It feels almost churlish to speak ill of a $50 billion plan aimed at financing economic development for Palestinians across the region. After all, millions of Palestinians, many of them refugees, are living in dire conditions. They are in desperate need of the sums of money and projects on offer in the Peace for Prosperity plan introduced by US President Donald Trump’s senior adviser, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner in Bahrain this week. Yet no glossy document or sleek gathering can conceal the fact that what has been presented is a recycling of old ideas that are perceptually flawed and unimplementable. It is a reductionist approach to a complex and multilayered conflict in which nontangible factors such as fear, beliefs and trust are as important as borders and natural resources, if not more so. What was presented at the workshop in Manama was not a peace plan by any stretch of the imagination. If, as the Trump administration claims, it is just the first chapter of something more comprehensive, it was wrong to present it without the other chapters, especially the political one. To the Palestinians it smacks of an economic peace that has the fingerprints of Israel, and its prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, all over it. The absence of an accompanying political plan left it dead on arrival as far as the Palestinians are concerned. It is hard to blame them for feeling patronized by a plan such as this, which suggests that economics takes priority over their national aspirations for self-determination and the right to live in freedom and with dignity — hence their refusal to send a delegation to the workshop in Bahrain. In concocting the plan in the manner they did, Kushner and his team come across as attempting to exploit the misery of the Palestinians and bribe them, in return for postponing, perhaps indefinitely, their national right for self-determination, their wish for Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank and the blockade on Gaza, and for East Jerusalem, at least parts of it, to become the capital of an independent Palestine. And of course, there is an equal concern that there must also be a fair and just solution for the predicament of Palestinian refugees. For the Palestinians, these issues taken together comprise the most fundamental basis for any peace agreement with Israel, and following more than two years of constant friction with the Trump administration, any hint of a purely economic peace merely wounds their national pride. Ever since President Trump coined the term “Deal of the Century,” the endgame has been vague, with no adequate process and no clear deadlines. Hence, few believe that it has the potential to lead the protracted Israeli–Palestinian conflict along a path toward a peaceful conclusion. Had it not been for the hostile environment created by Washington — by closing the office of the Palestinian delegation in Washington, by cutting all funds to the Palestinian authority and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees and, above all, by moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and merging it with consulate-general that had served as an unofficial US embassy to Palestine — then maybe, just maybe, some elements within the Palestinian polity might have been more conducive to an economic investment project as a step towards a comprehensive peace agreement. Moreover, had the Trump team taken care to learn from the history of the peace process since the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, and actually had a genuine intention to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace, they would have realized that simply throwing money at such a complex and delicate process achieves very little. In the heyday of Oslo the international community was more than happy to bankroll an Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative with sums of money so vast as to create a massive peace industry. Sadly, this achieved only sporadic success, and with no political progress to match the flow of cash, much of it ended up going to waste through a lack of strategy and capacity to invest it in a manner that would serve nation and state building for all concerned. In addition, a lack of necessary expertise and accountability, not to mention corruption and outbreaks of hostilities that have crippled much of the infrastructure and built environment, have left a legacy that requires a political process to proceed in parallel to an economic one. Ever since President Trump coined the term “Deal of the Century,” the endgame has been vague, with no adequate process and no clear deadlines. Hence, few believe that it has the potential to lead the protracted Israeli–Palestinian conflict along a path toward a peaceful conclusion. Yossi Mekelberg No one in their right mind would oppose investment in areas where Palestinians live. Gaza desperately needs electricity, clean water and proper sanitation systems. Creating jobs is essential wherever Palestinians reside in the region — especially as they are such a young society — as is housing and enabling enterprise. Nevertheless, without the required political, economic and social structures and stability, international investment will not be forthcoming. Even if the money was to become available, it is doubtful whether it could achieve the kind of prosperity claimed by Kushner’s plan. Who is he going to hand the money over to? The Palestinian institutions that the administration has cut all ties with? This back-to-the-future type of plan is a further evasion of the need to tackle head-on the core issues at the heart of the historical conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. If the argument from Washington is that because Israel is heading to the polls shortly this is not the time to introduce the political phase of a peace plan, it could have also held its horses on the economic phase, as this merely comes across as a ploy to sideline a peace agreement based on a two-state solution. Under these circumstances the introduction of the Peace to Prosperity plan is either naive and stems from ignorance or, more likely, it is disingenuous and no more than a smokescreen to give the impression of doing something to alleviate the plight of the Palestinians by offering generous investment in their well-being, while in reality it is an attempt to make the Palestinian leadership appear obstructionist. Now that the fanfare surrounding Manama is over and the dignitaries have returned home, the Palestinians are left with their bleak reality: between the state of flux of the Israeli and Palestinian political systems, and a US reluctance to use its levers of power to become an honest and genuine broker for peace, coexistence and reconciliation, further outbreaks of hostilities are now more likely than any lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.