The Lasting Impact of Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ on the Question of Palestine

Abstract:

In 2017 US President Donald Trump launched the ‘Deal of the Century’ (DoC) to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although Trump is no longer in office, the impact of the DoC lingers and will continue affecting future approaches to the conflict and its resolution. This article argues that the Trump DoC profoundly impacted the colonial order in Palestine, destroying further the illusion that a just settlement addressing the plight of the Palestinians could be reached. The DoC’s impact has affected three significant areas: the vision of a resolution, the approach to conflict resolution, and the venue where the conflict occurs. It helped shift the vision from two-state solution to none, significantly undermining the approach that was based on negotiation and third-party mediation, and assisted in creating a new regional versus international venue for the conflict.

Key Words:

• Deal of the century
• Israel
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Palestine
• Trump

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See Mounir Akash (2013) The right to sacrifice the other, America and genocide. (Beirut: Dar Riad Al-Rayes) [in Arabic].

2 See Robert Freedman, ed., Israel and the United States: Six Decades of US-Israeli Relations, (Westview Press, 2012). See also Khaled Elgindy. Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians, from Balfour to Trump. Brookings Institution Press, 2019.

3 Yasser Arafat ‘may have been poisoned with polonium,’ BBC News, November 6, 2013, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-24838061. Accessed on August 21, 2023.

4 Noam Chomsky (1999) Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians (London: Pluto Press).

5 Edward W. Said (2001) The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After (Vintage Books).

6 Naseer Aruri (2003) Dishonest Broker: The Role of the United States in Palestine and Israel Publisher (South End Press).

7 Rashid Khalidi (2014) Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle (Beacon Press).

8 United States Department of State (n.d.) The Abraham Accords Declaration. United States Department of State. Available online at: https://www.state.gov/the-abraham-accords, accessed on January 23, 2023.

9 See the full plan online at: Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People. Trump White House Archives (January 2020). Available online at: https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Peace-to-Prosperity-0120.pdf, accessed on Aug. 23, 2023.

10 Tariq Dana and Ali Jarbawi (2022) Whose Autonomy? Conceptualising ‘Colonial Extraterritorial Autonomy’ in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Politics, 43 (1), p. 107.

11 Ilan Pappe (2020) The Steal of the Century: Robbing Palestinians of Their Past and Future, The Arab World Geographer, 23 (1), p.9.

12 Ibid.

13 Patrick Wolfe (2006) Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native, Journal of Genocide Research, 8 (4), p. 387–409. See also on settler colonialism and indigenous resistance: Honaida Ghanem (2022) The Palestine Question: From the Balfour Declaration to the Deal of the Century in The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East, ed., Armando Salvatori et al., (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press).

14 United States Department of State (n.d.) The Abraham Accords Declaration. United States Department of State. Available online at: https://www.state.gov/the-abraham-accords, accessed on August 9, 2022.

15 In his book: Rashid Khalidi (2020) The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine (Metropolitan Books: Henry Holt and Company), Khalidi divides the Palestinian struggle for statehood into six stages that he describes as six “declarations of war.”

16 Richard Little (2007) The Balance of Power in International Relations: Metaphors, Myths and Models (New York, Cambridge: University Press); Hidemi Suganami (1996) On the Causes of War (New York: Oxford University Press Inc.).

17 John A. Vasquez (1996) Distinguishing Rivals that go to War from Those That Do Not, International Studies Quarterly, 40 (4), p. 531–58.; Thazha. Paul (2006) Why Has the India-Pakistan Rivalry Been so Enduring? Power Asymmetry and an Intractable Conflict, Security Studies, 15(4), 600-630.

18 Claude (2000) Power and International Relations (New York: Random House), p. 55-56.

See also Ho-Won Jeong (2000) Peace and Conflict Studies: an Introduction (Virginia, George Mason University: Routledge).

19 C. R. Mitchell (1991) Classifying Conflicts: Asymmetry and Resolution, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 518 (1), pp. 23-38.

20 Giorgio Gallo and Arturo Marzano (2009) The Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflicts: The Israeli-Palestinian Case, Journal of Conflict Studies 29, pp. 33-49.

21 Ben Baruch (2012) An interview with Johan Galtung. Peace Insight (March 12). Available online at: https://www.peaceinsight.org/en/articles/interview-johan-galtung/?location=sudan&theme=peace-education, accessed January 21, 2022.

22 Girogio Gallo and Arturo Marzano (2009) The Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflicts, Journal of Conflict Studies, 29, p. 45.

23 Ho-Won Jeong (2000) Peace and Conflict Studies: An Introduction (Aldershot: Ashgate), p. 109.

24 Johan Galtung (1990) Cultural Violence, Journal of Peace Research, 27 (3), p. 291; David G. Gil (1998) Confronting Injustice and Oppression: Concepts and Strategies for Social Workers (New York: Columbia University Press); Toran Hansen (2008) Critical Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice, Conflict Resolution Quarterly 25(4), pp. 403-427.

25 Ghazi-Walid Falah (2021) How Should One Read Trump’s Map of the ‘Deal of the Century’?, Third World Quarterly, 42 (12), p. 3030.

26 Kenneth Waltz (1979) Theory of International Politics (New York: Random House), p. 127.

27 Stuart J. Kaufman, Richard Little, and William C. Wohlforth (2007) The Balance of Power in World History (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK).

28 Michael Stohl and Mary Chamberlain (1972) Alternative Futures for Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 16(4), p. 527.

29 Chuck Thiessen and Marwan Darweish (2018) Conflict Resolution and Asymmetric Conflict: The Contradictions of Planned Contact Interventions in Israel and Palestine, International Journal of Intercultural Relations 66, p. 75.

30 Khaled Elgindy, author of Blind Spots: America and the Palestinians from Balfour to Trump; author’s email correspondence, August 2018.

31 Tareq Baconi (2021) Gaza and the One-State Reality, Journal of Palestine Studies, 50 (1): p. 79. Regarding how US as a mediator ended the two-state solution, see also Rashid Khalidi (2014) Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (Boston: Beacon Press).

32 Lovatt is an Israel-Palestine expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations; author’s email correspondence, July 2018.

33 Mussa Qawasma (2021) Is the Two-State Solution Still Viable?. Foreign Affairs (August 24). Available online at: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ask-the-experts/2021-08-24/two-state-solution-still-viable?fbclid=IwAR1VRHOjo5H64CFkWyOJ6o0GOfzOnMkA43R3HpltIeTB5FODQpgHb09EyK4, accessed on August 21, 2023.

34 Ian S. Lustick (2020) The One-State Reality: Reading the Trump-Kushner Plan as a Morbid Symptom, The Arab World Geographer, 23 (1), p. 27. See also, Leila Farsakh (2011) The one-state solution and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Palestinian challenges and prospects, The Middle East Journal, 65 (1), p. 55-7, on the challenges and opportunities for the one state solution. And Virginia Tilley (2010) The one-state solution: A breakthrough for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock (University of Michigan Press), on the one-state solution: a breakthrough for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock.

35 Peter Beinart (2020) Opinion | I No Longer Believe in a Jewish State. The New York Times (July 8). Available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/opinion/israel-annexation-two-state-solution.html, accessed on August 21, 2023.

36 Michael Barnett, Nathan Brown, Marc Lynch, and Shibley Telhami (2023). The One State Reality, What is Israel/Palestine? (New York: Cornell University Press).

37 Bashir Bashir and Rachel Busbridge (20182019)The Politics of Decolonisation and Bi-Nationalism in Israel/Palestine, Political Studies, 67 (2), p. 388.

38 Jeruslem Embassy Act of 1995 (n.d.) Authenticated U.S. Government Information. Available online at: https://www.congress.gov/104/plaws/publ45/PLAW-104publ45.pdf, accessed on August 21, 2023.

39 Baconi, “Gaza and the One State Reality,” pp. 77-90.

40 Abdul Rashid Moten (2018) US Embassy in Jerusalem: Reasons, Implications and Consequences, Intellectual Discourse 26(1), pp. 5–22.

41 Dana Chwatt (2019) Framing of the U.S. Embassy Move to Jerusalem: A Comparative Qualitative Study, Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, 10 (1), p. 46.

42 It should be mentioned that what was exactly shared in the Camp David Negotiations and what role the US administration played remains a very debatable issue in the literature.

43 Raja Shehadeh (2011) Sheikh Jarrah and the Renewed Israeli-Palestinian Violence. The New Yorker (May 11). Available online at: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/sheikh-jarrah-and-the-renewed-israeli-palestinian-violence, accessed on August 21, 2023.

44 Aseel Jundi (2021) Save Sheikh Jarrah: The Online Campaign Giving Hope to Palestinian Refugees in East Jerusalem. Middle East Eye (March 22). Available online at: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-save-sheikh-jarrah-campaign, accessed on August 21, 2023.

45 The significance of these protests is that the come across space in the different areas of Israel’s settler colonial project and all types of indigenous Palestinian communities joining the protests. See also, Walaa Alqaisiya, (2023) “Beyond the Contours of Zionist Sovereignty: Decolonization in Palestine’s Unity Intifada.” Political Geography, 103.

46 United Nations Security Council (2016) Resolution 2334. United Nations. Available online at: https://www.un.org/webcast/pdfs/SRES2334-2016.pdf accessed on January 23, 2022.

47 BBC (2019) Israel and the Palestinians: Can the Settlement Issue Be Solved?. BBC News (November 18). Available online at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38458884, accessed on January 23, 2022.

48 Joseph Krauss (2021) Pompeo Is 1st Top US Diplomat to Visit an Israeli Settlement. AP NEWS (November 19). Available online at: https://apnews.com/article/race-and-ethnicity-israel-boycotts-west-bank-jerusalem-38f09415fb4990ebdcbfea15dccff514, accessed on January 23, 2022.

49 Kali Robinson (2021) What Is U.S. Policy on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict? Council on Foreign Relations (July 12). Available online at: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-us-policy-israeli-palestinian-conflict accessed on January 23, 2022.

50 David Newman (2020) The Changing Geopolitics of Settlements and Borders in Trump’s Deal of the Century, It Is Time to Think beyond the Territorial Box, The Arab World Geographer, 23 (1), p. 29.

51 Muriel Asseburg and Sarah Ch. Henkel (2021) Normalisation and Realignment in the Middle East A New, Conflict-Prone Regional Order Takes Shape. SWP (July 28). Available online at: https://www.swp-berlin.org/10.18449/2021C45/ accessed on January 23, 2022.

52 Author’s email correspondence, July 2018.

53 John J Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt (2007) The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux).

54 Manny Rodriguez (2020) The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Trump Era: A Human Rights Perspective (Hartford, CT: Trinity College, Senior Thesis).

55 Martin S. Indyk (2020) Biden Can Clean up Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian Policy Mess, but Can He Broker Peace? Council on Foreign Relations (Novembee 17). Available online at: https://www.cfr.org/article/biden-can-clean-trumps-israeli-palestinian-policy-mess-can-he-broker-peace accessed on January 23, 2022.

56 Ahmed Abukhater (2019) Palestine - Peace by Piece: Transformative Conflict Resolution for Land and Trans-Boundary Water Resources (Cham, Switzerland: Springer), p. 22.

57 Sean F. McMahon (2016) Temporality, Peace Initiatives and Palestinian-Israeli Politics, Middle East Critique, 25 (1), p. 6.

58 As’ad Ghanem (2020) The Deal of the Century in Context – Trump’s Plan Is Part of a Long-Standing Settler-Colonial Enterprise in Palestine, The Arab World Geographer, 23 (1), p. 45–59.

59 Mouin Rabbani (2019) Jerusalem and the Trump Administration Transforming the Status Quo (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies), p. 22.

60 Aaron David Miller (2005) Israel’s Lawyer. Washington Post (May 23). Available online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2005/05/23/israels-lawyer/7ab0416c-9761-4d4a-80a9-82b7e15e5d22/ accessed on January 23, 2022.

61 Isak Svensson (2009) Who Brings Which Peace? Neutral versus Biased Mediation and Institutional Peace Arrangements in Civil Wars, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 53 (3), p. 448.

62 Ibid. p. 449.

63 Isak Svensson (2019) Biased mediation, in Research Handbook on Mediating International Crises, edited by Jonathan Wilkenfeld, Kyle Beardsley, David Quinn (Massachusetts: Edward Edgar publishing), p. 325.

64 William Zartman (2023) UN Mediation in the Syrian Crisis: From Kofi Annan through Lakhdar Brahimi to Staffan de Mistura, in Ibrahim Fraihat and Isak Svensson, Conflict Mediation in the Arab World (Syracuse University Press).

65 Zeev Maoz and Terris Lesley (2009) Credibility and Strategy in International Mediation, in Jacob Bercovitch and Scott Sigmund Gartner (eds) International Conflict Management: New Approaches and Findings (London: Routledge), pp. 69-95.

66 Edward W. Said (2003) The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After (Vintage Books). See also Naseer Hasan Aruri (2003), Dishonest Broker: The U.S. Role in Israel and Palestine (Cambridge, Ma: South End Press).

67 Ilai Z. Saltzman (2017) Not so ‘Special Relationship’? US-Israel Relations during Barack Obama's Presidency, Israel Studies, 22 (1), pp. 50-75.

68 Khaled Elgindy (2017) Trump Just Sabotaged His Own Peace Process, The Brookings Institution (December 7). Available online at: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2017/12/07/trump-just-sabotaged-his-own-peace-process/ accessed on January 23, 2022.

69 Jacob Bercovitch (2002) Introduction: Putting mediation in context, in Studies in international mediation: Essays in honor of Jeffrey Z. Rubin’, ed., Jacob Bercovitch (New York: Palgrave Macmillan); See also Saadia Touval and I. W. Zartman (2001) International mediation in the post-Cold War era, in Turbulent peace: The challenges of managing international conflict, Chester Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall, ed., (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press), pp. 427-43.

70 Moten, “US Embassy in Jerusalem,”.

71 Jenny Leonard and Justin Sink (2022) Bloomberg - Are You a Robot? Bloomberg (July 15). Available online at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-15/biden-says-time-not-ripe-to-restart-israel-palestinian-talks accessed on January 23, 2022.

72 Ahmad Mudhofarul Baqi (2022) From Foes to Friends: The Normalization of the United Emirates Arab and Israel Relations, Insignia: Journal of International Relations, 9 (1), p. 80.

73 Email discussion with the author, July 2018.

74 Muddassir Quamar (2020) Changing Regional Geopolitics and the Foundations of a Rapprochement between Arab Gulf and Israel, Global Affairs, 6 (4-5), p. 1. See also Ibrahim Fraihat (2020) Iran and Saudi Arabia: Taming a Chaotic Conflict. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

75 Reuters Staff (2020) Palestinian Leader Calls for U.N.-Led Peace Conference Early next Year. Reuters (September 25). Available online at: https://www.reuters.com/article/un-assembly-palestinians-int-idUSKCN26G2Y6 accessed on January 23, 2022.

76 Richard Engel (2020) A Conversation with Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh of the Palestinian Authority. Council on Foreign Relations (November 17). Available online at: https://www.cfr.org/event/conversation-prime-minister-mohammad-shtayyeh-palestinian-authority accessed on January 23, 2022.

77 Steve Holland (2018) Trump Administration Takes Aim at International Criminal Court, PLO. Reuters (September 10). Available online at: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-icc-idUSKCN1LQ076 accessed on January 23, 2022.

78 Gardiner Harris (2018) Trump Administration Withdraws U.S. from U.N. Human Rights Council. The New York Times (June 19). Available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/us/politics/trump-israel-palestinians-human-rights.html accessed on January 23, 2022.

79 UNCTAD (2018) State of Palestine Expresses Intent to Join UNCTAD. UNCTAD (May 24). Available online at: https://unctad.org/news/state-palestine-expresses-intent-join-unctad accessed on January 23, 2022.

80 State of Palestine Joins the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (2021). OPCW (November 13). Available online at: https://www.opcw.org/media-centre/news/2018/06/state-palestine-joins-organisation-prohibition-chemical-weapons accessed on January 23, 2022.

81 State of Palestine Joins Convention (2021) United Nations Climate Change (November 13). Available online at; https://unfccc.int/news/state-of-palestine-joins-convention accessed on January 23, 2022.

82 Noam Chomsky (2015) Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians (London: Pluto Press).

83 Statement by Harvard Faculty in Support of Palestinian Liberation (n.d.). Google Docs. Available online at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQP5aNY9fTLf8-1cVbw7vJNYElWNzs6GLfhIM0NUo-Y5Krama8MyINIhaiehSGOzhhiB2nxM3ERBYkF/pub, accessed June 3, 2021.

84 Stanford Community Protests Israeli State Violence against Palestinians (n.d.). Google Docs. Available online at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdc1XUNvjE8zjpTgXBFdWaukRJAorMYHjwb_cHq-AXitdCsew/viewform, accessed June 3, 2021.

85 Princeton University Community Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (n.d.). Google Docs. Available online at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScxG4x4MOkooD0dfraFiCNX6Xsg6Oxo9l-lhhRpYD_A6OwTbg/viewform, accessed May 18, 2021.

86 Statement by the Faculty in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration on Palestine | Ethnicity, Race, and Migration (n.d.). Yale University. Available online at: https://erm.yale.edu/news/statement-faculty-ethnicity-race-and-migration-palestine, accessed May 17, 2021.

87 Georgetown Faculty, Staff & Students Statement of Solidarity with Palestinian People (n.d.). Google Docs. Available online at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRbhVKx-7quTcBA5B62ck8zh3DFFhJg0HXQMsOQJZX_akZyfnZaT_Qk6gX3xmOh5RhnJmxw2d_BzKdz/pub, accessed June 3, 2021.

88 Brown Community’s Letter of Solidarity for Palestine (n.d.). Google Docs. Available online at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OKPkIl7tI061zumkOOKxjRSHJzB-4ifXotgqn4WlDT0/edit, accessed May 15, 2021.

89 UC Berkeley Faculty and Staff Statement in Support of Palestine (n.d.). Department of Ethnic Studies UC Berkly. Available online at: https://ethnicstudies.berkeley.edu/uc-berkeley-faculty-and-staff-statement-in-support-of-palestine/, accessed May 20, 2021.

90 AAA Membership Endorses Academic Boycott Resolution. July 2023. https://tinyurl.com/26reqo6j Accessed on Aug. 24, 2023.

91 Sunaina Maira (2018) Boycott!:The Academy and Justice for Palestine (Oakland, California: University of California Press), p. 7.

92 Ibid, p. 56.

93 Heidi Johnson (2021) Federal Judge Finds Georgia Anti-BDS Law Unconstitutional. Legal News & Commentary (May 26). Available online at: https://www.jurist.org/news/2021/05/federal-judge-finds-georgias-anti-bds-law-unconstitutional/ accessed on January 23, 2022.

94 Ibid.

95 Ibid.

96 See Raz Zimmt (2023) Declarations of Senior Iranian Officials Concerning the West Bank Point to Intensifying Iranian Effort to Expand Its Influence in this Arena, The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. Available at: https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/app/uploads/2023/02/E_029_23.pdf accessed on January 23, 2022.; Udi Dekel (2023) The Palestinian Resistance Axis Converges with the Iran-Hezbollah Axis, The Institute for National Security Studies. Available online at: https://www.inss.org.il/publication/palestinian-iran-axis/ accessed on January 23, 2022.

97 Netanyahu says Iran behind attacks as Israeli killed in Hebron shooting. Aljazeera, Aug. 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/21/one-israeli-dead-one-wounded-in-shooting-near-hebron.

98 Adeeb Ziadeh (2020) Europe’s Stand on Jerusalem and the US “Deal of the Century, Siyasat Arabiya, 8 (43), pp.51–65.

99 Azmi Bishara (2022) Palestine: Matters of Truth and Justice (London: Hurst), p. 2.

Additional information

Funding

Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library.