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Commentators already have noted that the map goes nowhere near showing the archipelago effect in reality, and shows Palestinian territory to be much more coherent than it would be on the ground.

A US President facing impeachment and an Israeli Prime Minister indicted for corruption, leading an interim minority government, are announce a plan to solve the conflict with the Palestinians, without any Palestinian present.

Flanked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but no Palestinian leader, President Donald Trump unveiled “a vision for peace” in the Middle East on Tuesday which permits Israel to annex much of the occupied West Bank immediately, offering the Palestinians only local control in isolated Bantustans surrounded by Israeli territory.

The release of the 180-page plan  — which was drafted by aides to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and an old family friend of Netanyahu — was staged as a celebration, and acted as a dual campaign rally, with the American president and the Israeli prime minister boasting of all they had achieved for Israel to a room filled with far-right supporters of the Jewish state, including Sheldon Adelson, the Republican and Likud megadonor who spent millions of dollars to elect both leaders.

Trump, who intervened in a previous Israeli election campaigns on Netanyahu’s behalf — by recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights last year — gave the embattled prime minister a podium at the White House to detail conditions imposed on the Palestinians which sounded like terms of surrender.

To start with, Netanyahu said, the Palestinians would be required to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, cede the entire Jordan Valley, disarm Hamas, and abandon the hope for both the return of refugees who fled homes in what is now Israel and for a capital in Jerusalem’s Old City.

While Trump said that Palestinians could eventually have a capital in Jerusalem, the plan suggested that this would be outside of the city, in a neighborhood close to, but not in the city, as the Telegraph correspondent Raf Sanchez pointed out.

Within hours of the plan’s release, Netanyahu said that his government would move on Sunday to formally annex the 131 Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank, all of which are illegal under international law, as well as the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea. The plan’s map of the newly expanded Greater Israel, and the fragmented Palestinian enclaves, were shared on Twitter by Trump.

In his remarks, Trump said that Netanyahu had “authorized the release of a conceptual map” showing the contours of the land to be annexed, and their two governments would soon form a joint committee “to convert the conceptual map into a more detailed and calibrated rendering so that recognition can be immediately achieved.”

Because the Israeli settlement blocs, which are home to more than 400,000 settlers, are stitched together with a network of roads and checkpoints that restrict the freedom of movement of Palestinians, the territory Trump said his plan “allocated” for a future Palestinian state would exist only as a series of enclaves inside Israel.

As Ben Silverstein of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington, explained, the “conceptual map” included in the plan gave an “appearance of contiguity” that facts on the ground would make impossible.

 

Trump’s plan was denounced by both Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, among the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination to challenge Trump for the presidency. While Sanders called the plan “unacceptable,” Warren went further, promising to “oppose unilateral annexation in any form — and reverse any policy that supports it.”

”Trump’s ‘peace plan’ is a rubber stamp for annexation and offers no chance for a real Palestinian state. Releasing a plan without negotiating with Palestinians isn’t diplomacy, it’s a sham. I will oppose unilateral annexation in any form—and reverse any policy that supports it.”

Header: Sheldon Adelson, a Republican and Likud megadonor who helped elect both President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, watched the two men announce a plan that permits Israel to annex much of the occupied West Bank at the White House on Tuesday. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Source (read the full article): The Intercept