The fol­low­ing arti­cle has been pub­lished in The Aus­tralian by Alex Ryvchin.

The eco­nom­ic com­po­nent of the Trump administration’s intense­ly await­ed plan to achieve an end to the con­flict between Israel and the Pales­tini­ans has been released.

For­mal­ly titled Peace to Pros­per­i­ty, the pro­pos­al con­tains a three-pronged pro­gram of invest­ment and reforms to trans­form the Pales­tin­ian econ­o­my and soci­ety through the injec­tion of $US50 bil­lion ($71.8bn) of for­eign invest­ment, oppor­tu­ni­ties for ­ordi­nary Pales­tini­ans in employ­ment, edu­ca­tion, even recre­ation, and the estab­lish­ment of a trans­par­ent and com­pe­tent Pales­tin­ian admin­is­tra­tion, with­out which busi­ness­es will have no con­fi­dence to invest and Pales­tin­ian insti­tu­tions will con­tin­ue to with­er.

The plan assumes, cor­rect­ly, that peace build­ing and viable Pales­tin­ian self-gov­ern­ment will ­require far more than glam­orous sign­ing cer­e­monies on man­i­cured lawns. In offer­ing unprece­dent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties while main­tain­ing diplo­mat­ic and eco­nom­ic pres­sure on the bloat­ed, inert Pales­tin­ian lead­er­ship, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has over­thrown the old dis­cred­it­ed order of attempt­ing to get the Pales­tini­ans to nego­ti­ate in good faith by extract­ing upfront con­ces­sions from Israel.

Yet the lat­est pro­pos­al, astute as it may be, is des­tined to fail, just like more con­ven­tion­al diplo­mat­ic efforts of pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tions. This is because the Trump plan, like all oth­ers, is found­ed on an irre­deemable fal­la­cy: that the Pales­tin­ian lead­er­ship wants to end the con­flict.

Long before the Trump plan was tabled or its con­tents were revealed, it was pre­dictably reject­ed out of hand by the Pales­tin­ian lead­er­ship. Any plan that promis­es to “empow­er the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple” and “improve the pub­lic sector’s abil­i­ty to serve its peo­ple” is a threat to the sta­tus quo by which the lead­ers of the Pales­tin­ian move­ment have attained per­son­al sta­tus and wealth while shed­ding all account­abil­i­ty to the peo­ple they claim to serve.

Saeb Erekat, the peren­ni­al “chief nego­tia­tor” for the Pales­tini­ans, announced a boy­cott of the region­al con­fer­ence in Bahrain at which the plan is being pre­sent­ed. Erekat’s three-decade career as a nego­tia­tor has result­ed in three rejec­tions of a two-state solu­tion, which would have deliv­ered the Pales­tini­ans state­hood over ter­ri­to­ry equiv­a­lent in size to 100 per cent of the area of the West Bank and Gaza, with a cap­i­tal in east Jerusalem, an end to the block­ade of Gaza and a solu­tion to the Pales­tin­ian refugee ­prob­lem.

The equal­ly long­stand­ing and self-serv­ing Pales­tin­ian leg­is­la­tor Hanan Ashrawi, who laud­ed Sad­dam Hus­sein for “stand­ing up for Arab rights, Arab dig­ni­ty, Arab pride” fol­low­ing Iraq’s inva­sion of Kuwait, and noto­ri­ous­ly opposed the his­toric Oslo Accords because they recog­nised Israel, called the Bahrain con­fer­ence “delu­sion­al, irre­spon­si­ble” and “an insult to our intel­li­gence”.

Ashrawi has a Syd­ney Peace Prize to her name and the ado­ra­tion of Bob Carr and parts of the glob­al left, but not a sin­gle, tan­gi­ble leg­isla­tive or diplo­mat­ic achieve­ment in three decades of pub­lic life.

The petu­lant refusal of the Pales­tin­ian lead­er­ship to even con­sid­er a pro­pos­al intend­ed to offer ordi­nary Pales­tini­ans an alter­na­tive to war, con­flict and vic­tim­hood is a betray­al and a crime but is impec­ca­bly con­sis­tent with ear­li­er Pales­tin­ian respons­es to inter­na­tion­al efforts aimed at giv­ing them state­hood.

When in 1937 the British first pro­posed resolv­ing com­pet­ing Jew­ish and Arab claims to the land through par­ti­tion and the cre­ation of a first-ever inde­pen­dent Arab Pales­tin­ian state, along­side a Jew­ish state on just 4 per cent of the British Man­date ter­ri­to­ry, the reac­tion of the Pales­tin­ian lead­er­ship was an out­right “no”, backed by wide­spread vio­lence and calls for the “lib­er­a­tion of the coun­try and estab­lish­ment of an Arab gov­ern­ment”.

When the UN held con­sul­ta­tions through­out the coun­try in 1947, again seek­ing to medi­ate peace­ful­ly rival claims to the land, the Arab lead­ers boy­cotted the pro­ceed­ings.

Peri­od­i­cal­ly, some Pales­tin­ian lead­ers have admit­ted that their strat­e­gy of boy­cott backed by vio­lence has been utter­ly ruinous. Pales­tin­ian jurist Hen­ry Cat­tan admit­ted the 1947 boy­cott had been “unfor­tu­nate”.

Pales­tin­ian union­ist Maj­di Shel­la ­admit­ted the Pales­tini­ans “have a long tra­di­tion of boy­cotting ­every­thing. Some­times boy­cotting is the eas­i­er road. If you want to do noth­ing, boy­cott.”

Yet the Pales­tini­ans have refined their instinct for rejec­tion and polit­i­cal self-immo­la­tion to such an extent that they appear to know no oth­er path.

This is why Pales­tin­ian riot­ers destroyed green­hous­es left to them by the Israelis fol­low­ing the uni­lat­er­al ­Israeli with­draw­al from Gaza in 2005. This is why last year Pales­tini­ans in Gaza set fire to the Kerem Shalom bor­der cross­ing through which med­i­cine, aid and con­sumer prod­ucts intend­ed for the Pales­tini­ans are trans­ferred.

Far from hold­ing Pales­tin­ian lead­ers account­able for their betray­al of their own peo­ple, instead sup­port­ers of the Pales­tin­ian cause in the West uncrit­i­cal­ly have backed the lat­est Pales­tin­ian boy­cott, there­by mak­ing them­selves com­plic­it in the entrenched ­cul­ture of vio­lence, cor­rup­tion and big­otry of the Pales­tin­ian lead­er­ship.

After all, just as Pales­tin­ian lead­ers have been enriched by their own obstruc­tion­ism, one won­ders what anti-Israel activists would do with them­selves if the Pales­tini­ans ever chose peace and pros­per­i­ty over per­pet­u­al con­flict.

Per­haps the most telling state­ment on the Trump pro­pos­al came from a senior Sau­di diplo­mat who called the Pales­tini­ans “irre­spon­si­ble” for refus­ing even to enter­tain a pro­pos­al intend­ed to pro­vide immense ben­e­fits for their own peo­ple.

“His­to­ry and Allah have brought a real oppor­tu­ni­ty,” the diplo­mat said. “The blood con­flict had last­ed too long. The Saud­is and all Gulf states plus Egypt and Jor­dan realise that the age of war with Israel is over.”

It took the Arab nations three failed inva­sions of Israel and decades of eco­nom­ic war­fare and fruit­less diplo­mat­ic skir­mish­es final­ly to recog­nise that the Jew­ish state is nei­ther tem­po­rary nor a threat to their inter­ests. One won­ders how many more decades of boy­cott and blood­shed will be need­ed before Pales­tin­ian lead­ers final­ly chart a new and con­struc­tive course.

Alex Ryvchin is co-Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry and the author of The Anti-Israel Agen­da – Inside the Polit­i­cal War on the Jew­ish State (Gefen Pub­lish­ing House, 2017).