Trump’s Peace Plan Offers Palestinians a Severance Package for the Occupation

• Trump’s Peace Plan Offers Palestinians a Severance Package for the Occupation
  by Zvi Bar’el, https://www.haaretz.com/
  A political solution in which Israel releases its hold of the Palestinian economy could triple growth in the West Bank and Gaza. But in the meantime, why not take the billions Washington plans to raise in Bahrain?
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  Participants of the Bahrain “economic workshop” will surely regret that U.S. President Donald Trump was so quick to announce it. Truthfully, what’s so urgent about it? And had he waited another three years, the guests could at least have enjoyed a wonderful stay at the Shangri-La Hotel, which is slated to open in 2022. According to the Bahraini government, this will be a wonderful vacation site by the sea, with luxury villas and the kind of service only Shangri-La knows how to provide.
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  The Palestinians have already said they won’t come. The Qataris probably won’t either. Turkey – whose president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, vehemently criticized the idea – apparently won’t be invited. King Abdullah of Jordan will likely to come just to please Trump and Saudi Arabia, but he’d be happier spending those two days elsewhere.
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  Bahrain, the host, made its own position clear when Foreign Minister Khalid Al Khalifa said this week that the workshop “serves no other purpose” than supporting the Palestinian economy. There will be no diplomatic plan, no discussion of borders or other core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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  Bahrain “remains supportive” of the Palestinians “in restoring their legitimate rights on their land as well as establishing an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital,” the statement added. An independent state? Trump has no intention of even mentioning the words “Palestinian state.”
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