In response to communication from CAMERA’s Israel office, Agence France Presse yesterday commendably corrected an English-language article, “Trump increasingly ambiguous on Israel amid Gaza war,” which had confused President Trump’s shelved “Peace to Prosperity” plan with the implemented Abraham Accords, falsely stating that the latter enabled Israel to annex West Bank land.
In this substantive error, the April 7 article (1:27 a.m. GMT) had falsely reported:
By the end of his term, the United States had brokered the so-called Abraham Accords, which would allow Israel to annex a large area of the West Bank, leaving the Palestinians with a tiny portion of their previous territory and a capital in the outskirts of Jerusalem.
The “Peace to Prosperity” plan proposed Israeli annexation of some 30 percent of the disputed West Bank, leaving Palestinian with control over 70 percent of the West Bank, compared to the 40 percent that they now control. While this is less territory than the Palestinians had hoped for, it was nearly double what they have ever controlled previously in history. (How is 70 percent “tiny,” while 30 percent is “large”?)
President Donald J. Trump, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bahrain Dr. Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Foreign Affairs for the United Arab Emirates Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan participate in the signing of the Abraham Accords Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2020, on the South Lawn of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
In any event, the subsequent Abraham Accords, which cemented Israeli normalization with several Arab countries, did not enable Israeli annexation of West Bank land. (Nor did it address Palestinian control of additional West Bank land.) To the contrary, the Abraham Accords took Israeli annexation of West Bank land off the table.
As AFP correctly reported Dec. 20, 2022:
The United Arab Emirates jumpstarted the Abraham accords in return for a promise by Netanyahu’s then government not to move ahead with annexation of the West Bank, a step that had the blessing of the Trump administration.
The French version of the same April 7 article more accurately reported how President Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan, which would have allowed Israeli annexation, was ultimately pushed off the agenda due to the administration’s prioritizing Israel’s normalization of ties with several Arab countries:
Il avait également claqué la porte à l’accord âprement négocié sur le nucléaire iranien. En fin de mandat, le milliardaire républicain avait présenté son plan de paix, qui aurait permis à l’Etat hébreu d’annexer une grande partie de la Cisjordanie, ne laissant aux Palestiniens qu’un Etat réduit en peau de chagrin, avec une capitale en périphérie de Jérusalem.
L’administration Trump avait finalement donné la priorité à la reconnaissance d’Israël par d’autres pays arabes, avec succès, marginalisant ainsi encore davantage la question palestinienne.
AFP editors agreed that a correction of the English-language article was necessary, and republished a corrected version of the article at 3:04 p.m. GMT with new wording which doesn’t mention annexation, and which correctly notes that the Abraham Accords concerned normalization between Israel and Arab countries:
By the end of his term, the United States had brokered the so-called Abraham Accords, which saw Arab countries including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain normalize ties with Israel.
The move kicked any imperative to address the Palestinian issue even further down the road — at least temporarily.
The corrected version is available at Barron’s, which carries a note at the top of the article alerting readers to the correction:
CORRECTS para 11 on Abraham Accords, which did not provide for annexation of West Bank as initially sent. Here is a corrected repetition