By Staff Reporter
March 17, 2020 (Ezega.com) -- According to a report on Al Jazeera, Ethiopia may have been a victim of a Middle East diplomacy unrelated to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) project. The dam negotiations may have been taken over by an ambitious, if foolhardy, project to settle the Israeli-Palestinian dispute by Jared Kushner, a senior advisor to President Donald Trump..
According to the report, Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law, and senior advisor, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, have been pushing for the acceptance of this Middle East peace plan, dubbed the 'deal of the century,' (DoC). Several countries were enticed to support the proposal, including Egypt, Sudan and a host of other Arab countries.
Egypt was promised some $9bn out of a proposed $50bn dedicated to luring Egyptian, Jordanian, Palestinian and Lebanese leaders into supporting the plan. Sudan had already received lifting of US sanctions on 157 companies. In return, both Egypt and Sudanese leaders were encouraged to meet with Israeli leaders. Benjamin Netanyahu met with Sudan's Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Uganda in February 2020.
The peace plan was worked out primarily between Jared Cushner and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamine Netanyahu. By all reports, it did not involve the Palestinians, who rejected it from the start.
There are four major elements of the new political proposal: 1) Israel keeps the vast majority of Jerusalem as its sovereign capital; 2) Palestinians get no right of return; 3) it redraws borders mainly between Israel and the West Bank; and 4) doesn’t allow for Palestine to create a fighting force to defend itself. In return, the Palestinians will get economic assistance for the revitalization of the whole region and supervised steps towards eventual statehood on some parts of the disputed territories.
“The so-called ‘deal of the century’ isn’t a peace plan at all. It is a plan to reelect Benjamin Netanyahu,” Guy Ziv, an Israel expert at American University said. “If this plan was truly aimed at breaking the diplomatic stalemate, the Palestinians would have been consulted in the plan’s formulation.” He noted that their negotiators cut off ties when Trump’s team decided to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
For more information on this topic, please read Vox report and Al Jazeera report on Trump's Middle East Plan.
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