On January 28, 2020, Trump unveiled a so-called "New Middle East Peace Plan" to promote the Palestinian-Israeli issue. In this plan, the United States will intervene in and preside over Middle East affairs in all aspects of politics and economics, with the aim of resolving the chaos in the Middle East once and for all.
However, just three days after the plan was announced, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced the severance of diplomatic relations with the United States, and Iran, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and other Middle Eastern countries also criticized and protested against the United States.
Even Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have always supported the United States, have not commented on the plan, and demonstrations have erupted in major cities in the Middle East, such as Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Amman, and Istanbul, to protest against the plan, which is clearly biased in favor of Israel.
So, what kind of plan could cause such an uproar in the Middle East?
懂王的傲慢——“想挣钱，就得跪着”
In 2017, when Trump was just inaugurated as president, the "New Middle East Peace Plan" was already in the making of the US government, and the Americans called this plan the "deal of the century", which shows the importance attached to it.
The content of the plan can be summarized in a nutshell:
First, the United States claims to have "tailored" a security governance system for Palestine, and will carry out "demilitarization" in Palestine in the future, and designate Hamas and Jihad as terrorist organizations to deal a heavy blow.
The Palestinian government (Fatah) also wants to reduce its military, retain only a limited number of security forces, and cooperate with the United States and Israel in the task of counterterrorism. At the same time, the IDF has the right to enter Palestinian territory to carry out "security missions".
How do we understand this paragraph?
Suffice it to say, the United States is trying to divide the different political factions in Palestine and intensify their infighting. Hamas and its ilk are "thorns" that must be uprooted, and Fatah still has room to talk about it, and can exert political pressure to force it to give in and accept it as a "dog."
It can be seen from this that the Trump administration's intervention in the Middle East under the guise of "peace and security in the Middle East" is not actually to solve the problem of the Palestinian region at all, but to solve the problem of Palestine.
Second, the United States has closed the Palestinian office in the United States, moved its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, supported Israel's construction of Jewish settlements in Palestine, and the Palestinian side wants to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's inalienable capital.
And Palestine may not join any international organization without Israel's permission.
Listening to what this said, if Palestine wants to join any international organization as an independent political entity, it still has to look at Israel's face.
Taken together, it can be seen that the US government does not respect the political sovereignty of Palestine at all, but regards Palestine as a disobedient "Dominion" in Israel.
It can be said that the United States has done its utmost to benefit Israel, which is "both father and son," and has done its best to suppress Palestine.
In this regard, Trump said: Don't worry, I don't have paper - I still have a hand left.
The "New Middle East Peace Plan" also addresses the economic problems of Palestine.
The United States has vowed to raise $50 billion over 10 years to build Palestinian infrastructure, open up high-tech "industrial zones" and "agricultural zones," double Palestine's GDP within 10 years, and reduce the number of poor people in Palestine by half.
Good guys, live out is the Middle Eastern version of the "Marshall Plan".
At first glance, it sounds like this set of economic aid plans is not bad, but this is like the pie drawn by your boss that "plans to give you a promotion and a salary increase", and it doesn't matter at all. The $50 billion that the United States wants to "raise" is not allocated from the US government's own pocket.
In the US plan, none of the allies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates can run, and they all have to pay, and the United States itself will contribute a fraction at most. Wouldn't it be beautiful to take the money from the Middle East and invest it in the Middle East, and then I, the United States, will be a "great good man"!
As for the question of how the $50 billion will be apportioned and how the investment will be planned, the United States said: Well, it is still being conceived.
And this is already an old trick of the United States. Since the end of World War II, as far as Western European countries and as far as Japan and South Korea, the United States has repeatedly tried and tested the way of influencing or even manipulating the sovereignty of other countries through "economic aid."
It can only be said that Wang is worthy of being a businessman, and the US government headed by him naturally looks at the problem from the perspective of a capitalist.
In the eyes of the Trump administration, Palestine is poor and chaotic like this, and if you sell your territorial sovereignty in exchange for 50 billion in aid, isn't that a pinch? To put it bluntly, the king is telling Palestine that if you want to make money, you have to kneel.
Biden's dilemma - "the landlord's family has no surplus food"
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a military operation codenamed "Al-Aqsa Flood" against Israel, in which thousands of rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip and landed in Israel, destroying a large number of Jewish settlements. Subsequently, the Kassan, a Hamas-affiliated armed brigade, infiltrated areas of southern Israel, exchanged fire with Israeli forces, and captured dozens of Israeli officers and soldiers.
This annoys Israel.
In the early hours of the next morning, Netanyahu strongly claimed that the Israeli army would use all its military forces to destroy Hamas.
At the same time, the Israeli Ministry of Energy announced that it would cut off electricity, fuel and supplies to the Gaza Strip.
As a result, a new round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict broke out.
In the following six months, the war gradually spread to neighboring countries, and continued to escalate and expand in the Middle East.
Over the past six months, Syria, Allah and the Houthis have repeatedly fired rockets at Israel; the Houthis have blocked the Red Sea and continued to attack Israeli-linked ships; Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has fired dozens of rockets and suicide drones at Israel in the past few days. Obviously, everyone is very unpleasant to look at Israel in all directions.
Despite Israel's fierce war at a time when it is in a state of flux, its international posture remains tough.
On April 7, 2024, Israel has rapidly withdrawn most of its troops from northern Gaza, but has left one brigade behind to maintain the siege on Gaza and prevent the return of Gaza's population to northern Gaza.
Its propaganda rhetoric of "completely eliminating Hamas" and "punishing Palestine" has not changed.
On the side of the United States, the people sitting on the throne of the White House have been replaced by today's "old man" Biden, who was full of ambition and understood Wang Trump.
Unlike Israel's usual tough stance, since the outbreak of the conflict, the United States has changed dramatically from its initial "unconditional support" for Israel, to its demand for an Israeli ceasefire on April 4, and the addition of a series of additional conditions for continued support for Israel for the first time.
What made the Biden administration change?
One is the influence of public opinion.
After the end of the Cold War, Western countries led by the United States can be said to have controlled world public opinion, and by manipulating traditional media and exaggerating powerful cultural influences, Western countries seem to have defined who is democratic and righteous and who is authoritarian and evil.
However, in the current Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the West's "right to speak in public opinion" has been broken.
TikTok has completely ripped off the fig leaf of the Western media, and a large number of real battlefield images in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as well as the brutal appearance of the Israeli government in killing civilians, bombing hospitals and schools, and engaging in "genocide", have been truly revealed.
As a result, public opinion completely reversed. Palestine has received solidarity and support from people around the world, and even in major Western cities such as London and Paris, many people have taken to the streets to protest against Israel's atrocities.
The self-immolation incident of US soldier Aaron Bushnell has directly exposed the ugliness of the US military's direct involvement in the genocide of the Palestinian people, and has set off an upsurge of public opinion against the United States and Israel.
The second is the war situation.
Israel is besieging Gaza, and the countries of the Middle East are besieging Israel. As a nail in the coffin of the United States embedded in the Islamic world, Israel's position as a "little bully" in the Middle East is no longer so solid.
According to Israeli Finance Minister Avi Lieberman:
Just one month after the war began, Israel had lost $51 billion, equivalent to 10 percent of its GDP.
Think about Trump's promise to "raise $50 billion in 10 years" in the "New Middle East Peace Plan" in the "New Middle East Peace Plan", which is equivalent to Israel losing all this money in a month.
In the first quarter after the outbreak of the war, Israel's GDP fell by 19.4% on an annualized basis, while at the same time, Israel's defense budget has increased significantly, with defense spending nearly doubling compared to 2022.
While paying such a great price, Israel's results have been unsatisfactory.
After moving into northern Gaza, Israel has largely failed to achieve any of the desired strategic results, especially after being mired in street fighting with Hamas, and the Israeli rate of loss of armored units is particularly staggering.
With Israel's national size, it cannot afford the attrition of protracted and guerrilla warfare in the face of Hamas, and the image of good fighting that it has established in several Middle East wars over the past few decades is gradually "collapsing".
In the case of both defeat in the war of public opinion and in actual combat, Israel can be said to have lost both face and confidence. Israel is no longer the Israel of the past, and the United States is not the same as it used to be.
In the 40s, the United States was able to provide a large amount of weapons and equipment and military supplies to more than a dozen allies such as Britain and the Soviet Union while making expeditions to Europe and the Pacific, but now, the 24,000 shells produced by the United States every month are not even enough for Ukraine and Israel to share.
In the 90s, in order to invade Iraq, the United States could send 690,000 troops, 2,000 tanks, 1,740 flying aircraft, and 6 aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf;
Today, the United States, in the face of the Houthis who continue to sink American ships in the Red Bay, not only does not make a decent military response, but also repeatedly claims that it will "revoke the Houthi terrorist organization designation" in order to ease relations with them.
Compared with the tough and repressive posture of the Trump administration, the current Biden administration seems timid and hesitant.
The core reason is the same as that of Israel: the United States is gradually shrinking in both soft and hard power in the international arena, and its control over the situation in the Middle East has begun to be stretched.
Therefore, even if Trump can "return to the throne" in the US presidential election in November this year, I am afraid that it will be difficult for the US government to regain the arrogant posture when it came up with the "New Middle East Peace Plan".
It is undeniable that the United States is still strong today, but if it wants to rely on its national strength to intervene in the Middle East while being optimistic about the Americas, taking into account Europe, and eyeing the Asia-Pacific region, I am afraid it is really a lack of skills.
Knowing that the United States is standing behind Israel, the Middle East countries led by Iran are still jointly attacking Israel militarily.
epilogue
In this world, hegemony will not be eternal, but the people's desire for independence and self-determination will be eternal.
The Trump administration's "New Middle East Peace Plan" four years ago did not bring the Palestinians to their knees, and Israel's tanks and turrets are unlikely to bring the Palestinians to their knees today.
This is because the key to unlocking peace in the Middle East is not hidden in a piece of paper from the United States, nor in the guns of hegemonism, but in the people of the Middle East themselves.