Today’s front-page New York Times report on the Trump/Netanyahu annexation plan barely mentions Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, and includes only one quote from a Palestinian.
President Trump’s plan was labeled the ‘Deal of the Century’ because it was supposed to bring peace and dignity to the people of the Middle East. Instead it does the exact opposite and resurrects apartheid, a racist political system that should have been left in the dustbins of history.
Liberal and centrist American Zionists regard Trump’s plan as an existential threat to “the Jewish democracy.” These Israel supporters say the plan will move Israel toward annexing much of the West Bank, thereby ending any possibility of a two-state solution and leading to a binational state in which Palestinians will demand equal rights.
Ilhan Omar: “This is not a peace plan. It is theft.”
Nancy Pelosi: “There are some areas of common ground here.”
The split over Israel in the Democratic Party has been on full display.
Trump’s plan, according to a “conceptual map” the administration released, would see Israel’s annexation of the Jordan Valley, the areas around the Dead Sea that are currently in the West Bank, and the ‘E1’ area between Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The U.S. mainstream media should be calling it the Mideast “peace plan,” in quotation marks, instead of accepting the Trump/Netanyahu description as truthful. But of course the New York Times quotes an Israel lobbyist high in its story.
Tareq Baconi writes that Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ is not a peace deal, but an Israeli domestic political ploy that represents a battle within Israel’s right over how sovereignty should be asserted in the West Bank. Meanwhile, Palestinians are again witnessing nothing short of the reconfiguration of international plans to sustain their dispossession.
While the details of the long-awaited “Deal of the Century” have largely been left up to speculation, it is largely understood that the deal will be heavily tilted in Israel’s favor.
Donald Trump has a political motive to release his unbalanced “peace plan”: His biggest donors the Adelsons want it out before anyone else gets into the White House. But only Dan Raviv of Israeli broadcaster i24 News will say so.
US President Donald Trump is set to release his long-awaited “deal of the century” peace plan in the coming days. It is expected the plan will extend Israeli sovereignty to settlements in the West Bank, in addition to annexing the Jordan Valley.