February 1, 2020
Erdoğan bitterly criticizes treasonous Arab leaders
who back Trump’s Middle East plan
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday (Jan 31) criticized Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states for not speaking out against the Middle East plan of President Donald Trump which he said endorsed the Israeli annexation of Palestinian lands.
“Some Arab countries that support such a plan commit treason against Jerusalem, as well as against their own people, and more importantly against all humanity,” Erdogan told his party’s provincial heads in Ankara.
Erdogan said Arab nations' stance towards Palestinians was pitiable and countries that failed to speak out would be responsible for "grave results".
Despite Palestinians' rejection of the plan and their boycott of Trump, three Gulf Arab states - Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates - attended the White House gathering where Trump announced his plan.
"When we look at the stance of countries in the Muslim world toward this step and the announced text, I pity us. Saudi Arabia mostly, you are silent. When will you speak? The same goes for Oman, Bahrain, the Abu Dhabi leadership," Erdogan said.
"They even go and applaud it there. Shame on you," he added. "Some Arab countries supporting such a plan are betraying Jerusalem, their own peoples and most of all humanity."
Ankara categorically rejects the plan that "basically destroys Palestine as a whole and seizes Jerusalem," Erdogan added.
Erdogan said it was "inexplicable" for Palestinians to be pressured into accepting the plan.
On Wednesday, Erdogan said that Trump’s so-called Middle East peace plan ignores Palestinians' rights and attempts to legitimize Israel's occupation.
Erdogan said the plan will not serve peace and solution in the region. It ignores Palestinians' rights and attempts to legitimize Israel's occupation, he stressed.
"Jerusalem is sacred for Muslims and Trump's so-called peace plan proposing to leave Jerusalem to Israel is never acceptable," Erdogan added.
Earlier, Turkey's foreign ministry described it as an "annexation plan that aims to kill the two-state solution and seize Palestinian lands", calling it "stillborn".
The Palestinian people and their lands "cannot be bought," the ministry said in a statement.
What's in Trump's so-called Middle East Peace Plan
Establish Jerusalem as Israel’s “undivided” capital, with a potential Palestinian capital to the east and north of the city.
Recognize the vast majority of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territory as part of Israel. A Palestinian state would receive territory, mostly desert, near Gaza to compensate for the loss of about 30% of the West Bank.
Recognize the Jordan valley, which makes up about a third of the occupied West Bank, as part of Israel.
Offer a path to some form of Palestinian statehood but with no army, and overarching Israeli security control in some areas, including over the sea.
The plan also sets a series of conditions the Palestinians have to meet before receiving independence including the “complete dismantling of Hamas”, which governs Gaza.
The possibility of stripping Israeli citizenship from tens of thousands of Arab Israelis who live in 10 border towns, with those towns and their residents being included into any future state of Palestine.
Recognize sections of the desert bordering Egypt as part of any future Palestinian state.
Refuse Palestinian refugees the “right of return” to homes lost to Israel in previous conflicts.
Trump said the economic portions of the plan, would lead to one million new jobs for Palestinians over the next 10 years, invest $50bn in the new state.
The real goal of Trump’s Middle East Plan is not peace
According to Politico, the Trump administration’s long-awaited and ill-named peace plan has many objectives, but making peace isn’t among them. It is a politically expedient move intended to boost Trump and Netanyahu’s election chances.
The motives behind a document conceived without any Palestinian input, unveiled on the same day as an important vote in the Israeli parliament on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s immunity, and less than a year before Americans vote for their next president, are at once more mundane and more grandiose, Politico said adding:
“The mundane reasons, first. It’s hard not to see in the timing an effort by Trump to help Netanyahu in Israel’s elections six weeks from now, and, more than that, an effort by Trump to help Trump—to shore up support from evangelicals and conservative Republicans as he heads into his reelection campaign.”
In short, this is a plan that gives Israel everything it wants, concedes to Palestinians everything Israel does not care for, tries to buy off the Palestinians with the promise of $50 billion in assistance that will never see the light of day, and then calls it peace, according to the Politico.
“The ideas put forward by the administration may not tell us anything much about the future of Middle East peace, other than to make more plain what was already manifest—that the notion of a viable two-state solution increasingly is a thing of the past, and that the de facto annexation of West Bank territory may soon become de jure,” Politico concluded.
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
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