Ami Ayalon, Gilead Sher, and Orni Petruschka, write:

It sounds great on paper: The U.S. administration will hold a “peace to prosperity” economic workshop in Bahrain on June 25 and 26 to jumpstart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Yet scratch the shiny PR surface and you’ll find a dangerously simplistic approach to a complicated situation. Anybody who followed the last 30 years of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict understands that President Donald Trump’s announcement of this first step on the way to a deal is all form and no substance: a new name for the same failed idea known as “economic peace,” and before that as “a new Middle East.”

Putting economics first, before a political process, is more than a tactical error, yet another in a long line of failed attempts to advance towards a permanent two-state solution. The Trump administration’s focus on economics—led by Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner—is a strategic mistake that could stymie the negotiations before they begin. If Trump and his team studied history, they would know that placing economics before core political issues is a slap in the face to the Palestinians. Of course, the Palestinians want to improve their quality of life; of course they want to build a growing economy. But these are secondary goals, to be pursued after self-determination is achieved. If the Palestinians could be “bought” with economic benefits, we would be long past the need for talks. Trump’s approach is not only immoral, it is impractical.

The truth is that economics were never enough to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Paris Agreement, which followed the Oslo Accords—a set of agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed in the 1990s that were never implemented to the letter—focused on economics, and it did not salvage the deterioration of the security situation that resulted in the second intifada, a bloody 4-year Palestinian revolt against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Neither the first nor the second intifadas broke out for economic reasons (the Palestinian economy was not faring badly, relatively speaking). They erupted because the way forward was unclear, and because the Palestinians felt that the economic benefits offered would not lead to the end of the occupation. High hopes for trust-building had been dashed against the absence of a political plan to end the conflict. This void nurtured despair and disappointment, leading to angry uprisings that cost many lives on both sides. [Continue reading…]