--- title: Trump's Plan Is the Latest Outrage for the Palestinians description: Once again the Palestinians are being faced with an unfair deal that will not resolve the conflict with Israel, writes Professor Rashid Khalidi. canonical: https://time.com/5774722/trumps-plan-outrageous-palestinians/ author: Rashid Khalidi article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-01-31T12:00:54.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T08:09:23.592Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Trump's Peace Plan Is the Latest Outrageous Deal for Palestine og:description: Once again the Palestinians are being faced with an unfair deal that will not resolve the conflict. og:url: https://time.com/5774722/trumps-plan-outrageous-palestinians/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt27adeed00ad53281/698a0987011682672a97ee67/Palestine-donald-trump.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: Palestinians Israel US og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Trump's Peace Plan Is the Latest Outrageous Deal for Palestine twitter:description: Once again the Palestinians are being faced with an unfair deal that will not resolve the conflict. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt27adeed00ad53281/698a0987011682672a97ee67/Palestine-donald-trump.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # President Trump's Peace Plan Is the Latest in a Century of Outrageous Deals for the Palestinians > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. by [Rashid Khalidi](https://time.com/author/rashid-khalidi/) ## Rashid Khalidi Jan 31, 2020 12:00 PM UTC  Protesters hold candles during a protest against the Mideast plan announced by the U.S. President Donald Trump, at the road in Jebaliya refugee camp, Gaza Strip, Jan. 30, 2020\. Trump's Mideast plan would create a disjointed Palestinian state with a capital on the outskirts of east Jerusalem, beyond the separation barrier built by Israel. Protesters hold candles during a protest against the Mideast plan announced by the U.S. President Donald Trump, at the road in Jebaliya refugee camp, Gaza Strip, Jan. 30, 2020\. Trump's Mideast plan would create a disjointed Palestinian state with a capital on the outskirts of east Jerusalem, beyond the separation barrier built by Israel. Adel Hana—AP by [Rashid Khalidi](https://time.com/author/rashid-khalidi/) ## Rashid Khalidi Jan 31, 2020 12:00 PM UTC Once again, a [tawdry deal](https://time.com/5773138/trump-israel-palestine-peace-plan/) has been done over the heads of the Palestinians, in their absence, and ignoring their rights – indeed their very existence as a people. As with the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and UN Security Council resolution 242 of 1967, the greatest power of the age, today the United States, is once again dictating terms for the disposition of Palestine tailored to meet the demands of only one side of the conflict. According to [Trump’s plan](https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Peace-to-Prosperity-0120.pdf), Israel annexes over a third of the West Bank including all illegal settlements and gets complete security control over a Swiss cheese Palestinian “state” with no sovereignty, no contiguity, and no control over its borders; Israel gets all of Jerusalem, including the holy places; Palestinian refugees are denied return, not only to Israel, but to the Palestinian “state” unless Israel approves, so most will be forced to remain where they are; and every other wish of the Israeli hard right is fulfilled. While President Donald Trump stood before a cheering White House audience together with Benjamin Netanyahu, there were ghosts in the room. They were the ghosts of the 12 million Palestinians, who are to pay the price of the disreputable formula they have cooked up. Their rights and interests are passed over in silence, whether those displaced in 1948 and 1967 in order to create a Jewish state in a majority Arab country, or those who still live in different parts of the single Israeli-ruled entity that is Palestine-Israel today. International law will be ignored, as will the scores of UN resolutions to which the U.S. was a party, and which the Trump administration has flouted. The “Deal of the Century” as Trump described it, is in fact a typical colonial concoction: put together by those who believe that they know better than the benighted natives do what is best for them, and elevating the rights and interests of one group over those of another. This pattern, set by Great Britain and the early Zionist movement, has been followed by the U.S. and Israel ever since then. Given the blatant biases, and the bland ignorance of Middle Eastern realities, of Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, David Friedman and the other architects of this parody of a peace plan, one thing is absolutely certain. This plan will not bring peace between Palestinians and Israelis, nor will it bring either people lasting security. It will certainly not resolve the underlying conflict between them. Whatever the White House and their extremist Israeli mentors may think, this conflict cannot be assuaged by imposing one side’s demands on the other, or by throwing dollars raised from Arab Gulf monarchies at the Palestinians. Such an approach can only entrench an unjust status quo whereby Israel continues to oppress the Palestinians. What we are seeing now is simply a continuation of what this administration has done since it came into office: enforce one blatantly pro-Israeli fait accompli after another, thereby checking off every item on the wish list of the Israeli right wing and of Trump’s electoral base and some of the main donors to his campaign. Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the move of the [U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem](https://time.com/5174043/us-embassy-jerusalem-may/), closing the PLO office in Washington D.C., recognition of Israel’s annexation of the [Golan Heights](https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/435125-trump-says-us-will-recognize-israeli-control-of-disputed-golan), the defunding of the UN body that provided education and health services to Palestinian refugees, and the redefinition of refugees to exclude the Palestinians, all form part of this cascade of pandering initiatives. While far more extreme and one-sided than anything that preceded it, this new plan also constitutes a continuation of a much older pattern. The Palestinians, the overwhelming majority of the population of Palestine at the time, were not even mentioned in the Balfour Declaration, whose terms governed their lives for three decades. Nor were they mentioned in UNSC 242, the supposed basis for “peace-making” in the Middle East, which not surprisingly has signally failed to bring peace to Palestine/Israel in over half a century. Talking, or at least listening, to only to one side of a complex conflict, as the great powers have done since 1917, guarantees only one kind of outcome: one-sided and unjust. That is all that has been on offer to the Palestinians for most of the past century. Any formula advanced as a resolution of the conflict that is not squarely based on principle of equality and justice will inevitably fail. Indeed, Trump’s “deal” is not only a preordained failure, but will likely exacerbate the conflict by encouraging the stronger side’s illusion that it can impose its will on the weaker one with American help. Difficult although it may be for some to accept, and hard as it will be to achieve, absolute equality of human, personal, civil, political, and national rights must be enshrined in whatever future scheme is ultimately accepted by the two societies. Ultimately, what is at its core a 19th century colonial project, with different classes of rights for different peoples, cannot survive in the 21st century. Until would-be peace-makers understand and accept these hard facts, they will continue to exacerbate the problem of Palestine, as have all U.S. administrations from that of Harry Truman to Trump. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5774722/trumps-plan-outrageous-palestinians/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5774722/trumps-plan-outrageous-palestinians/"},"headline":"President Trump's Peace Plan Is the Latest in a Century of Outrageous Deals for the Palestinians","datePublished":"2020-01-31T12:00:54.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T08:09:23.592Z","description":"Once again the Palestinians are being faced with an unfair deal that will not resolve the conflict with Israel, writes Professor Rashid Khalidi.","url":"https://time.com/5774722/trumps-plan-outrageous-palestinians/","keywords":["Middle East","World","ideas"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt27adeed00ad53281/698a0987011682672a97ee67/Palestine-donald-trump.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Rashid Khalidi","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/rashid-khalidi/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt27adeed00ad53281/698a0987011682672a97ee67/Palestine-donald-trump.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Palestinians Israel US","caption":"Palestinians Israel US","creditText":"Adel Hana—AP","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/middle-east/","name":"Middle East"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5774722/trumps-plan-outrageous-palestinians/","name":"President Trump's Peace Plan Is the Latest in a Century of Outrageous Deals for the Palestinians"}}]}] ```