‘Deal of the Century’: A cynical reelection ploy

The peace agreement, signed between Jordan and Israel in 1994, was originally based on a common interest to achieve a comprehensive peace that would improve the regional environment and avert potential conflict amidst an untenable status quo.  For Jordan, it also entailed correcting a historical injustice and alleviating the Palestinian’s needless and oppressive reality as a result of living under an occupation.  This all rested on endorsing a political structure in the form of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as the future capital of Palestine.

Jordan has long acquired the recognition as a prudent and responsible member of the international community. Its long tradition of seeking political solutions to the litany of regional entanglements and political fragmentation is well known.  Its unwavering resolve to bring peace to the region is also very familiar to the international community. Its leadership interjected political acumen to promote reconciliation, warning that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict cannot be corralled and remain under wraps forever.

Today’s reality, however, falls far short from that ideal of a comprehensive peace.  The region is going to be ill served by the imposition of a perfidious plan. The “Deal of the Century” and the theatrics that accompanied it simply amounted to a snub. It served no purpose other than to ensure that Palestinian statehood remain a false hope.

Culpability for this sad state of affairs lies largely with liable shortsighted opportunists. The imperative to propagate their personal interests, to the detriment of the common good, entailed exploiting their respective voters.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu political posturing and flagrant pledge to annex the occupied Jordan Valley, ahead of Israel’s elections in March, may have delighted his ring-wing base, but it encapsulated Israel’s excess affront to diplomacy as well as demonstrating the paucity of strategic thinking. His extraordinary stubborn efforts to sabotage Israel’s peace treaty with Jordan seems to have been motivated by his obsessive mission to remain in power and avoid corruption charges.

It remains unclear whether Netanyahu’s rival contender in the elections, former military chief-of-staff and chairman of Blue and White alliance, Benny Gantz, will navigate a different outlook and outcome, should he become Israel’s next prime minister.

Inured to Israel’s standard practice of flouting international law, there is good reason to doubt that an Israeli prime minister will have the political courage and conviction to catapult the peace process out of the deep-freeze. Then there is the question of whether or not Gantz possesses enough political heft to influence his fellow ministers and implacable cohorts in Israel, that an urgent change of course is crucial.

Yet, whatever doubts political observers may have about this from actually happening, it would mark the pinnacle of statesmanship if Gantz did embark on such a path.

Set against this state of affairs is also the worrying international and regional landscape. The prospect of more military adventurism, which would exact a heavy toll in terms of human life, is alarming. Meanwhile, the rise of illiberal behaviour in significant quarters of the world has created a dismal reality. The disparaging politics that has risen raises the stakes on a global level.

Predicting the outcome of the emerging status quo is difficult. But forestalling more upheaval in this part of the world will depend on statesmanship of the highest order, and one that possesses a huge reservoir of goodwill.

The only conceivable way to gain influence over a range of vexing issues, such as failed states, internecine conflicts, migration, climate change and the proliferation of deadly weapons, to name but a few, is the preservation of the mechanisms that govern inter-state relations. More so, safeguarding the integrity of the rules-based international order and its institutions is the only way to procure accountability between nations.