Call Trump’s ‘peace plan’ what it is: escalating apartheid

On Jan. 27, President Donald Trump, side by side with his partner in crime, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, announced their joint “Plan for Prosperity.” Trump touted this plan as a path to peace in the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” 

The plan received support not only from Netanyahu, but also his political rival Benny Ganz. In particular, the continued existence of illegal Israeli settlements under the plan has been lauded by Israeli politicians. The Israeli ruling class is united on its apartheid policies against Palestine. 

What Trump won’t tell you is that this isn’t a “conflict” at all. It’s the brutal oppression of the Palestinian people at the hands of the white supremacist state of Israel, based on the theft of Palestinian lands, and made possible by the United States. For more than seven decades, Washington has spent billions of dollars making the Zionist settler state its forward military base in Western Asia.

Trump also won’t tell you that his plan is about nothing more than setting in concrete the existing apartheid conditions in occupied Palestine. 

A de facto state of apartheid has long existed for the Palestinian people. Nonetheless, Trump’s plan presents an escalation of the U.S.-Israeli strategy. To claim peace while putting forward a plan that does nothing to ease the violence of the Israeli state against the Palestinian people shows the lengths to which the U.S. will go to maintain its control over the region. 

This “peace plan” is nothing more than a repetition of the policy of “Bantustan” territories in apartheid South Africa or the “Reservation Plan” for Indigenous peoples in the U.S. In both cases, promises of “self-governance” and “autonomy” were made. However, the apartheid regimes in South Africa and Washington only delivered segregation, poverty and violence. 

There is no reason to believe that Trump’s plan is any different. 

But there’s every reason to believe that the Palestinian people will resist, as they have since the Nakba (“catastrophe”) of 1948. Within hours of the Trump-Netanyahu announcement, Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem and throughout the global diaspora responded with a thundering “NO!” Palestinians and supporters have taken to the streets in protest and will continue to undertake acts of resistance.

It’s the responsibility of people in the U.S. to support them.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! End Israeli apartheid now!