-On Sunday, I delivered to Prime Minister Netanyahu
my vision for peace, prosperity,
and a brighter future for Israelis and Palestinians.
-Your Deal of the Century is the opportunity of the century
and, rest assured, Israeli will not miss this opportunity.
-The first thing to recognize about Trump's
so-called Deal of the Century is that it's no deal at all.
To have a deal, you need to broker
an agreement between two different sides.
In this case, the Israelis and the Palestinians.
What Trump has announced this week,
that's been long anticipated,
has no buy-in whatsoever from the Palestinians
and little support from the neighborhood around Israeli.
In the White House, as Trump delivered
the supposedly historic proposal,
there were no Palestinian leaders present.
There were hardly any Arab political figures
of any importance present, either.
Instead, you had Trump's own loyal lieutenants;
senior figures in the Jewish American community
and pro-Israeli lobby in Washington;
and, of course, very significantly,
a number of prominent evangelical pastors
for whom Israeli supremacy over the Holy Land
is a matter of religious conviction.
-My vision presents a win/win opportunity for both sides.
-What the Trump administration proposes
for the Palestinians is that, over a period of four years,
the Palestinians work toward a situation
where they can become a state.
-We are askin' the Palestinians
to meet the challenges of peaceful coexistence.
-The Trump vision for a future Palestinian state
is conditioned on a whole series of turns.
Most importantly, the wholesale disarmament
and defanging of Islamist militant group Hamas.
-Stopping the malign activities of Hamas.
-As well as a broader recognition
from the Palestinians
of the Jewish character of the Israeli state.
-As the Jewish state.
-The Trump administration has proposed
a kind of economic solution, first.
-It takes enormous talent
to reject $50 billion worth of investment.
-But Palestinian officials and critics
say that economic incentives seem more like a payoff
for their political rights they will not currently have.
-The "deal of the century" is totally rejected.
It is a shame for anyone who is trying to support it.
-From what we're seeing in this Trump plan,
including maps that have been circulated by the White House,
any putative Palestinian state is a far-off prospect,
if not a total impossibility.
Under this current understanding,
it's torn up by Israeli roads and settlements.
It seems like a geographical impossibility, in many respects.
And, most importantly, what makes a state
is the ability to be sovereign and capable
and, specifically, from what we're seeing right now,
the Palestinians won't have total sovereign control
over their territories and their circumstances.
-Today's agreement is a historic opportunity for the Palestinians
to finally achieve an independent state
of their very own.
After 70 years of little progress,
this could be the last opportunity they will ever have.
-What boosters of this plan would argue
is that it recognizes the geopolitical realities
of the current situation on the ground.
They think that, eventually,
the Palestinians will come to the table,
that a plan for development will be too sweet a deal
to refuse, eventually, although we have little evidence
of the Palestinians accepting that logic.
Over the past three years,
we've seen the Trump administration
essentially dole out gift after gift to the Israelis.
-As everyone knows, I have done a lot for Israel.
Moving the United States embassy to Jerusalem,
recognizing the Golan Heights.
Perhaps most importantly,
getting out of the terrible Iran nuclear deal.
-And, at the same time, essentially, also,
put their foot on the Palestinians.
Trump and Netanyahu were standing at the dais
of the White House on a day when the American president
is the subject of a ongoing impeachment trial
in the Senate and on the same day,
also, that Netanyahu say his attorney
general file a criminal indictment
against him on a series of very damaging corruption allegations.
Trump, of course, also shared his plans
with Netanyahu's main rival,
Benny Gantz, of the centrist Blue and White Party in Israel.
Come April, Gantz could very well
be Israel's next prime minister.
-I just completed an important and exceptional meeting
with the president of the United States,
Mr Donald Trump,
a true and courageous friend of the state of Israel.
-What this shows is that, at least,
when it comes to the Palestinians,
no matter all the other political divisions
within Israel,
the bulk of the Israeli political establishment,
especially among the center and on the right,
are, by and large, on the same page.
-We discussed matter of the utmost importance
to Israel's future and security.
-The most immediate effect of this announcement is,
perhaps, to encourage the Israelis to go forth
and begin a new process of annexation
of Palestinian territory.
There are reports of that already being contemplated
by Netanyahu's government.
-It does not give us any of our rights as Palestinian people.
Therefore, the "deal of the century"
and the other deal is rejected by us.
We want the right to return.
We want to return to our country.
We want a just solution.
-What a lot of critics also point to
is a pretty disturbing historical parallel.
That is, the Bantustans of apartheid-era South Africa,
where certain parts of South Africa
saw these quasi-autonomous states of Black Africans
kept under control by a white supremacist state.
That reality of the "Bantustans"
will become more and more part of the conversation
if the current plan unveiled by Trump
and endorsed by Netanyahu goes nowhere.
If we don't see a viable Palestinian state
and if the Israelis have no intention of allowing it
to come into existence, is it time, now,
to consider whether everyone living between the Jordan River
and the sea should have full and equal political rights,
which is currently not the case right now?