On January 28, 2020, United States president Donald Trump formally unveiled a plan to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in a White House press conference alongside Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The plan, officially titled Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People, had been delayed by two years and previously rejected by Palestine, which was not invited to the meeting.
The plan was authored by a team led by Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner. Both the Jewish West Bank settlers' Yesha Council and the Palestinian leadership opposed the plan, the former because it envisaged a Palestinian state, and the latter arguing that it was too biased in favor of Israel. The plan was divided into two parts, an economic portion and a political portion. On June 22, 2019, the Trump administration released the economic portion of the plan, titled "Peace to Prosperity". The political portion was released in late January 2020.
The plan had been characterized as requiring too few concessions from the Israelis and imposing too harsh requirements on the Palestinians. Reactions among congressional Democrats were mixed, and all the leading Democratic 2020 presidential candidates denounced it as a "smokescreen" for annexation. Proposed benefits to the Palestinians from the plan were contingent on Israel and the United States subsequently agreeing that a list of conditions have been implemented, including total demilitarization, abandonment of international legal action against Israel and the United States, and compliance "with all the other terms and conditions" of the 180-page plan. Many of these conditions were denounced by opponents of the plan as "impossible" or "fantastic". The plan proposed a series of Palestinian enclaves surrounded by an enlarged Israel, and rejected a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem proper, proposing instead a Palestinian capital on the outskirts of the city. The proposed areas for the Palestinian capital have been described as "grim neighborhoods" and are separated from Jerusalem proper by the Israeli West Bank barrier. Many Israeli settlers have expressed discontent and concern with the plan's security assurances.
During the press conference announcing the plan, Netanyahu announced the Israeli government would immediately annex the Jordan Valley and West Bank settlements while committing not to create new settlements in areas left to the Palestinians for at least four years. U.S. Ambassador to Israel David M. Friedman claimed the Trump administration had given permission for an immediate annexation, stating that "Israel does not have to wait at all" and that "we will recognize it". A spokesman for the Israeli governing Likud party tweeted that Israeli sovereignty over settlements would be declared on the following Sunday. The Trump administration clarified that no such green light for annexation had been given; Trump later explained that "I got angry and I stopped it because that was really going too far".
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 during the First World War announcing support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. The proposal was subsequently endorsed by the League of Nations as part of partitioning of the Ottoman lands. In 1917, Jews constituted less than 8% of the population; by 1947, due mainly to subsequent immigration, they comprised about 33% of the inhabitants, though owning just 7% of the land. That year the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan, which allotted 56% of the land to 30% of the population that was Jewish, although the majority of allocated land was the Negev desert. The Palestinian leadership and the Arab nations rejected the plan, resulting in the 1947–1949 Palestine war. By the war's end, Israel controlled 78% of Mandatory Palestine, and much of the local Arab populace had either been expelled or fled.
According to the IDF, Palestinians constitute the majority of the population in the area Israel now controls (Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank). Both Clinton's and the subsequent Trump plan confine most of that majority to an area less than a quarter of the land.
The West Bank and Gaza, occupied since 1948 by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, were captured by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. Shortly after the 1967 war Israel began building settlements in the land, in violation of international law.
Two states
In 1974, a UN resolution on the "Peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine" called for "two States, Israel and Palestine ... side by side within secure and recognized borders" together with "a just resolution of the refugee question in conformity with UN resolution 194".
Following the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the Palestinians gained limited autonomy in a scattered mosaic of small areas in the West Bank. There followed a cycle of negotiations, suspension, mediation, restart of negotiations and suspension again. A number of agreements were reached, until the Oslo process ended after the failure of the Camp David Summit in 2000 and the outbreak of the Second Intifada.
United Nations
Section 2 of the plan gives an "Overview of United Nations efforts" and notes that close to 700 UNGA (non-legally binding) and over 100 UNSC (legally binding) resolutions have not brought about peace. The plan says that critical recommendations are disputed both as to their meaning and legal effect and have enabled political leaders to avoid addressing the complexities of the conflict rather than allowing a realistic path to peace. Of these resolutions, François Dubuisson says that they have affirmed the Palestinian right to self-determination, that territory claimed by Palestine is under belligerent occupation, that Israeli settlements are illegal and that the annexation of East Jerusalem was illegal. Dubuisson also stated that Israel is under an obligation to withdraw from the territories it occupied, that all states in the region have a right to secure and recognized borders and that Palestinians who became refugees during the conflict have a right of return or to fair compensation. Section 21 of the plan stipulates that a final agreement will be proposed in a new UN Security Council resolution and a new United Nations General Assembly resolution.
Present position
As of September 2025, Palestine has been recognized as a state by 147 UN members, and has had the status of UN non-member observer state since 2012. Israel, the United States and most Western countries do not recognize Palestine as a state. The United Nations use the terms "Palestine", "State of Palestine", and "occupied Palestinian territory" (oPt or OPT) interchangeably depending on context. Specifically the term "occupied Palestinian territory" refers as a whole to the geographical area of the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. References to land or territory refer to land claimed by the State of Palestine. Dubuisson asserts that UN resolutions "establish all the principles that should guide the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" and that the Trump plan does not apply, or even mention, any of these principles deferring instead to Israel's security concerns and the recognition of its "valid legal and historical claims". Nickolay Mladenov, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process since 2015, points out the dangers inherent in the current situation stating "There is no Middle East peace process".
United States policy changes and development of the plan
Development of the plan began in November 2017, led by Kushner, chief negotiator Jason Greenblatt, deputy national security adviser Dina Powell, and ambassador David Friedman. Kushner, a property developer married to Trump's daughter Ivanka, had no prior experience of diplomacy, asked the parties not to talk about history, and reportedly never discussed his plan with the Palestinians. According to Peter Beinart of Jewish Currents, "another key participant in drafting the proposal was David Friedman, who became Trump's ambassador to Israel after representing his bankrupt casinos." He reportedly had close ties to the Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, compared Jewish American critics of Israel to collaborators with Nazism and was skeptical about the idea that Palestinians should have a state.
In December 2017, following through on a campaign promise and a 1995 U.S. law, Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital. A key member of Trump's team, the Arabist Dina Powell, left the team "on good terms" two days after the announcement. The move was condemned by Arab countries, and Palestinians broke off contacts with the Trump administration, though maintaining intelligence cooperation with the CIA. Trump reacted by ending both bilateral aid for Palestinians and contributions for UNRWA, citing the PA's refusal to take part in the administration's peace initiative. The United States also shut down the Palestinian diplomatic office in Washington.
In February 2019, Kushner and his personal adviser Berkowitz flew to Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Saudi Arabia in order to unveil their closely guarded plan. Qatari Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Lolwah Al Khater gave no indication that the meeting had provided much detail regarding the political plan. Jason Greenblatt, who played an important role in Trump's 25 March 2019 recognition of the Golan Heights as part of Israel, was thereafter shunned by the Palestinian authority. In the Palestinian view, Greenblatt, throughout his two years of engagement, acted as Israel's spokesman, a country he would never criticize, while he would frequently lambast the Palestinian side on his Twitter account. In April 2019, Greenblatt said that plan does not call for a confederation model or for a transfer of land from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula to the Palestinians. When asked in June 2019, Greenblatt said that the Trump plan "will include a resolution to all of the core issues, including the refugee issue, and will also focus on Israel's security concerns". In November 2019, the United States abandoned its four-decade-old position that Jewish settlements in the West Bank were inconsistent with international law.
To sway Trump, whose initial impression in 2017 was that Netanyahu did not want peace, Netanyahu tried to convince Trump that it was the Palestinians who were hostile to peace, and he adopted metaphors related to Trump's interests. The Palestinians wanted to draw the border as close to Tel Aviv as the George Washington Bridge was to the Trump Tower, and an enduring peace was as probable as "a hole-in-one through a brick wall". According to Israel Kasnett of the Jewish News Syndicate, the U.S. policy changes between 2017 and 2019 are described by "Mideast experts and Israel advocates" as a paradigm shift. Jane Kinninmont, writing for Haaretz, asserts that the "all new" economic peace approach has been tried before and doesn't work. When the plan emerged, Yehuda Shaul argued that, far from being an 'unconventional approach' that broke with tradition, the proposals were actually remarkably similar to the details set forth both in the Drobles Plan, written for the World Zionist Organization, and published over 40 years earlier, in 1979, entitled Master Plan for the Development of Settlements in Judea and Samaria, 1979–1983, and key elements of the earlier Allon Plan. The aim of the Drobles' plan was to ensure Jewish settlement in the Palestinian territories, while blocking the possibility that a Palestinian state could ever emerge.
Former United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said that, on May 22, 2017, Benjamin Netanyahu showed Donald Trump a fake and "spliced-together" video of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas calling for the killing of children. This was at a time when Trump was considering whether Israel was the obstacle to peace. Netanyahu showed Trump the video to change his position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Rolling out the plan
In late June 2019, the "economic plan" was unveiled at a U.S.-led "Peace to Prosperity" conference in Manama, Bahrain. The Palestinian leadership boycotted the entire event. According to Bess Levin, writing for Vanity Fair, the whole conference was 'panned by experts', citing one who described it as "the Monty Python sketch of Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives".
In September 2019, Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt finalized the "political plan", access to which was restricted to only Kushner, Greenblatt, Friedman and Kushner's former employee and aide Avi Berkowitz. Greenblatt resigned in September 2019, realizing, according to Martin Indyk, that the plan had no future. He was replaced by Berkowitz, a young lawyer who worked for Kushner's companies and whom, like Kushner, was raised as an Orthodox Jew with deep ties to Israel.
The economic portion of the plan, consisting of two pamphlets of 40 and 96 pages each that are filled with financial tables and economic projections, was published by the Trump administration on 22 June 2019. It was presented by Kushner during the workshop in Manama, Bahrain on June 25–26. The political portion of the plan was rolled out on 28 January 2020. The timing of roll-out showed a contrast between the Trump impeachment trial and the Israeli five weeks from the announcement of the plan. The U.S. government insisted that revealing the plan now was not designed to distract from impeachment, but was rather a reaction to political realities in Israel. Amid intense partisanship, Israel has had three elections in less than a year (April 2019 to March 2020), and may yet have a fourth. Prior to the 2020 Israeli legislative election Israel had the April 2019 Israeli legislative election, with Netanyahu facilitating the formation of the Union of the Right-Wing Parties by uniting the Jewish Home party with the far-right Otzma Yehudit party. Otzma is widely characterized as racist and traces its origins to the extremist Kahanist movement. Immediately prior to the September elections, on 10 September 2019, Netanyahu pledged to annex part of the West Bank on the border with Jordan and promised to apply "Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea" if re-elected.