(Bloomberg Opinion) -- For Palestinians, a long-dreaded day of reckoning is fast approaching. The so-called peace plan unveiled by the Trump administration on Tuesday invites Israel to immediately annex large chunks of the occupied West Bank and the Jordan Valley. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wasting no time in doing just that, possibly as early as next week.
For Palestinians, that would signal the end of all hope for a genuinely independent state alongside Israel. The Trump proposal envisages an Israeli-dominated, non-sovereign Palestinian “state” that is an enclave within a hyper-empowered greater Israel. And even that can only be accomplished after Palestinians meet an unheard-of set of conditions to Israel’s satisfaction.
When the Camp David summit in July 2000 failed, my father asked me what I thought. I said Israelis would eventually enforce the highly circumscribed “statehood” Palestinians had just rejected. They would try to use their overwhelming power to gobble up large parts of the occupied territories, without absorbing the Palestinian population or allowing genuine Palestinian independence.
Until this week, they were blocked from doing this because the U.S. was a third signatory to the 1993 Declaration of Principles that prohibits unilateral annexation. Now David Friedman, the American ambassador to Israel is openly encouraging Israel to annex big chunks of Palestinian territory.
The Palestine Liberation Organization for decades sought to negotiate a two-state agreement with Israel. If the Israelis go ahead with this annexation and Washington perseveres with the new Trump policies, they will look like the biggest dupes imaginable. Hamas, which insists on armed struggle, will appear vindicated despite the continuous disasters their violence have wrought on Palestinian lives and fortunes.
How should Palestinians respond?
The clever move would be to thank Trump for his ideas, and welcome the opportunity to sit down with the other parties to discuss how, if at all, these new proposals fit with the formal and binding framework signed and agreed to in 1993. (Spoiler: they don’t.)
If life were a debating society or courtroom, all Palestinians need do is hold up the signature page of the Declaration of Principles and win the argument every time.
But life isn’t like that. For years Palestinians were harangued and punished by Israelis and Americans for supposedly violating the spirit of the Oslo agreements by “unilaterally” seeking greater international recognition. Now Israel and the U.S. have blithely wrecked those agreements, which evidently aren’t sacred after all.
Besides, Palestinian politics won’t allow the PLO to play that game. Their constituents are too outraged to be satisfied with debate-hall arguments, and Hamas will capitalize on any perceived PLO weakness.
Palestinians might be able to recuperate their diplomatic position if Israel doesn't go ahead with annexations in the coming weeks and Trump is defeated in November. Then it would be up to the Democrats to urgently restore sanity to U.S. policy. That is not impossible, but it requires Palestinians to simply wait and see what happens.
Beyond that, Palestinian options are highly limited. Unless the international community moves quickly to restore hope for genuine Palestinian statehood through diplomacy, the arguments against another major uprising will be crippled.
If it becomes obvious that Palestinians are indefinitely trapped as noncitizens in a formalized, apartheid-style greater Israel, and that the international community isn’t going to rescue them from such a fate, they are essentially left with two choices.
In the abstract, what would make most sense would be to, in effect, declare themselves conscripted Israelis and fight through uncompromising but nonviolent means for full political as well as civil rights in the de facto greater Israel. But Palestinian nationalist narratives don’t provide the basis for such a strategy. And there is little historical precedent for a people securing their rights in this way.
Armed struggle is the other option; Hamas and others will be clamoring for it. If Trump and Netanyahu get their way, Hamas will probably succeed at last in taking over the Palestinian movement. Or, to prevent that, the PLO itself will return to armed struggle.
The only thing that may give the Palestinians pause is the fear that any violence might invite disproportionate Israeli response, including a widening of the annexation horizon and mass expulsions of people from these areas.
But it’s hard to imagine any people simply accepting the fate to which Trump and Netanyahu are sentencing the Palestinians. If my father were to ask me about the likeliest outcome of the latest “peace plan,” I would tell him that violence is coming, if not right away then soon enough. Effective arguments against such a path, reckless and self-destructive as it is, are dwindling rapidly.
To understand this, ask yourself if you would accept a permanent subjugation. If the answer is “no,” then you can anticipate the disastrous consequences of Trump’s peace plan.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bobby Ghosh at aghosh73@bloomberg.net
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
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