Expert Panel: the Deal of the Century and Palestine's Future

There have been a series of deals and projects to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, or to be more exact, Palestinian-Zionist conflict suggested by the American presidents since the occupation of Palestine by the Zionist regime and foundation of Israel government. Different American presi-dents in different periods felt obligated to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict and in fact the ad-vancement of the peace negotiations in the Middle East between Arabs and the Zionist regime is a part of the United States commitment in the framework of strategic relations with the Zionist regime. Needless to say, the Zionist regime's stubbornness in these negotiations does not mean disagreement with America but is actually a tactic to maintain more power in negotiations in di-verse formulas and deals. All these American deals share a common goal which has been to end the conflict by stabilizing Israeli government's sovereignty over a large part of the historical land of Palestine, and offering some incentives such as formation of a Palestinian government without the principal ruling factors to the Palestinian part. The solution based on the formation of two governments was offered after different negotiations in Oslo Accords; however, this solution was not meant to create equal conditions or providing the minimums for the Palestinians to attain their rights. These negotiations had no clear prospects for the return of Palestinian refugees or the fate of Jerusalem. The Palestinian Liberation Organization accepted the United Nations Security Council Resolutions of 181, 242 and 338 in 1988 and gave up its claim over the whole historical land of Palestine. Madrid Conference of 1991, and then Oslo Peace Accords resulted in Palestin-ians settling for the least or the lowest level of legal or national rights in return for giving up more than half of their historical land. Nonetheless, the Zionist regime considered this participations in different peace negotiations as a tactic to decrease and control international pressure on itself. Truthfully, the two-state solution is contradictory to both the Zionists' expansionistic and occupa-tional approach and the conditions in the historical land of Palestine (including geographical con-ditions, lack of strategic depth and the demographic threat to Israel considering Arabs' popula-tion), and therefore all the efforts to resolve this conflict have been so far fruitless. It has been based on these analyses that the Zionists, especially right-wing nationalistic ones, have always wanted a bigger share of the Palestine land and have never acquiesced in dividing Jerusalem or the return of the refugees (the two important issues at hand), and considered the solution of al-ternative homeland for Palestinians as the best for themselves.
With the peace negotiations ending in stalemate and their nearly complete cessation during the last days of Obama's presidency, all attempts in line with peace based on a two-state solution failed. It is worth mentioning that even before Trump comes to power, the American politicians had come to this conclusion that the current formulation to resolve the conflict based on dividing the land between the two states and formation of two states wouldn't work. Also, they could clearly sea that the Israeli part is not willing to make any compromises and the tension in Obama-Netanyahu relations because of the continuation of Israeli settlements was the result of such ob-stinacy. Thus, the plan to exchange some lands of the West Bank with a part of Sinai Peninsula and formation of a Jordanian-Palestinian Confederation was first suggested by Obama at the end of his presidency. After Donald Trump won the presidency, he suddenly proposed a radical ver-sion of the plan known as "the Deal of the Century". There have been a lot of protests to this plan by the regional countries, international organizations and Palestinian movements (even autono-mous organizations); however, the US has greatly counted on Saudi Arabia to execute this plan. Anyway, this plan requires Arabs' significant role and their huge financial support to be executed. Not very unexpectedly, based on the current information, the Deal of the Century doesn't merely include the Palestine issue, and contains some bigger regional aspects in West Asia and North Africa.
The Tehran Foreign Policy Studies Quarterly's tenth expert panel is about "The Deal of the Cen-tury and Palestine's future". All the issues regarding this subject both in the regional and interna-tional level have been perceptively investigated by the following professors and scholars:
Hossein Amir Abdollahian, Ph.D., secretary of the International Conference on Supporting Palestine Intifada;
Mohammad Fathali, Ph.D., former Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon;
Sabet, Ph.D., supervisor of task forces in Center for Strategic Defense Research.

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