What the Trump peace plan cannot accomplish - by Jonathan Tobin

The economic vision for the Palestinians isn’t new and won’t work. But the problem isn’t the plan. It’s that its intended beneficiaries have other priorities. 

Jonathan Tobin..
JNS.org..
24 June '19..

When the Trump administration released the economic portion of its Middle East peace plan last week, the avalanche of criticism was immediate and harsh. Even though the president’s foreign-policy team couched the plan as a “vision” of peace rather than an intricate blueprint, its critics weren’t wrong in pointing out that there was little in it that was new, and that its chances of success were nil.

Yet in analyzing the effort, it’s important to note that there’s a difference saying that the plan won’t succeed and saying that putting it forth was the wrong thing to do. That’s because the problem with it isn’t the content, but the context. An effort to shift the focus from a push on Israeli concessions, which are never enough to satisfy the Palestinians, to one in which Palestinian society could be transformed—economically and hopefully peaceably—was long overdue. But as long as the intended beneficiaries aren’t interested in such programs, the “ultimate deal” is simply not going to happen under any circumstances.

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Jonathan S. Tobin is the Editor-in-Chief of JNS — Jewish News Syndicate. He is also a contributing writer for National Review and a columnist for the New York Post, Haaretz and other publications.