White House Sees No Need to Balance Pro-Israel Bias on Peace Plan

Officials not interested in being an 'honest broker'

While the details of President Trump’s “deal of the century” peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians are still secret, officials offered some spoiler alerts, saying that the White House feels no need to try to offer a balanced plan, or do anything to show themselves to be honest brokers.

Instead, they say the administration wants to underscore that it is “proudly supportive of Israel,” and feels no need to balance the peace proposal with anything that the Palestinians might want, because they don’t see an “equivalency” between the two.

Which is, of course, not how deals end up being made. This is, rather, a continuation of the US policy toward the Israel-Palestine conflict for decades, initially talking up a fair deal but finally offering a plan that would rubber stamp Israeli policy, and offer the Palestinians effectively nothing in return.

When the plan is offered, the Palestinians can be expected to reject it, because it is admittedly going to be biased against them. Then administration officials can condemn the Palestinians for not taking part in the US-led process, and punish them further.

The irony of this is that, because an Israeli election is just around the corner, if the proposal is offered before the vote the far-right Israeli government will also spurn it, no matter how in favor of Israeli policy it is, because any deal would conceivably give the Palestinians something, even if it’s by accident, and that would open up other Israeli parties to attack the government as weak.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.