Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Economic Aspect of 'Century's Deal' Spurs Arab Denouncement


Sun 23 Jun 2019 | 02:34 PM
Yassmine Elsayed

U.S. President Donald Trump's Middle East peace plan, known as "Century's deal", which was partially revealed yesterday, met with harsh reaction and frank rejection by Arab politicians and commentators, in addition of formal statements.

Set to be presented by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner at an upcoming conference in Bahrain, starting Tuesday for two days, the $50 billion economic vision for the deal envisions a global investment fund to prosper the Palestinian and neighbouring Arab economies as part of broader efforts to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Though having supporters in the Gulf, the plan was denounced widely in many Arab countries, where accusations were made for those who engineered it.

"We don't need the Bahrain meeting to build our country, we need peace, and the sequence of (the plan) -- economic revival followed by peace is unrealistic and an illusion," Palestinian Finance Minister Shukri Bishara said on Sunday.

The plan, clearly, abandoned the two-state solution - the long-standing worldwide formula that envisages an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

Reuters quoted statement from PLO, where it dismissed Kushner's plans as "all abstract promises," insisting that only a political solution will solve the problem. It said they were an attempt to bribe the Palestinians into accepting Israeli occupation.

The lack of a political solution prompted rejection in Arab countries from commentators and ordinary citizens, who almost agree that the deal is "dead-on-arrival".

Jawad al-Anani, a former senior Jordanian politician, said: "This is an unbalanced approach: it assumes the Palestinians are the more vulnerable side and they are the ones who can succumb to pressure more easily."

"This is a major setback for the whole region," he added.

According to Reuters, Arab analysts believe the economic plan is an attempt to buy off opposition to Israel's occupation of Palestinian land with a multi-billion dollar bribe to pay off the neighbouring hosts of millions of Palestinian refugees to integrate them. In Lebanon, Nabih Berri, parliament speaker said: "Those who think that waving billions of dollars can lure Lebanon, which is under the weight of a suffocating economic crisis, into succumbing or bartering over its principles are mistaken."