Times of Israel Blog..
30 June '19..
When you read Peace to Prosperity, the American economic plan to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the first question that comes to mind is why are Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority (PA)/Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) rejecting it?
Setting the goals and path to the $50 billion investment, the plan, which is clearly rooted in the basic paradigms of the Oslo Accords, would appear to give the Palestinians almost everything they want.
Far from being a solely “economic” vision for the development of Palestine, Peace to Prosperity incorporates themes of a purely political nature, favorable to the Palestinian narrative and detrimental to Israel’s.
The plan refers repeatedly to the area Israel seized in the Six Day War from the Jordanians as “the West Bank” – i.e., the term coined by the Jordanians, and adopted by the Palestinians, for the area of land that Israel refers to as Judea and Samaria. It continues to discuss the need and practicalities of physically connecting the West Bank to the Gaza Strip in order to allow the free movement of Palestinians and goods between the two areas.
Going further than the Oslo Accords, the plan assumes independent Palestinian control over the border crossings of the Palestinian state, granting the Palestinians the ability to gather import taxes. At present, Israel controls the external border crossings and collects all the import taxes, which are then transferred to the PA.
Referring to Palestinian development in the West Bank, the plan integrally requires the extension of the Palestinian control beyond the areas they govern today into the areas which are solely governed by Israel. These development plans include the laying of new roads and the building of both industrial areas and residential housing.
Additional to these and other plans, Peace to Prosperity makes one major factual claim that represents the US adoption of the PA/PLO narrative. Discussing the development of the Palestinian manufacturing industry, the plan refers to “Palestinian craftsmanship” that has been in demand for “hundreds of years.” Critics of this claim would refer the authors of the plan to the words of Palestinian historian Abd Al-Ghani Salameh, as exposed by Palestinian Media Watch, who said that at the time of the Balfour Declaration – i.e., 1917, just over 100 years ago – “there was nothing called a Palestinian people.”
Since the plan adopts Palestinian terminology and narrative, and is often implicitly critical of Israel, the question remains, why is the Palestinian leadership rejecting it?
(Continue to Full Column)
Lt. Col. (res) Maurice Hirsch is the Head of Legal Strategies for Palestinian Media Watch. He served for 19 years in the IDF Military Advocate General Corps. In his last position he served as Director of the Military Prosecution in Judea and Samaria.
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