We are in a different mindset today and it's a mindset that talks about the one-state reality. It might not be a solution, but it already is a reality.
Jen Psaki: 15:37 And are there other third party countries or leaders or bodies that could play a constructive role?
Marwan Muasher: 15:47 I mean, of course, the international community still adheres to international law and all, but once again, I struggle to see how anybody can play a positive role now that the two-state solution sort of has been killed. What I can see is that the Palestinians will shift to a rights -based approach and that will create its own dynamics in the future. But the era of neat solutions for this conflict is over.
Jen Psaki: 16:26 Tell us a little bit more what a rights-based approach means. What does it mean for the Palestinians? What does it mean for Israel? How would it play out?
Marwan Muasher: 16:33 So I'm a Palestinian living in the West bank or Gaza. I'm told explicitly and in no unclear terms that there is no way I'm going to get my own state, but I'm still living under occupation. So what are the options that are open to me if I'm living under occupation and I have no chance of ending that occupation and having my own state? The options are, I either live in an apartheid system indefinitely or I start calling for equal rights. If Israel doesn't want to end the occupation, it might as well. What justification does Israel have for maintaining an occupation indefinitely and denying people equal rights? It's not a justification that Israel can give. It's not a justification that the international community can give. And I think more and more Palestinians are coming to that realization today, not because they prefer it as the outcome of the conflict, but because there is simply no other option left to them other than to just sit and die and accept an occupation indefinitely, which of course, you know, no community will do.
Jen Psaki: 17:49 And before I let you go, I just wanted to ask you about, and I think I've asked you this before, but about the impact of leadership, of the Palestinians as well as in Israel. Obviously Abbas will not be there forever, just by nature, and Prime Minister Netanyahu may not be there six weeks from now. What impact would a change in leadership on either or both sides have, or would it have an impact on this?
Marwan Muasher: 18:18 Well, leaders are important. I mean, I think Mr. Netanyahu has done a lot of damage to the peace process. But leadership alone cannot substitute for facts on the ground. If Mr. Abass goes, or once he goes, it is even a question of whether the whole PA will remain. The whole Palestinian Authority was established for one reason only, which is to help in the transition period towards ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state. If a Palestinian state becomes impossible, there is no justification for the Palestinian Authority even to remain. So we are in a new mindset, we are in a new situation totally, that we are in a post-Oslo era, basically.
Jen Psaki: 19:07 Marwan Muasher, thank you as always for joining us on The World Unpacked.
Marwan Muasher: 19:11 Thank you.
Jen Psaki: 19:16 Thanks for listening to the World Unpacked, which is produced by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. You can find us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information and to subscribe, you can find us at worldunpacked.com. Don't forget to rate the show. It helps other people find us. Our audio engineer is Tim Martin and our executive producer is Lauren Dueck.