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At the White House today, Donald Trump is trying to get as close as possible to emulating a moment that happened 27 years ago this week.
On September 13, 1993, President Bill Clinton rounded up two enemies. In the White House garden, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, shook hands.
It was seen, at that time, as an irreversible moment in the establishment of peace; the first face-to-face meeting between Israelis and Palestinians and an agreement on a framework that would lead to the resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
September 13, 1993 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shakes hands with PLO leader Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn.
It didn’t work. Years of renewed bloodshed followed that have morphed into low-intensity conflict, a terrible equality imbalance and a political stalemate that continues to this day.
The Palestinians continue their fight for a nation state, a mostly peaceful fight in the West Bank, less in Gaza. The Israelis run a status quo that some say suits them very well.
Enter Donald Trump. With no prospect of getting Israelis and Palestinians to repeat that historic handshake, but eager to be seen as the last to negotiate, he has accomplished a different feat. It is not one to rule out.
With his son-in-law Jared Kushner as a runner, he has persuaded two Arab Gulf countries to recognize the Jewish State of Israel.
Context is vital here. Until last month, only two Arab countries recognized Israel. Egypt signed an agreement in 1979 and Jordan signed one in 1994.
However, the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative was explicit that no other Arab country would recognize Israel unless it completely withdrew from the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Gaza and the West Bank) and allowed the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
That initiative continued until last month when the UAE agreed to a normalization agreement with Israel.
In return, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to suspend his plan to annex parts of the West Bank.
Construction work in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank
So instead of requiring Israel to reverse a fact on the ground in exchange for diplomatic ties, the UAE rejected the offer: if it does not comply with annexation, we will recognize it.
Then Bahrain followed and other Arab countries can too. It represents a paradigm shift in the geopolitics of the region and strengthens the alliance against Iran, a common enemy of Israel and many Arab nations in the Gulf.
The prospects for trade and tourism are huge. There will be flights between the countries; embassies and ambassadors as well.
It is a blow to President Trump. His administration has overseen a process in which the regional dial has moved. That is much more than his predecessor, Barack Obama, can claim.
He has joined Israeli-Arab hands this week and is the perfect image of re-election. Donald Trump, the negotiator.
But peacemaker? What about the central theme of all this? The one that was supposed to be solved with that handshake in 1993?
Well, for Yasser Arafat’s political protégés, the deals amount to a deep betrayal by his Arab brothers. It represents the greatest crisis in the history of the Palestinian Authority.
The Palestinians have been left out. The Americans and Israelis openly say they are sick of waiting for the Palestinians to accept their vision of peace, one in which Israel does not need to withdraw from the West Bank and one in which the Palestinians do not obtain their own capital. East of Jerusalem.
Israeli security forces control over 60% of the West Bank
A trip through the West Bank, and it is extremely difficult to see how, at least at this moment, an agreement between Israel and the Gulf does anything to bring a resolution to the Palestinian problem.
Look at it with the hardened eyes of those who live there, both Palestinians and Israeli Jewish settlers.
Khairi Hannoun is in her sixties. I met him one day after an Israeli soldier threw him to the ground.
With a flag and a cane, but nothing else, he had been protesting the continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
He refused to go ahead and faced the consequences.
“They don’t want to stay a single [Palestinian] citizen of this land ”, he told me when we met.
“The Israeli occupation differs from any other occupation around the world. It is a surrogate occupation. This means that they want to take control of where you are and kick you out of this land. They have no solutions. If they tell you they have a solution, they are lying.” .
Khairi Hannoun being immobilized by an Israeli soldier
When I told the Israeli army that I was interviewing Mr. Hannoun, they said they would send me a statement.
“Khairi Hannoun is known as an inciter. He has been a regular and recurring provocateur in the Judea and Samaria region. [the Israeli name for the West Bank], regularly attacking soldiers and using violence against IDF troops, and has been incarcerated in an Israeli prison over the years on at least seven occasions due to violence against IDF troops. Since 1979, he was imprisoned for several years in an Israeli prison. “
Israeli security forces control more than 60% of the West Bank and three-quarters of a million Israeli Jewish settlers live in the area.
That’s more than three times as many as were in the West Bank in 1993 when that handshake in the White House promised a peace that never came.
At a bus stop for the exclusive use of Israeli settlers, not Palestinians, I met Rachel Gordon, originally from London.
“When we moved here about 20 years ago, that Arab city was very small and it has grown exponentially.” he said, pointing to a nearby Palestinian town.
“But don’t you see that you are being a bit hypocritical in the sense that you are saying that the Arab city has grown, but your city was not here at all?” I asked, referring to the Israeli settlement he lives in.
“As far as I am concerned, it is Israeli territory and all of Israel belongs to the Jewish people,” he said.
For decades, the Palestinian quest has been its own state, with East Jerusalem as its capital and with Jewish settlers returning from the West Bank.
But is that still achievable? Or should Israel’s deal with the Gulf Arabs push for a new Palestinian strategy?
“I think what we have to do as Palestinians is recognize that there is a one-state apartheid reality. Accept that as a starting point, but not accept it as our future,” said Dr. Yara Hawari, policy analyst at Al Shabaka, The Palestine Policy Network told me.
“[The deal with the Gulf Arabs] it really emphasizes the need for a recalibration of the Palestinian struggle … that we cannot trust people we think were allies, that we have to seek alliances, friendship, interconnection with other struggles, other peoples around the world. “
There are hints of that with parallels between injustices here and elsewhere. ‘Palestinian lives matter’ is a catchphrase that is being heard more and more.
The Donald Trump deal should not be ruled out. It represents a chariot and characteristic horses by convention. It is changing the relationship between Israeli Jews and (some) Arabs and has focused minds among the Palestinians.
And so, one day we will be able to draw a line from this moment towards peace in the Holy Land. But I still can’t see its outline.
