The U.S.’ newly unveiled plan to mediate the Israel/Palestine conflict appears tailor-made to provoke outrage.
The plan, which Trump deemed the ‘Deal of the Century,’ seeks to codify Israel’s annexation of vast swathes of the West Bank and cement the presence of Israeli settlements deemed illegal under international law. After its release on Jan 28, 2020, media outlets and international organizations called it a ‘con,’ ‘lopsided’ favoring Israel, and dangerous. Commentators have likened its framework to that of South Africa’s apartheid scheme, where Palestinians will be doomed to live as second-class citizens.
The plan itself mandates Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad “unambiguously commit to nonviolence” before they can take part in negotiations; something which is politically unthinkable. In other words, it is written to never be implemented.
The so-called Peace to Prosperity Plan reveals telling aspects of the current U.S.-backed Israeli policy towards Palestine, not as a political territory, but a market to be cornered and captured.
Predictably, Palestinian leaders and the Arab League rejected it outright.
While it is easy to dismiss the plan as an unserious act of diplomatic theater written by bad-faith actors, it is more than that. The economic framework outlined in the plan, which has so far been scarcely covered, reflects an ongoing real-world attempt to exploit and subdue Palestinians.
The so-called Peace to Prosperity Plan reveals telling aspects of the current U.S.-backed Israeli policy towards Palestine, not as a political territory, but a market to be cornered and captured.
Hidden in its small individual tenants include denying Palestinians economic sovereignty, forcing imports and exports to be regulated by Israeli authorities in Israeli-controlled ports and incentivizing companies to ‘invest’ in Palestine by exploiting it as a cheap labor source. Its exclusions also speak volumes: while the plan touts the human capital potential in Palestine, there is no mention of ensuring the protection of Palestinian workers or guaranteeing any measure of workplace safety.
The economic framework outlined in the plan, which has so far been scarcely covered, reflects an ongoing real-world attempt to exploit and subdue Palestinians.
By combining neoliberal governance with a hard-lined military policy, Trump’s peace plan indicates a growing emphasis on prying open Palestine to be hollowed out.
Economic Sovereignty Denied
The plan calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state with a capital ambiguously located in the eastern suburbs of Jerusalem encompassing the far-northern area of Kafr Aqab to the small town of Abu Dis.
The authors of the plan suggest Palestinian leaders may call this new capital zone ‘Al Quds,’ Arabic for Jerusalem, effectively suggesting they re-brand different parts of their country Jerusalem to project the fiction that they indeed control eastern Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the plan warns that dividing Jerusalem represents a clear and present danger to Israel and defends full Israeli sovereignty over the city.
Palestine will, according to the plan, contain areas of the West Bank which are currently not populated by settlements, Gaza, and a splattering of virtually uninhabitable zones in the deserts of southern Israel earmarked as industrial and residential land.
But this Palestine will not have any airports or sea ports.
The only ports they will have limited access to are located in Ashdod and Haifa; both in Israel. “These earmarked port facilities will be used only by [Palestinian] cargo ships,” the plan stipulates.
“The State of Israel will help the State of Palestine establish a fast-track transportation system that will allow the State of Palestine to transport all cargo from the earmarked port facilities to the State of Palestine, subject to the State of Israel’s security considerations,” it furthers. The end clause, ‘subject to the State of Israel’s security considerations,’ means the plan envisages Israeli controllers and security personnel overseeing Palestinian imports and exports, unilaterally drafting rules determining what Palestine can and cannot import and export.
Functionally speaking, this merely codifies what Israel is already doing with regards to the Palestinian economy, where Israel maintains the ability to completely isolate the West Bank and Gaza from the rest of the world. In the event of a flare-up in tensions, Israeli authorities have the power to simply block imports headed for Palestine and stop exports.
This fully cedes Palestine’s economic sovereignty to Israel, making the plan a non-starter for Palestine’s hopes for self-determination.
For airports, the plan calls for the creation of a ‘free trade zone’ between Jordan and Palestine, where goods may be exported from Palestine “using an airport located in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.”
The provisions are collectively aimed not at fostering the creation of a Palestinian state but of formally subordinating Palestinian governance....
The plan leaves open the possibility of Gaza acquiring an airport only for “small aircraft,” as well as the creation of a small island off the coast of Gaza to serve as a sea port. Both schemes, according to the plan, are only available to Palestine after five years of compliance with the plan and are subject to Israeli veto. The port island proposal in particular has been floated by economists for decades, but critics point out it has more potential to isolate Gaza than to integrate it into a global market.
Gaza used to maintain both an airport and a functioning sea port, but both were bombed by the Israeli military, which has also imposed a crippling blockade insulating Gaza.
Additionally, the plan recommends that any future State of Palestine must become a member of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) before it is internationally recognized, effectively forcing the proposed state to acquiesce to a series of austerity-minded monetary policies, which have destabilized the Middle East for decades.
The provisions are collectively aimed not at fostering the creation of a Palestinian state but of formally subordinating Palestinian governance into an Israeli-controlled scheme, a relationship remarkably similar to the status quo.
Exploiting Palestinian Labor
The economic portion of the so-called peace deal was unveiled in June 2019, and it remains virtually unchanged. As a final draft of an economic plan, it is conspicuously thin on details regarding the condition of Palestinian labor, but deploys vaguely aspirational language to brand the deal as a pitch to sell an enterprising startup named Palestine.
Peace to Prosperity promises to build “A Foundation for Growth and Business Investment,” to “Unleash” the economic potential of Palestine and to Empower its people.
“The greatest resource of every nation is its people,” the draft proclaims.
Rather than a blueprint to empower Palestine, this is a way to turbocharge the extraction of its human capital.
While the plan details how it will enable Palestinians to attend universities, engage in study abroad opportunities, gain vocational skills and have access to vital health services, it still relies on an economic model whereby Israel controls the borders and monitors major economic activity. As a company, it will make little sense to establish a presence in Palestine without having significant or even primary ties to Israel.
This means the plan calls for foreign investing in human capital without providing the resources to ensure a functional economic environment within which foreign capital can thrive. As a result, it is likely that companies will ‘invest’ in Palestine by situating their headquarters in Israel, which controls the reins of the Palestinian economy and is comparatively much more globally integrated into the market, while setting up satellite locations and outsourcing its labor needs to Palestine.
Israeli and Palestinian employees for SodaStream (AFP/FILE)
The current business model that most closely embodies this economic investment blueprint is SodaStream, the controversial carbonation company headquartered in Israel that previously relied on the mass labor of Palestinians in Mishor Adumim, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.
In 2014, after a prolonged campaign by the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement to halt global consumption of SodaStream products, the company was embroiled in a controversy surrounding the treatment of its Palestinian workers. Sixty Palestinians called a wildcat strike to protest the fact that they were prohibited from bringing food from home to break their Ramadan fasts, due to the kosher rules the facility observed.
Although management promised to fix the issue, they were fired the next day.
More broadly, Palestinians face large scale wage discrimination. In 2016, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics found that Arab Israelis earned only 58.6 percent of what a Jewish Israeli on average, and that the wage gap shows all signs of widening.
the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics found that Arab Israelis earned only 58.6 percent of what a Jewish Israeli on average, and that the wage gap shows all signs of widening.
The current draft of the Peace to Prosperity plan offers no provisions guaranteeing Palestinian workplace protections, equitable salaries or protections from discrimination, effectively giving a greenlight for companies like SodaStream to exploit Palestinian labor without facing any tangible consequences.
Rather than a blueprint to empower Palestine, this is a way to turbocharge and legalize the extraction of its human capital, which is already underway.
This is how the U.S.’ new plan imagines Palestine’s integration into the local community. And by all counts, it is going forward whether or not regional leaders, or even Palestinian people, agree on its contents.
