So what's the big deal?
Well U.S. President Donald Trump
says it’s simple really.
His plan for Israel and Palestine
is the best deal out there.
And the Palestinians need to realise that.
This could be the last opportunity
they will ever have.
But can we even call it a deal?
The Palestinians say it’s more like a done deal.
Or no deal at all.
So how does Trump’s plan
stack up against the ones that have failed before?
And does it stand any chance at all
of ending more than 100 years of
mistrust and war?
Before we do a deep dive on the Trump plan
let’s remind ourselves how we got into this mess.
First off there’s Jerusalem.
Over the centuries Jews, Muslims and Christians
have fought over their holy city religiously.
But they’ve also fought over the Promised Land.
Who does it belong to?
Go back far enough and all three can stake a claim.
Israel is trying to carve out a home here.
And the Palestinians are trying to hold on to theirs.
And it’s this fight that Trump has stepped into
with a new plan to solve things.
Many have tried before him.
And just as many have failed.
In the fight to give the Jews their own country
1917 was big.
It’s when Arthur James Balfour
the UK’s foreign secretary, promised the Jewish people
a “national home" in Palestine.
This was the map back then.
But it’s been changing ever since.
And wars have had a lot to do with that.
"The time is the summer of 1948
a turning point in history for the people of Palestine
the Promised Land."
The Arab-Israeli War in 1948 was won by Jewish militias
who took over a lot of land.
Three quarters of a million Palestinians lost everything.
It’s what they call the Nakba
the Catastrophe.
After the Arab-Israeli War the borders changed from this
to this.
In 1967 the Six Day War ended in Israel's military occupation
of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
But that didn’t settle things.
Israel continued to expand, the Palestinians fought back
and the cycle got stuck on repeat.
The 1990s and the Oslo Accords
brought a brief moment of hope.
The first one, signed in 1993, was historic.
Sworn enemies shaking hands on the White House lawn.
Those two even won a Nobel Peace Prize.
But the terms of the Oslo Accords failed to stick.
Cue another attempt
the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.
This time countries that belonged to the Arab League
told Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian land.
But Israel wasn’t interested.
And those are just the highlights
in a string of failed deals.
So let’s take a look at what they’re fighting over.
It’s this land between the River Jordan and
the Mediterranean Sea.
Today it’s carved up by Israeli settlements
and guarded by separation walls.
The process that we've been gradually seeing since 1967
is this process in which Israel is gradually overtaking
Palestinian land, building settlements
demographically re-engineering
advancing its interests at the expense of
the rights of Palestinians.
Something had to be done.
And as soon as Donald Trump got to the White House
he figured he could pull it off.
He put his son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge of
coming up with a two-state solution
Israel and Palestine side by side.
Three years later Kushner presented a plan
that he says includes major Israeli concessions.
This is the first time that Israel has ever agreed
to a Palestinian state.
And it’s the first time that Israel has agreed to a map.
And so this is an amazing opportunity for
the Palestinian leadership.
And they’d be very wise to pursue it.
It's a great plan for Israel.
It's a great plan for peace.
So what Kushner and Israel are basically saying is this
Israel isn’t giving up any of its land, occupied or otherwise.
And as far as the Palestinians are concerned
he says they need to know that any deal
is better than no deal at all.
But if you ask the Palestinians.
Well, actually
no one asked the Palestinians.
They call it a deal except the party
they want to make a deal with
is not even at the table.
One reason is that the Palestinians have basically
cut off all ties with the Americans.
That goes back to 2017 when Trump decided to recognise
Jerusalem as the capital of Israel
and moved the US embassy there.
The Palestinians were incensed.
They’ve always seen East Jerusalem as theirs.
So let’s look at what the Americans and Israelis
came up with.
It’s all in this 181-page document
called “Peace to Prosperity”.
It includes a $50 billion infrastructure plan.
International investors are expected to pay for it.
And it’s supposed to create a million jobs for
Palestinians while reducing poverty.
But the Palestinians say money won’t buy their
support for a deal they haven’t agreed to.
One of the big issues is Israeli settlements
considered illegal under international law.
Israel says it’s agreed to stop building them
in occupied territories like the West Bank
for the next four years.
But here’s the thing.
There are already 200 settlements
with 600,000 Israelis living in them.
Under Trump’s plan they would all be
annexed as part of Israel.
And critics say that just rewards Israel
for breaking the law.
If there's one lesson we can gain
from the last 50-plus years of building settlements
is the level of Israeli commitment
to continue going at that project.
On Jerusalem the deal says the city remains
the undisputed capital of Israel.
It also says that Palestine gets part of East Jerusalem.
Just not the part the Palestinians want.
The parts of Jerusalem they're offering is on the outskirts
and don't even fall within international lines of
what's recognised as East Jerusalem
which includes the Old City of Jerusalem
where all the holy sites are.
And finally Palestinian refugees can forget about
going home to the land they’ve lost.
The deal says "there shall be no right of return".
This was entirely missing.
And I think future peace negotiations
will continue to fail unless
that vital ingredient of rights is present.
And after all that, if this plan ever makes it
this is what the two states would look like.
Palestine would be a patchwork of territories
joined by tunnels and bridges
surrounded by a sea of Israeli settlements
roads and separation walls.
Israel would control the borders and airspace.
And look at the Gaza Strip.
Nearly 2 million Palestinians live there
in almost complete isolation and poverty.
They’re being promised a 50-km-long rail tunnel
to the West Bank
one of the longest in the world.
It doesn't offer them statehood but rather
offers them a permanent state of apartheid.
So if the Palestinians aren’t sold
why are Trump and Netanyahu pushing this now?
Many analysts say the timing of this plan
wasn’t a coincidence.
Both leaders were heading into an election.
Trump was facing impeachment.
And on the day they announced the deal
Netanyahu was indicted on corruption charges.
So it's very convenient that this plan
has come at this point.
Trump and Netanyahu’s plan also seems like it has
the backing of Arab states like Saudi Arabia
who are encouraging Palestine to negotiate.
This is all in a sort of context of a regional political shift
in which these Arab states are allying themselves
and entrenching their relationships
with Israel and the US.
So you get the idea.
The proportions of this conflict are biblical.
As is the scale of suffering in this small corner of the world.
No plan
not even this one from Trump and the Israelis
offers us a one- or even a two-state solution
that they can all agree on.
What we have is more like a state of confusion.