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).