Last month, Jared Kushner led a delegation of US envoys to Bahrain for an “economic workshop,” where he outlined his vision for a lasting settlement between Israel and Palestine. Titled “Peace to Prosperity”, the $50 billion plan was effectively a bribe, a one-time payment intended to persuade Palestinians to abandon their core national ambitions. Roundly scorned, Kushner’s deal was rejected before it even emerged.
The central innovation of “Peace to Prosperity” is its attempt to resolve what is essentially a political problem through economic means. “Land for Peace”, the organising framework of the past three decades, has been traded for “Money for Peace”, a Trumpian formula designed to work in lockstep with the increasing neoliberalism of the Palestinian Authority (PA) economic policy. The language of the plan is appropriately corporate: it speaks vaguely of ‘empowerment’ and ‘opportunity’, and leans heavily on the influence of the private sector.
‘Modern’ is a key buzzword: everything stands to be modernised, from the dilapidated transportation network in Gaza, to the old-school inspection techniques that clog up West Bank checkpoints. Palestinians are envisioned as customers in a vast transnational business deal, rather than political subjects making a moral and historical claim to their land. There is no mention of an occupation, or of a Palestinian state. The plan’s appeal, such as it is, is directed squarely at Palestinian desperation, designed to exploit their powerlessness in a region increasingly dominated by Israel.
