“The truth is better than illusions,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Thursday, doubting the reasons that led Donald Trump to maintain that Ukraine could recover the entire lost territory. The same could be said of the new approach to the Palestinian of US President at a time when the solution of two states emerges again from Gaza's debris.
Steve Witkoff, US sent for the Middle East, says that the 21 points for Palestine designed by the White House has the generalized support of regional leaders. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, argues that the White House program is compatible with the Palestine Plan proposed in the New York Declaration and backed last week by the UN General Assembly.
But how is it possible that there is this confluence between the two plans, one backed by the US; And the other, for the UN? Are we facing another of Trump's mirages?
The optimistic interpretation is that Trump's son -in -law, Jared Kushner, and former United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair, have finally been able to materialize their influence on the White House, introducing a new way of seeing the conflict for the day after the end of the war in Gaza. According to this interpretation, Blair himself would direct an agency called 'Gaza Transition International Authority' for a period that could extend up to five years, receiving a UN mandate to become the “Supreme Political and Legal Authority” of Gaza.
Leaving aside the possible considerations on the role of Blair, the plans backed by Trump and the UN have similarities that could make possible the approach between the two. For example, none of the plans provides the massive displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. The 'Riviera Trump', another way to call a system of voluntary and also forced expulsions, does not have the support of Blair and is clearly rejected by Egypt and Jordan.
Neither plans contemplate that Hamas has a role in the future Palestine government. The two insist on disassembling Hamas, but not prohibiting it as an organization. A long time ago that the Palestinian authority (non -Islamist rival of Hamas based in Ramela) argues that Hamas and other armed factions must deliver weapons. “We do not want an armed state,” said Mahmud Abás, president of the Palestinian authority on Thursday, before the UN General Assembly.
End of the annexation of the West Bank?
It is also true that both plans take for granted that Israeli annexations will be completed in the West Bank. According to Macron, Trump also accepted that condition during his meeting with Arab leaders last Tuesday. Much depends on how the concept of 'annexation' is defined. Discarding it completely in the West Bank is a political blow to the movement of Israeli settlers, and that is what the United Arab Emirates demands. If Trump wants the support and investment of Arab nations, he will have no choice but to insist.
Gideon Sa'ar, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel, said that in the debate the issue of the annexation of Palestinian territories has not been included. “What can be discussed, but it has not yet been decided, is the application of Israeli laws to Israeli communities located there, which are not under the government of the Palestinian authority,” he said. Declarations that seem to prepare a scenario in which Israel takes control of the area known as Area C. If Trump rules out that possibility, as Macron and Blair, Benjamin Netanyahu expect to accept it.
The differences, from the AP to UNRWA
But once that is settled, the differences between the two plans begin to emerge. The New York Declaration, forged after months of French diplomacy, proposes a technocratic administration for a single year for the first transition phase. After that period he puts the Palestinian authority in the center of a new unified government that covers Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
But if Washington has banned until Abbas travels to New York, how can he accept that the Palestinian authority is responsible for a new unified Palestinian state?
The answer is in the many requirements that within the Trump plan would have to fulfill the Palestinian authority before taking control. According to a diplomat, the proposal gives many options to Israel to use its veto power and stop the transition to a Palestinian self -government. A version of the Trump/Blair Plan that the Palestinian authority proposes that the administration of Gaza and the West Bank stay separate, something that the AP opposes.
The New York Declaration gives a central role in reconstruction to UNRWA, as the UN Humanitarian Aid Agency for Palestinian refugees is called, but both the United States and Israel have dedicated all their efforts to destroy the organization arguing, without foundation, that it is a terrorist front.
It has been considered the possibility that the Palestinian authority assumes the role of UNRWA, and that it is not so insisted on the right of the Palestinians to return. But Israel has been since 2023 by subjecting the Palestinian authority to a financial pressure with the retention of fiscal income that corresponds to it. How could Trump support an organization to which Israel is trying to take bankruptcy?
Israeli prime minister has not presented any plan for the day after the war in Gaza
The answer is in a renovated Palestinian authority, a phrase that has been listening to diplomatic halls for more than 20 years, but has never been achieved. The fundamental pillars of the reform program are well known: elections to a new president and a new Parliament, and the commitment of all candidates to accept the letter of the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine, including Israel's right to exist, which means excluding those who support Hamas.
Other constituent elements of that program are to end payments to political prisoners and change the school curriculum. Great demands, all of them, for an organization that does not celebrate parliamentary elections since 2006.
Abbas already finds opposition to his plan to celebrate, for the first time since 1964 elections to the National Council, the body that supervises the organization for the liberation of Palestine (PLO). His critics argue that he is excluding people who in the last two years have led the resistance against Israel. It is the prelude to a controversy that will affect Palestine policy for many months.
The reality is that no one can predict what type of Palestinian political leadership could arise from the debris in Gaza and the fields of burned foak refugees. Trump prefers a technocratic transition body that consults to the Palestinian authority.
Stabilization force
The last piece of the puzzle is an international stabilization force, something planned both in the Trump plan and that of the UN. Initially, those soldiers would be parked on the border between Israel and Egypt, and would enter the strip coordinating with the Israeli and the American part. That implies a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces in Gaza and the disarmament of Hamas.
The officers of the Palestinian security forces would be accounts directly to the Palestinian authority and their training would be carried out initially, from Egypt, Jordan and several Islamic countries.
Netanyahu has been insisting that there will not be a Palestinian state, and some aspects of the Blair plan do not incorporate the characteristics of self -government. But the Israeli prime minister has not presented any plan for the day after the war in Gaza. The moment is being approached quickly when he is forced to say what he is willing to accept.
Translation by Francisco de Zárate.