Nobody should be surprised that US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace proposal is heavily tilted towards the Israelis. What is surprising is that, rather than rejecting Trump’s proposal, the world has left the Palestinians largely on their own.

While dismissing the Palestinians’ national yearnings with the patronising promise to ‘improve their lives’, the Trump peace plan embraces Israel’s national narrative that it alone has valid historical claims to Judea and Samaria, the Jews’ biblical homeland. So, while it would give the Palestinians their own state, it would be a fragmented territory covering Gaza and 70% of a West Bank dotted with Israeli settlements and surrounded on all sides by Israeli-annexed territory. Its capital would be located in a suburb of East Jerusalem, which would remain Israel’s undivided capital.

The plan ignores Palestinian demands for the right of return to homes left when Israel was established in 1948—a right that was recognised at the time by United Nations General Assembly resolution 194. Moreover, in line with Israel’s far-right ethnocratic ambitions, the border would be drawn in a way that strips 300,000 Israeli Arabs of their citizenship, making them citizens of the Palestinian state.

The Palestinian territories would be connected by a maze of tunnels and bridges, and much like the Bantustans of apartheid South Africa, they would be subject to overwhelming Israeli military control. Anyone entering the new Palestine—by air, sea or land—would have to go through Israel.

Meanwhile, Palestinians would be prohibited from creating their own armed forces or engaging in any activities ‘that adversely affect the State of Israel’s security’—as determined by Israel’s government. Likewise, the Palestinians would have to earn the right to this sham state by disarming Hamas and proving—not to any international body, but to Israel and the United States—that they have created a democratic system governed by the rule of law.

In presenting such a deeply unfair plan, Trump has destroyed any credibility that the US may have still had as an honest mediator. Moreover, he has undermined the belief—crucial for progress towards a fair deal—that internationally agreed principles of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, from the need to adhere to the pre-1967 borders to the illegality of Israeli settlements, are unassailable.

Given how willing the rest of the world seems to be to abandon the Palestinians, these losses will not be easy to reverse, even if Trump loses the November presidential election and his successor abandons the plan, as candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren seem prepared to do. The fact that anyone is taking Trump’s skewed plan seriously is a testament, first and foremost, to the radical transformation that the Middle East has undergone in recent years. Solidarity with the Palestinians used to be the glue that held together an otherwise fragmented Arab world; now, their plight is seen as a nuisance, a burden and above all an obstacle to rapprochement with Israel.

Yes, the Arab League repudiated the US plan at a meeting of its foreign ministers in Cairo. But the truth, as Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement put it, is that Trump’s ‘deal of shame’ would not have happened without the ‘complicity and betrayal’ of several Arab states.

The ambassadors of Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates participated in the White House unveiling ceremony, implying these countries’ approval. Moreover, despite ‘renewing its assertion’ of support for the Palestinian people, Saudi Arabia noted that it ‘values the efforts’ of the Trump administration in ‘developing a comprehensive peace deal between the Israeli and Palestinian sides’. Given Trump’s apparent loyalty to Saudi Arabia—based, not least, on lucrative arms deals—the kingdom’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was probably privy to the plan’s contents before it was released.

In Jordan, King Abdullah initially warned that Israel’s annexation of the Jordan Valley would have serious security consequences. But he has since advised other countries to ‘look at the glass half full’. Judging by its ambiguous attitude towards Palestinian statehood, one must wonder whether Jordan would prefer having as its neighbour Israel, with which it has historically colluded to rein in Palestinian aspirations, rather than a Palestinian state.

Similarly, Egypt’s foreign ministry called upon both sides ‘to carefully consider’ the peace plan, and even claimed that creating an independent and sovereign state in the occupied territories would restore all the ‘legitimate rights’ of Palestinians. And though Tunisia’s president condemned the peace plan as ‘the injustice of the century’, the country’s ambassador to the UN was soon sacked for leading the challenge against it in the Security Council.

But it is not only the Arab world that is letting down the Palestinians. The European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Josep Borrell, strongly condemned the plan. However, his unilateral statement was needed precisely because some EU countries—including the Czech Republic, Hungary and Italy—blocked a shared resolution. France, for its part, gave the plan a cautious welcome.

Beyond the EU, the UK government hailed the Trump peace plan as ‘a serious proposal’ and ‘a positive step forward’. And despite officially condemning the plan for ‘contradicting UN resolutions’, Russia stands to gain from what a Moscow Times editorial called the ‘unilaterally imposed humiliating terms’ of the deal. This ‘provides a precedent for major powers dictating terms to weaker ones’ and vindicates Russia’s occupation of Crimea, ‘Russia’s West Bank’. In fact, ‘limited sovereignty’ was exactly what the Kremlin wanted to give the former Soviet republics.

If, with the probable connivance of the Trump administration, Israel annexes its West Bank settlements, the paradigm shift in the Israeli–Palestinian peace process would be complete. Israel’s status as an apartheid state would be officially confirmed. And the Palestinians will face a stark choice: submit or struggle. If they choose the latter, it had better be a diplomatic struggle; a third intifada would be calamitous for their cause. Boycotting America, still an indispensable power for an equitable regional solution, proved to be a wrongheaded Palestinian policy.

During the recent flare-up between the United States and Iran, US President Donald Trump tweeted that he was prepared to bomb ‘52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago)’. Some of these targets, he added, would be ‘important to Iran and the Iranian culture’, suggesting that he was willing to strike Iranian national heritage sites.

Trump’s tweet indicates that his entire Iran policy is rooted deep in the past, as if actions taken today represent a belated response to wounds inflicted long ago. If so, his administration has something in common with the Iranian regime, which has long dwelled on the real and perceived wounds of bygone eras.

After all, Iranians (and many others) point out ad nauseam that the US had a hand in the 1953 coup that deposed the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, and installed the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, which itself was toppled in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Likewise, Iranians note repeatedly that the US assisted Saddam Hussein during Iraq’s ruthless war against Iran in the 1980s.

Listening to the litany of grievances on both sides, it’s difficult to avoid the impression that both the US and Iran are hostages of history. Obsessed with the real or imagined injustices of the past, each finds it impossible to move forward. In Iran, the US is still the ‘Great Satan’, just as Iran remains the quintessential bête noire for many in the American foreign-policy establishment.

Although there are real issues of contention between the two countries, the US–Iran conflict has long since broken the bounds of rationality. It persists because it serves domestic political interests in each country. Iranian hardliners benefit enormously from having such a visible enemy against which to mobilise. As tensions have escalated in recent years, their position has been strengthened. The regime has increasingly used the perceived US threat as a pretext to repress its own people and to foment chaos across the region. For every voice in the US advocating regime change in Iran, there are Iranians seeking to defend the regime by any means necessary.

Similarly, listening to some of the US pundit and political class, it sometimes sounds as if hostility towards Iran is a fundamental American value. Whether their goal is regime change or something else, most in the US foreign-policy establishment claim to want Iran to become a ‘normal country’. But do Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and other US regional allies count as ‘normal countries’? And what about the US itself? American exceptionalism dictates that it is anything but ‘normal’.

A more rational, objective approach is still possible. It might not seem like it now, but there is ample room for bilateral cooperation. Iran’s leaders have long insisted that the purpose of their country’s nuclear program is peaceful. But, given Iran’s past behaviour, there clearly needs to be an intrusive system of international inspections in place before the world can have confidence in that claim. Picking up where the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action left off and negotiating such a system should not be seen as an impossible task.

Both countries have a profound interest in maintaining stability in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US doesn’t want these countries to become Iranian satellites, and the Iranians don’t want them to serve as bases for aggression against Iran. These aims are not irreconcilable; in fact, proper diplomacy could achieve both sides’ primary objectives.

The US and Iran also have a joint interest in developing a more robust security structure for the broader Gulf region. In recent months, Gulf countries have been calling for strategic de-escalation vis-à-vis Iran, with even Saudi Arabia expressing a desire for dialogue. There are some diplomatic initiatives already on the table, and negotiating a new regional agreement on ballistic missiles could serve as a good starting point for ongoing engagement.

More broadly, a gradual de-escalation of the conflict between the US, Iran and their respective allies and proxies would allow for all parties to focus more on their own priorities for the future. Iran, Saudi Arabia and many other countries in the region clearly need to liberalise their respective economic and political systems, not least by introducing more protections for human rights. But this is unlikely to happen in a climate of confrontation. The longer the conflict continues, the less chance these countries will have to pursue constructive long-term reforms.

And as long as both the US and Iran remain prisoners of their respective histories, regional stability will be at risk. The sooner they can look to the future instead of the past, the better it will be for everyone. There is plenty of common ground for fruitful cooperation. Someone needs to step onto it and show that it isn’t mined.

As in 1848, 1968, 1989, and 2010–2012, a wave of popular protests has taken the world by surprise. Ongoing mass revolts—in Beirut, Santiago, Hong Kong, Algiers, Baghdad and other cities—are gaining strength and wrongfooting governments. But although the temptation to seek historical comparisons is understandable, the 2019 uprisings have a distinct flavor of their own.

Nearly a decade ago, many in the West referred to the 1848 ‘springtime of peoples’ when describing the protest movements that began in Tunisia and spread to Egypt, Libya, Syria and other Arab countries. Likewise, many of the Lebanese whom I met on a recent visit to Qatar had no doubt that a new ‘Arab Spring’ cycle was unfolding today, except this time on a global scale, and seemed torn between excitement and anxiety.

Today’s protests also carry echoes of May 1968, not least in their youthfulness, spontaneity and lack of identifiable leaders. Yet, as with any historical development, the events of 2019 must be understood on their own terms.

In 1968, at a time of full employment, a combination of boredom and revolutionary utopianism led young demonstrators to erect barricades in Paris. In 1989, the hope of attaining freedom and prosperity mobilised protesters to help bring down communist regimes. But in 2019, anger and despair have replaced dreams and hope, notwithstanding the reasonable possibility of improvement in countries such as Sudan and Algeria.

If the 2019 revolts have a common thread or unifying explanation, it is the yearning for dignity and respect. People have taken to the streets because they feel they have been humiliated, ignored and despised for too long by irresponsible, corrupt and distant political elites.

The immediate triggers for the various protests—whether a tax on the use of WhatsApp in Lebanon, or an increase in metro fares in Santiago—often seem secondary or even trivial. And, like in Cairo in 2011, or in Beirut in 2005 after the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, mobile phones are the primary instrument for rallying fellow rebels.

But regardless of whether the initial cause of the revolt was primarily economic (as in Lebanon or Chile) or political (as in Hong Kong), the authorities have in each case been caught by surprise and responded too slowly. The protesters, too, seem amazed by their sheer numbers and strength. Having started by opposing a new tax, they suddenly find themselves calling for an end to the regime.

Camillo Cavour, the architect of Italian unification in the 19th century, once remarked, ‘Reforms made in time weaken the revolutionary spirit.’ Reforms that come too late, on the other hand, succeed only in feeding popular anger.

As a result, political leaders who had long refused any kind of compromise or concession now give the impression of being seized by panic. They are seemingly ready to reduce their privileges either spectacularly, as in Lebanon, or more symbolically, as in Chile. But, for many of the demonstrators, whatever governments do now seems too little, too late.

Complicating matters further, the protests are taking place at a time of exceptional geopolitical instability, fuelled by the strategic disengagement of the United States under President Donald Trump and the continued rise of authoritarian powers. Disorder in the streets is reinforcing a sense of global turmoil, and vice versa.

For starters, the US no longer seems willing or able to play a significant role in Latin America, its traditional backyard. US disengagement from the region has helped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro remain in power, despite massive popular protests against his rule. And although Chileans may be legitimately afraid of a return to the sort of civil violence that the country hasn’t experienced in decades, they, like other Latin Americans, must face their destiny largely alone.

The US is still a significant player in the Middle East, as the recent killing of Islamic State’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi showed, but it is withdrawing from that region as well. Russia is progressively replacing the US, at least in Syria, and probably will give way to China at some point. There, too, those calling for political and economic reform will find themselves largely on their own. It’s hard to see how popular demands for freedom and equality in the region can be reconciled with the rise of authoritarian powers such as Russia and China, not to mention regional players like Iran and Turkey. All fear pro-democracy protests like the plague.

Against this background, the presence of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at the first Russia–Africa summit in Sochi recently was particularly significant. It suggests that Egypt, which became a US ally in the 1970s, is hedging its bets by reviving its traditional alliance with Russia (and previously the Soviet Union).

In Lebanon, protesters of all confessions have united under the banner of ‘We are a people’, thereby challenging the sectarian balancing acts that have long shaped the country’s politics. But it remains to be seen whether this popular revolt will reshuffle the geopolitical cards like the protests in East Germany in 1989 or Syria in 2011 did.

Protesters around the world are rising up against systems that often are rotten to the core and cannot be reformed. But creating a fairer, and therefore more stable, new order will be a hugely difficult task.

For that reason, the year 2019 could end up resembling the ‘unfinished spring’ of 2010–2012. But given the unique spirit of the current protests and the current state of geopolitical flux, almost any prediction is mere speculation. The future—as it always is at such historical moments—is open.

The Palestinian Authority boycotted the US-led international conference held in Bahrain in mid-June on the economic aspects of the US Middle East peace plan. PA President Mahmoud Abbas made the decision to reject the US proposal—which would have provided around US$50 billion towards improving healthcare, education, investment and infrastructure for Palestinians—even before it was released. He also launched a campaign of intimidation against Palestinian businesspeople who attended the summit. The PA’s intelligence forces arrested one of them, Salah Abu Miala, on his return to the West Bank city of Hebron, while another reportedly went into hiding.

US pressure led to the release of Abu Miala, but the message to Palestinians was clear: those who dissent from Palestinian orthodoxy and seek to normalise ties with Israel in the interests of peace and prosperity will be punished.

The old guard of the Palestinian leadership has for decades relied heavily on international aid, but that funding is now drying up as more and more countries place conditions on it. For example, both Australia and the US have refused to directly fund the PA because it continues to make salary payments to terrorists and their families.

The Trump administration is offering the Palestinians an economic model that would end the reliance on aid. The plan aims to more than double Palestinian GDP, create a million new jobs, and reduce poverty in Palestinian areas by 50%. Infrastructure projects under consideration include desalination and energy plants and a road and rail corridor between Gaza and the West Bank. More than half of the funds would be spent on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, with the remainder divided among Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon for the Palestinians living in those nations.

Before dismissing the proposal, perhaps the PA should have asked the Palestinian people, whom polls show are overwhelmingly concerned about economic and quality-of-life issues, if they would like to have improved education, job prospects, healthcare, electricity and water management? In Gaza the unemployment rate is estimated at 44% and in the West Bank it’s close to 20%.

The PA has said that it will not consider the economic plan without first resolving the political aspects of the conflict. For its part, the US has indicated that it intends to unveil the political dimensions of its plan after the upcoming Israeli elections, probably in November.

However, the reality is that Israel and the PA have time and time again negotiated to resolve the conflict with little success. In 2000, 2001 and 2008, Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert offered the PA nearly all of the West Bank, Gaza and Arab neighbourhoods of east Jerusalem to create a Palestinian state and end the conflict, but these proposals were rejected or ignored by the Palestinian leadership. Israel also withdrew from Gaza in 2005, which led to a Hamas takeover of the territory and thousands of rockets repeatedly fired towards Israel. Meanwhile, the PA has been refusing to negotiate on any issues—economic or political—since 2014.

In light of these realities, it makes sense to try something new—like improving the economic situation before addressing the intractable political gaps. As Jared Kushner, the chief architect of the US economic plan, said in his speech at the Bahrain conference, ‘For too long the Palestinian people have been trapped in a framework for the past.’ He also noted, ‘Agreeing on an economic pathway forward is a necessary precondition to resolving the previously unsolvable political issues.’

The PA might be wise to seize the momentum for dealing with Palestinians’ needs while the offer is on the table. For even while the Bahrain conference was taking place, another issue was brewing that’s considered more important by many of the Arab nations attending the summit: the growing tensions with Iran and what to do about it.

The PA needs to understand that the situation has changed and that Israel is no longer the primary target of hatred from Arab states and indeed is seen by many as a useful ally against Iran. As a result, many of the Arab nations which attended the summit, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, will likely put pressure on the PA to participate in talks—economic and political—so, logically, it’s hard to see what they have to gain by refusing to even engage on the Bahrain proposals.

In January 2018, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani publicly admitted that without American support, his government and the Afghan National Army couldn’t last very long. That remains the case today: the government is in disarray and the ANA is barely holding out against the Taliban-led insurgency.

Yet US President Donald Trump understandably wants to disentangle America, if possible through a political settlement, from what has become an unwinnable war. As such, the Taliban and their supporters have no compelling reason to let the Afghan government and the United States off the hook easily. And given the complex web of conflicting interests in Afghanistan, separate US and Russian efforts to reach an enduring settlement may not succeed.

Afghanistan’s problem is not primarily a military one. Despite the ANA’s heavy losses (more than 45,000 personnel since mid-2014) and increased insecurity in the country, the army has managed to prevent the Taliban from taking over any major city on a lasting basis. US funding of the ANA to the tune of some US$4 billion per year, together with allied operational assistance, has been crucial in this regard.

Rather, the worsening security situation mostly reflects political and regional factors. For starters, Afghanistan has lacked the leadership it has needed ever since the US-led intervention began, initially under the post-Taliban administration of President Hamid Karzai (2001–2014) and then under Ghani’s national unity government.

The West had hoped that these leaders would strive to nurture national unity and seek to institutionalise politics instead of personalising power in the country. Instead, the traditional practice of divide and rule—along ethnic, tribal, linguistic and cultural lines, and also involving corruption and maladministration—has prevailed. Behind a fig leaf of sham democracy, Afghanistan’s leaders have focused on building personal power and influence at the expense of the national interest.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, Afghan governments since 2001 have been weak and almost entirely dependent on US and allied support. As a result, Afghanistan has been vulnerable to predatory behaviour by its neighbours—Pakistan in particular—and to regional rivalries and great-power competition.

The Afghanistan conflict is now deeply entangled with the India–Pakistan dispute, the Iran–Saudi Arabia rivalry, the Pakistan–Saudi Arabia strategic partnership, US–Iran hostilities, the Pakistan–China friendship, the periodic India–China border tensions, US–India camaraderie and US–Russia competition. Afghanistan has become a zone of conflict in a region of them, each one posing yet another obstacle to a political settlement.

Recent US efforts at reaching a political settlement have been unsuccessful. The US special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, the Afghan–American Zalmay Khalilzad, who began his peacemaking mission last September, has made little or no progress. Khalilzad has repeatedly claimed progress; in reality, he is struggling to make headway through the Afghan and regional political thicket.

Because of his own controversial involvement in Afghanistan for more than three decades as a self-declared US neoconservative, Khalilzad faces the mistrust of many Afghan leaders, including Ghani, and of governments in the region. He has excluded Iran, one of Afghanistan’s influential neighbours, from his consultation process. He is also viewed with suspicion in Islamabad and Moscow, given his past anti-Pakistan views and criticism of Russia’s regional ambitions.

The only concession that Khalilzad has thus far obtained from the Taliban—after meeting its representatives several times in Qatar’s capital Doha—is that the group has agreed not to allow Afghan territory to be used for hostile action against the US and its allies. But that pledge is conditional on the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan. And Khalilzad has been unable to persuade the Taliban to recognise the Afghan government as anything other than a US puppet and to enter direct negotiations with it.

Meanwhile, Russia has pursued its own peacemaking initiatives for Afghanistan, hosting several multilateral meetings in Moscow since late 2018. Participants have included Taliban representatives, Afghan dignitaries (led by Karzai, who now criticises the US for failing to bring stability and security to Afghanistan), the country’s immediate neighbours and India.

The Ghani administration had viewed these Moscow meetings as contrary to its alliance with the US, but nonetheless found it expedient to permit Afghanistan’s ambassador to Russia to attend the most recent gathering in late May. But with the Taliban refusing to agree to a ceasefire, let alone settle other substantive issues, this meeting also produced no tangible results.

Should US and Russian efforts fail to produce a lasting political settlement in Afghanistan, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council may need to reach a consensus among themselves and then implement a resolution based on Chapter VII of the UN Charter, concerning threats to international peace. The goal would be to prompt Afghanistan’s neighbours to cease proxy involvement in the country in support of rival interests; to facilitate the orderly withdrawal of US and allied forces from the country; and to guarantee Afghanistan’s geopolitical neutrality, from which the country benefited before its current troubles began with the invasion of the Soviet Union 40 years ago.

At that point, sufficient help and pressure will be needed to move Afghanistan’s leaders towards achieving a national consensus for their own sake and that of the country. Unfortunately, this may not come soon enough for Afghanistan’s suffering people.