Palestine, Israel brace ahead of Trump peace plan

While Israeli leaders have welcomed Donald Trump's long-awaited peace plan, Palestinian leaders have rejected it even before its official release.

JERUSALEM - Rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah will join forces Tuesday in a rare meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah against US President Donald Trump's long-awaited Middle East peace plan, officials said.

"We invited the Hamas movement to attend the emergency meeting of the leadership and they will take part in the meeting," senior Palestinian official Azzam al-Ahmed said.

Hamas official Nasser al-Din al-Shaar confirmed he would attend the meeting, which all Palestinian factions were invited to.

"The meeting will discuss the position that must be taken (against) Trump's plan," Shaar said.

The Islamist rulers of Gaza have been at odds with president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement for years, with Hamas representatives rarely taking part in meetings of the West Bank-based Palestinian leadership.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army said it was beefing up forces in the Jordan Valley, a swathe of the occupied West Bank expected to feature heavily in Trump's long-awaited plan.

"Following the ongoing situation assessment conducted in the IDF (Israel Defence Forces), it has been decided to reinforce the Jordan Valley area with infantry troops," the military said in a statement. A series of Palestinian protests against Trump's peace proposal were planned in both the West Bank and Gaza on Tuesday and Wednesday, raising the possibility of confrontation with Israeli troops.

In Gaza City, protesters stepped on posters of Trump laid out on the ground. They waved Palestinian flags and held aloft posters of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

"Trump is a fool, Palestine is not for sale," an activist shouted through a loudspeaker.

In a refugee camp in the coastal enclave, about 50 people gathered in Martyrs' Square holding posters of Abbas and his predecessor Yasser Arafat, the guerrilla leader who spearheaded the Palestinian cause until his death in 2004.

"We will pay with our blood, souls and sons to redeem Jerusalem. The deal of Trump will never succeed," said Umm Ahmed, who took part in the protest.

'Very disturbed'

Some have speculated that the US proposal could pull back from supporting the creation of a Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem, the common definition of the two-state solution.

However, the main political body representing Israeli settlers said it was coming out against Trump's peace plan because it reportedly includes the formation of a Palestinian state.

Yesha Council Chairman David Alhayani said in a statement Tuesday ahead of the peace plan's unveiling that settler leaders were "very disturbed" after meeting with American officials in Washington.

He says: "We cannot agree to a plan that includes the formation of a Palestinian state that will constitute a threat to the state of Israel and a greater threat in the future."

He is calling on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reject any plan that includes the creation of a Palestinian state.

Most of the international community supports a two-state solution to the conflict and views the settlements as illegal and an obstacle to peace.

More than 600,000 Israeli Jews live in settlements scattered across the occupied West Bank and occupied east Jerusalem, territories seized by Israel in the 1967 war and that the Palestinians want for their future state.

Amid the brewing tensions ahead of Trump's proposal, vandals set fire to a Palestinian school in the West Bank and left behind graffiti, in a so-called "price-tag" attack that is the hallmark of extremist Jewish settlers.

Hebrew graffiti scrawled on a wall read: “Demolishing homes? Only of enemies," and contained a reference to a nearby settlement outpost that was recently dismantled. Similar graffiti was left outside a mosque that was torched in East Jerusalem last week.

Riyad Shkokani, a teacher at the school, said it is located in a village outside the Palestinian town of Nablus close to the Yitzhar settlement. Yitzhar is a bastion of extremist settlers, who in the past have clashed with both Israeli occupation forces and Palestinians.

The Israeli police said in a statement that security forces will enter the area to investigate reports of vandalism.

A key element will be whether the proposal includes an American approval to any Israeli annexation of the West Bank. In the run-up to Israel's March 2 election, Netanyahu - who draws much of his support from Israel's far-right and Jewish settlers - has called for annexing parts of the occupied West Bank and imposing Israeli sovereignty on all its settlements there.

Palestinian and Arab sources who were briefed on the draft fear it seeks to bribe Palestinians into accepting Israeli occupation, in what could be a prelude to Israel annexing about half of the West Bank including most of the Jordan Valley, the strategic and fertile easternmost strip of the territory. These are territories Palestinians seek for an independent future state.

American approval could give Netanyahu the type of cover to go ahead with annexation, a move that he's teased to his supporters but resisted taking for more than a decade in power.

Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestinian mission to Britain, told Reuters in London that Trump's peace plan was merely "political theatre".

"It is not a peace deal. It is the 'bantustan-isation' of the people of Palestine and the land of Palestine. We will be turned into bantustans," he said, referring to the nominally independent black enclaves in apartheid-era South Africa.

"Jan. 28, 2020 will mark the official legal stamp of approval of the United States for Israel to implement a full-fledged apartheid system," he said.

'Overly good'

Trump was due to release his plan, years in the works, at the White House later Tuesday together with his close ally Netanyahu - but Palestinians, who accuse Trump of pro-Israel bias, were not taking part in the Washington event.

Trump, however, claimed not only that the plan might "have a chance," but said it could benefit the Palestinians, who he predicted might come around to the idea.

"It's very good for them, in fact it's overly good for them," the US president told reporters on Monday. "We think we will have ultimately the support of the Palestinians."

The Palestinians meanwhile have urged world powers to reject Trump's plan.

"We call on the international community to not be partners in this (plan) because it contravenes international law," Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said on Monday.

The details of Trump's initiative, which has been in the works since 2017, are not yet public. But his administration has already recognised Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights - which the Zionist state captured from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967 - and has also stopped referring to the West Bank as occupied territory.

It said Washington no longer considers Israeli settlements there as inconsistent with international law, as is the view of the international community, and most analysts expect Trump's peace proposal to reaffirm his administration's positions.

Trump also broke with decades of international consensus that the fate of occupied Jerusalem should be negotiated between the parties when he recognised the disputed city as Israel's capital in December 2017. He's also closed Palestinian diplomatic offices in Washington and cut funding to Palestinian aid programs.

Those policies have proven popular among Trump’s evangelical and pro-Israel supporters and could give him a much-needed boost from his base as the Senate weighs whether to remove him from office in impeachment hearings over alleged abuses of power, and as he gears up for a reelection battle this year.

Netanyahu meanwhile is facing imminent trial proceedings, after dropping his request for parliamentary immunity from corruption charges in a surprise move Tuesday.

"This is a plan to protect Trump from impeachment and protect Netanyahu from prison," Shtayyeh told a cabinet meeting Monday. "It is not a Middle East peace plan."

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has rejected repeated attempts by Trump to discuss the plan, with a senior Palestinian official telling AFP news agency there would be no discussion with the US "until they recognise the two-state solution".

Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said both Trump and Netanyahu were looking to change the subject from their own domestic troubles.

"The problem is it doesn't feel like this is the beginning of an important initiative," Alterman said.