Israeli Foreign Ministry Political Director Alon Ushpiz testified on Monday in a closed Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee session that Israel could face increased Western pressure to divide the country into two states.
According to Ushpiz, French President Emmanuel Macron has threatened to put forward his own proposal for the Middle East if United States President Donald Trump doesn’t present his administration’s new closely guarded plan immediately following America’s November 6 midterm elections.
The reports – which foreign ministry officials claimed to contained “inaccuracies” – aired on several local Israeli networks and came a day after Channel 10 quoted Trump last month telling Macron that he was prepared to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (Likud) to accept his plan.
Trump’s reported comments to Macron took place three days before he said, during a meeting with Netanyahu, that he favors Washington’s traditional two-state policy. Since as early as 1947, the US and its allies have sought to partition Eretz Yisrael into two separate states.
Following the American midterm elections, Trump and Netanyahu are expected to travel to Paris for World War I centenary ceremonies hosted by Macron. This is likely where things will begin to get difficult for the Israeli premier.
What Trump appears to be setting up is a game of “good cop/bad cop” in which Trump will be the good cop, Macron the bad cop and Israel their victim.
Trump has spent months positioning all the parties for a successful implementation of his plan. By moving America’s Israel embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in such a divisive manner that played in the international press as a major Israeli diplomatic triumph over the Palestinians, the president and his team have fostered a political atmosphere in which Israel owes Washington big.
By diplomatically chaining Netanyahu to his administration and beating the Palestinian political leadership into submission, Trump seems to believe he can succeed where his predecessors have failed in partitioning Israel into two states, each dependent upon American power for survival.
Macron’s role in his plan is clever as it allows Trump to maintain his “pro-Israel” image while forcing Netanyahu to comply with Washington’s two-state agenda. The French president serves as an outside factor likely to propose a partition plan less sympathetic to Israel’s needs than Trump’s if Netanyahu attempts to stall as he successfully did during Barack Obama’s presidency.
Although it’s been proven disastrous for Israelis and Palestinians alike, the Western powers have continued to aggressively push the two-state policy on both parties, leading many to question the true interests of America and its allies in the region.
But the real question we should be asking is what gives the United States, France or any other foreign power the right to dictate anything to Jews or Palestinians?
Neither Paris nor Washington should be proposing plans for determining the future of our country or solving the conflict between its peoples. Peace initiatives need to come from the populations most impacted by the realities on the ground, who have so much to gain by uniting against the involvement of foreign powers in the Semitic regions.
