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

摘要

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 centuryIsraelIsraeli-Palestinian conflictPalestineTrump Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 See Mounir Akash (Citation2013) 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 (Citation2003) Dishonest Broker: The Role of the United States in Palestine and Israel Publisher (South End Press).7 Rashid Khalidi (Citation2014) 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 (Citation2006) 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 (Citation2022) 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 (Citation2020) 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 (Citation2007) The Balance of Power in International Relations: Metaphors, Myths and Models (New York, Cambridge: University Press); Hidemi Suganami (Citation1996) On the Causes of War (New York: Oxford University Press Inc.).17 John A. Vasquez (Ci