Talk of a Peace Plan That Snubs Palestinians Roils Middle East
A
plan that the Saudi crown prince was said to foist on the Palestinians
would offer them limited sovereignty and deny them Jerusalem as the
capital.
nytimes.com
BEIRUT,
Lebanon — In a mysterious trip last month, Mahmoud Abbas, the
Palestinian president, traveled to Saudi Arabia’s capital for
consultations with the hard-charging crown prince about President Trump’s plans for Middle East peace. What was said when the doors were closed, however, has since roiled the region.
According
to Palestinian, Arab and European officials who have heard Mr. Abbas’s
version of the conversation, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman presented a
plan that would be more tilted toward the Israelis than any ever
embraced by the American government, one that presumably no Palestinian
leader could ever accept.
The
Palestinians would get a state of their own but only noncontiguous
parts of the West Bank and only limited sovereignty over their own
territory. The vast majority of Israeli settlements in the West Bank,
which most of the world considers illegal, would remain. The
Palestinians would not be given East Jerusalem as their capital and
there would be no right of return for Palestinian refugees and their
descendants.
The
White House on Sunday denied that was its plan, saying it was still
months away from finalizing a blueprint for peace, and the Saudi
government denied that it supports those positions.
That
left many in Washington and the Middle East wondering whether the Saudi
crown prince was quietly doing the bidding of Mr. Trump, trying to
curry favor with the Americans, or freelancing in order to put pressure
on the Palestinians or to make any eventual offer sound generous by
comparison. Or perhaps Mr. Abbas, weakened politically at home, was
sending out signals for his own purposes that he was under pressure from
Riyadh.
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Even
if the account proves incomplete, it has gained currency with enough
players in the Middle East to deeply alarm Palestinians and raise
suspicions about Mr. Trump’s efforts. On top of that, advisers have said
the president plans to give a speech on Wednesday in which he would recognize Jerusalem
as the capital of Israel, even though both sides claim it, a
declaration that analysts and regional officials say could undermine
America’s role as a theoretically neutral broker.
“There
is constant speculation and guessing about what we are working on, and
this report is more of the same,” said Joshua Raffel, a White House
spokesman. “It is not reflective of the current state of the plan we are
working on or the conversations we have had with regional players.”
The
Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Khalid bin Salman, said
in an email that “the Kingdom remains committed to a settlement based on
the Arab peace initiative of 2002, including East Jerusalem as the
capital of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. To suggest
otherwise is false.”
Mr.
Trump assigned the effort to reach what he calls the “ultimate deal” to
his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, aided by Jason Greenblatt, his top
negotiator, and other aides. After nearly a year of listening tours to
the region, they are developing a comprehensive plan but have kept
details under wraps.
“We
know what’s in the plan,” Mr. Kushner said in a rare public appearance
on Sunday at the Saban Forum, a Middle East conference in Washington
hosted by the Brookings Institution. “The Palestinians know what
discussions we’ve had with them. The Israelis know what discussions
we’ve had with them.”
Prince
Mohammed’s meeting with Mr. Abbas happened less than two weeks after
Mr. Kushner had visited the prince in Riyadh to discuss the peace plan.
Word
of the proposal has shaken up a region already wrestling with multiple
conflicts, astonishing Arab officials and Western observers alike.
Palestinian officials from both Mr. Abbas’s Fatah party and its rival,
Hamas, said they had found the plan insulting and unacceptable.
“If
the Palestinian leadership were to accept any of the above, the
Palestinian people would not let them remain,” said Hassan Yousef, a
senior Hamas leader in the West Bank who is also a member of the
Palestinian legislature.
Adding
to the shock for Palestinians, according to Palestinian officials from
Fatah and Hamas, as well as a senior Lebanese official and several other
people briefed on the matter, was the claim that Prince Mohammed had
told Mr. Abbas that if he would not accept the terms, he would be
pressed to resign to make way for a replacement who would.
Several
of the officials said the prince had offered to sweeten the agreement
with vastly increased financial support to the Palestinians, and even
dangled the possibility of a direct payment to Mr. Abbas, which they
said he had refused.
Prince
Khalid, the Saudi ambassador, said Saudi Arabia fully supported “the
Palestinian leadership under President Abbas” and “has not and will not
interfere in the internal affairs of the Palestinians.”
Mr.
Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, dismissed the accounts of the
Riyadh meeting and the Saudi proposals as “fake news” that “does not
exist,” and said the Palestinians were still awaiting a formal proposal
from the United States.
But
the main points of the Saudi proposal as told to Mr. Abbas were
confirmed by many people briefed on the discussions between Mr. Abbas
and Prince Mohammed, including Mr. Yousef, the senior Hamas leader;
several Western officials; a senior Fatah official; a Palestinian
official in Lebanon; a senior Lebanese official; and a Lebanese
politician, among others.
Ahmad
Tibi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Parliament, described a
similar set of ideas that he said the Palestinians had received from the
Americans and Israelis: a Palestinian state with only “moral
sovereignty” and noncontiguous territory and without East Jerusalem as
the capital; no Israeli settlement evacuation; and no right of return
for Palestinian refugees.
And
word of the plan has worried even some of the United States’ closest
allies, who are eager for clarification from the White House.
An
adviser to President Emmanuel Macron of France, speaking on condition
of anonymity, said French officials had heard a version of some of the
Saudi proposals, which sounded very similar to Israel’s opening bid and
not acceptable to Palestinians.
He
said that France had told the Americans that if they wanted to start
discussions, they should proceed, but should remember that France and
many other countries also have interests and concerns in the region.
Mr. Abbas was alarmed and visibly upset by the proposal, the Fatah official said.
Mr.
Yousef, of Hamas, said in an interview that there was consternation
that Mr. Abbas and his aides had not revealed and denounced the
suggestions publicly.
“As
long as they remain quiet about this, we do have fear of something like
this happening,” Mr. Yousef said, adding that if Mr. Abbas received any
offer, it is “very important” that he “tells the Palestinian people
that ‘we were offered 1,2,3,4 and that we refused this offer.’”
While
the proposals may sound far-fetched on their face, they have deeply
alarmed Palestinian and Arab officials because they come in a context of
fast-moving new dynamics in the region.
Prince
Mohammed, 32, is very close to Mr. Kushner, 36, both young men without
much foreign policy experience who see themselves as creative reformers
able to break with the ossified thinking of the
And
the Saudi prince has made clear that his top priority in the region is
not the Palestinian-Israeli issue, the fulcrum of Arab politics for
generations, but confronting Iran.
Regional
officials and analysts say they believe he might be willing to try to
force a settlement on Palestinians in order to cement Israeli
cooperation against Iran.
Western
and regional officials said Saudi Arabia’s main goal seems to be
normalization of relations with Israel, which would be difficult if the
Palestinian struggle remains a regional cause. Saudi Arabia currently
has no official relations with Israel but they have been widely reported
to have secretly cooperated for years on security issues.
But
several of Prince Mohammed’s foreign policy efforts so far have
sputtered, reflecting what many officials and diplomats in the region
say is a lack of understanding of basic regional dynamics, or a
willingness to ignore them.
His
move to isolate Qatar, in part for being too close to Iran, has if
anything forced it to become closer to Iran. Last month, his gambit to
pressure the Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri, to resign — to
isolate Iran’s Lebanese ally, Hezbollah — backfired, leaving Mr. Hariri
still in place and arguably stronger than before.
Alarms
began to go off across the region last month, when Mr. Abbas started
making phone calls to political leaders in the region after he had left
Riyadh.
One
Lebanese government official who received a call was most surprised by
what he said was a Saudi suggestion that the Palestinians could have Abu
Dis, a suburb of East Jerusalem, as their capital.
Abu Dis is separated from the city by a wall built as part of Israel’s separation barrier.
The
Lebanese official said no Arab could accept that kind of gamesmanship,
adding that no one could propose that to a Palestinian unless a person
lacking experience was trying to flatter the family of the American
president.
A
senior Lebanese official and a Lebanese politician, both briefed on the
discussions, said Mr. Abbas had been told he had two months to accept
the deal or he would be pressured to resign.
A
Palestinian official in Lebanon said one idea floated by the Saudis was
to compensate the Palestinians for the loss of West Bank territory by
adding territory to the Gaza Strip from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, a rocky
desert plagued lately by jihadist attacks. A Western official said
Egypt already had rejected that idea.
But
the news on Friday that Mr. Trump would recognize Jerusalem as the
Israeli capital suggested that ideas once considered beyond the pale are
now seriously being considered.
Recognizing
an Israeli capital there, even without explicitly denying the
Palestinians one, would overturn decades of consensus among
international peacemakers that any change in Jerusalem’s status must
come as part of a negotiated deal.
Palestinian
officials already have said that move would threaten any chance of a
two-state solution and could even provoke a new Palestinian uprising.
On
Sunday, Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian negotiator, said in a statement
that the move would create “international anarchy and disrespect for
global institutions and law.”
He
said the United States would be destabilizing the region, discouraging
supporters of a peaceful solution and “disqualifying itself to play any
role in any initiative towards achieving a just and lasting peace.”
Correction: December 4, 2017
An earlier version of this article incorrectly cited Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Parliament. He described a set of ideas that he said the Palestinians had received from the Israelis and the Americans; he did not confirm the main points of the Saudi proposal.
An earlier version of this article incorrectly cited Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Parliament. He described a set of ideas that he said the Palestinians had received from the Israelis and the Americans; he did not confirm the main points of the Saudi proposal.
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