AS expected, Trump’s Middle East peace plan is plainly being rejected by all just-minded members of the international community, which should be an eye-opener for Washington as it stands exposed for its brazen support to the Jewish State. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), on Monday, firmly rejected the plan, calling on its 57-member states not to help implement it in any form. After its meeting in Jeddah, the body representing 1.5 billion Muslims said the so-called ‘deal of the century’ does not meet the minimum aspirations and legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and contradicts the terms of reference of the peace process.
The OIC has, indeed, reflected aspirations and feelings of not just Palestinians but also the entire Muslim Ummah in rejecting a plan that is nothing but a tool to legitimize illegal occupation of Arab lands by Israel and safeguard strategic and economic interests of the Jewish State. In a rebuff to the US, the OIC Foreign Ministers reiterated support for East Jerusalem as capital of a future Palestinian State, stressing its Arab and Islamic character. There is a categorical message for Israel and its principal backer that peace would only be achieved with the end of the Israeli occupation, the full withdrawal from the territory of the State of Palestine in particular the holy city of Al-Quds Al-Sharif (Jerusalem) and other Arab territories occupied since June 1967. In real term, the Trump Plan is negation of the two-state solution as it seeks to safeguard illegal interests of Israel at the cost of an impotent Palestinian state always at the mercy of Tel Aviv. Arab League, which also rejected the plan outright, has aptly remarked that the plan leads to a status that amounts to a one-state situation that comprises two classes of citizens, that is apartheid, in which the Palestinians will be second-class citizens, deprived of the basic rights of citizenship. The clear cut statements of OIC and Arab League would also help remove the negative impression created by some initial but vague statements by some Arab states that were seen as a sort of approval of the unjust and one-eyed plan. Now the message is clear: There should be comprehensive negotiated solution under established terms of reference.
