US Secretary of State John Kerry was scheduled to start his 9th trip of shuttle diplomacy between Palestinian and Israeli leaders on this Dec. 11. However, the bridging “security arrangements,” which he proposed less than a week earlier on his last trip, have backfired and are now snowballing into a major crisis with Palestinian negotiators who view Kerry’s “ideas” as a coup turning the US top diplomat from a mediator into an antagonist.

Kerry’s “ideas” had provoked a “real crisis” and “will drive Kerry’s efforts to an impasse and to total failure,” the secretary general of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Abed Rabbo, said on this Dec. 9.

Resumption of the peace talks and US involvement in the negotiations with Israel were both on record Palestinian demands. Disappointed by the deadlocked negotiations and more by the way Kerry decided finally to get his country involved, the Palestinian presidency expectedly stands now to regret both demands. Kerry’s shuttle diplomacy during his current trip seems more aimed at controlling the damage his “ideas — proposal” caused than at facilitating the deadlocked bilateral talks.

On Dec. 6, Kerry said that (160) American security specialists and diplomats, headed by Gen. John Allen, the former commander of the US forces in Afghanistan, had drafted the “proposal,” believing “that we can contribute ideas that could help both Israelis and Palestinians get to an agreement.”

According to leaks published by mainstream Israeli media as well as by the official Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, the US “security arrangements” propose:

l Demilitarization of the future State of Palestine.

l US monitoring of its demilitarization.

l To put the border crossings into Jordan under joint Israeli-Palestinian control.

l Maintaining an Israeli military presence deployed along the western side of Jordan River after the establishment of a Palestinian state.

l Installing Israeli early warning stations on the eastward slopes of the West Bank highlands.

l Postponement of arrangements for the final status of Gaza Strip, i.e. severing the strip from the status planned by Kerry’s proposal for the West Bank.

l All of the foregoing are on the background of the US recognition of an understanding that the large Israeli illegal colonial settlements on the West Bank would be annexed to Israel, according to the letter sent by former US President George W. Bush to the comatose former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon in April 2004, to which the incumbent administration of President Barak Obama is still committed.

Kerry and his administration have obviously coordinated a political coup by the adoption of the Israeli preconditions for recognizing a Palestinian state almost to the letter, turning the Palestinian priorities upside down and changing the terms of reference for the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, which Kerry succeeded to resume and sponsor late last July.

When he announced the resumption of talks on last July 29, Kerry declared that his goal would be to help the Israelis and Palestinians to reach a “final status agreement’” within nine months. Interestingly, Kerry hinted that the negotiations might have to extend beyond the agreed upon nine months, thus, from a Palestinian perspective, planning to buy Israel more time to create more colonial facts on the occupied Palestinian ground.

Kerry’s “ideas” alienated the Palestinian “peace camp” and negotiators led by Fatah, which rules the Palestinian Authority (PA) and leads the PLO, who have put “all their eggs in the US basket” for the past two decades, let alone all the other PLO member factions who are against the resumption of the negotiations with Israel for pragmatic reasons, but first of all because they did not trust the US mediator; Kerry has just vindicated their worst fears. Non-member organizations like Hamas and Al-Jihad oppose the negotiations as a matter of principle.

On Dec. 8, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, according to The Times of Israel three days later, met with the US Consul-General in Jerusalem, Michael Ratney, and formally rejected the proposal, saying that the Palestinian position was “unequivocal”: No Israeli presence, though the Palestinians would tolerate a third-party military presence.

Kerry, who on his last trip, warned Israelis of a Palestinian third Intifada seems himself laying the ground for one. His “ideas” clash head to head with the Palestinian repeated and plain rejection of long or short-term interim or transitional arrangements based only on Israel’s security. He seems obsessed with Israel’s security as “the top priority” for Washington, both in nuclear talks with Iran and peace talks with the Palestinians.

In his press availability at Ben Gurion International Airport on Dec. 6 he used the word “security” and “secure” 20 times in relation with Israel, but no words at all about the Israeli “occupation” and “settlements.”

More likely Kerry is dictating to and pressuring the Palestinian presidency with the only option “to take” his proposal or “leave it,” to be doomed either way, by its own people or by the US-led donors to the PA. With friends like Kerry, Palestinian Abbas for sure needs no enemies. Ironically, Kerry’s “ideas” create a solid political ground for a Palestinian consensus that would be an objective basis for ending the Palestinian divide and reviving the national unity between the PLO in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip as a prerequisite to be able to stand up to Kerry’s “coup.”

- Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.