Perhaps, the most extraordinary aspect of the Trump plan dubbed the “deal of the century”, is its clear and seamless alignment with a long history of inequity inflicted upon the hapless natives of Palestine, ever since Mr. Balfour decided that their views and aspirations were of no real relevance or import compared to the manifest splendour of the Zionist dream.
No one should expect historic justice of course, even assuming that what this means is entirely clear. But to see hope in the proposed Palestinian statelet comprising disparate chunks of ghettoised Palestinians linked by tunnels and bridges so as not to tread the sacred land claimed by Jewish settlers, takes some leap of the imagination; one that few if any Palestinians are likely to possess.
The truth is that the plan is not really a blueprint for a Trumpian ‘deal’ (even though the U.S. president himself may believe otherwise), but an ideological tract, based on a reading of history that presumes the supremacy of Jewish biblical claims to the land, and the essentially secondary rights of its indigenous Palestinian population. It is, at heart, a vision promoted by one wing of the Zionist movement that has apparently become the dominant voice today.
