Palestinians reject US economic peace plan

Palestinian leaders accused the Trump administration of punishing them with one hand and offering to reward them with the other, as protesters turned out in the West Bank and Gaza yesterday to demonstrate against a US economic peace plan.
At a US-led conference in Bahrain US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner urged Palestinian leaders boycotting the event to think outside the “traditional box” and consider the $50bn plan to boost the Palestinian and neighbouring economies.
The event drew fiery criticism both within the Palestinian territories, where demonstrations broke out for a second day, and across the wider region, where many Arabs took aim at officials for taking part.
Palestinian officials said it was Trump who had inflicted further hardship on Palestinians, cutting hundreds of millions in aid to humanitarian organisations across the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza.
“If the US is so concerned about Palestinian well-being, then why did they carry out these punitive measures against us?,” senior Palestine Liberation Organisation official Hanan Ashrawi said in Ramallah.
“Why did they target Palestinian infrastructure? Why did they stop scholarships to Palestinian students?,” she asked.
In August last year, Washington announced an end to all US funding for the UN agency that assists Palestinian refugees.
The US was UNRWA’s biggest donor by far up to that point, giving it $364mn in 2017.
And in February, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) ceased all assistance to the Palestinians, to whom it provided $268mn in 2017.
The US cuts were widely seen as a way of putting pressure on the Palestinian leadership to re-engage with the White House, which it has boycotted since Trump recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 2017.
“The same team that cut $350mn of aid to refugee camps...(goes) to Manama to say we have a brilliant plan to bring Palestinians a new chance, a new opportunity,” Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Tuesday in Jericho.
“Why would Palestinians say no to such (a) plan?,” he added, mockingly.
Neither the Israeli nor Palestinian governments are attending the event at Manama’s luxury Four Seasons hotel, where international bureaucrats enjoyed cocktails and delicate pastries, mingling with Arab businessmen sporting gold Rolex watches.
Some Gulf states, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, voiced qualified support for Kushner’s plan.
Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab states with a peace deal with Israel, sent deputy ministers. Many Arabs slammed their governments for taking part, describing the event as a sell-off of Palestinians’ rights without them present.
Bahrain’s main opposition group, the outlawed Al-Wefaq party, said hosting the event had brought shame on their country’s rulers, while Kuwait’s parliament said it would reject anything that comes out of the event. Washington is hoping that wealthy Gulf states will bankroll much of the $50bn plan, another potential sticking point unpopular with some opposed to the deal.
Former Egyptian football star Mohamed Aboutrika took aim at FIFA head Gianni Infantino, who spoke in Manama about developing a sports sector in the Palestinian territories to drive economic growth.
“Thank you to everyone who boycotted this auction...the presence of the head of FIFA is a major question mark...our holy sites are not for sale,” Aboutrika wrote on Twitter.
More than 1,500km away in Gaza, where over half of the enclave’s 2mn people live in poverty, Palestinians criticised the Arab businessmen who attended for siding with the United States and Israel.
“Capitalists do not think of the poor,” said Abdel-Rahim Nateel, 62, who spent most of his life in the Beach refugee camp in northern Gaza.
“Let them come and give aid to the hungry people, make projects, ask Israel not to attack us...let them give us our state on the 1967 borders and we do not want anything else from them.”
Several thousand Palestinians demonstrated in Gaza yesterday, burning posters of Trump and his close ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “No to the conference of treason, no to the conference of shame,” read one banner. In the occupied West Bank, demonstrations against Bahrain were light for a second day.
Some Palestinians voiced a sense of exhaustion about peace efforts and promises of cash and prosperity. “This conference is just like all others from the past, Arab conferences, American conferences.
All of them have been at the Palestinians’ expense,” said Hamdallah Qasem, 72, who lives in Ramallah.
Their own leadership was not exempt from criticism, however.
Yara Hawari, a policy analyst based in Ramallah, said the low turnout at protests was due to a sense of fatigue at international initiatives from which they saw little chance of changing their situation.
“There are certain topics that mobilise Palestinians more than others — like Jerusalem. This ‘economic peace’ is just more of the same. They see it as empty talk,” Hawari said.