Pictures: Palestinians protest Trump's Mideast peace plan

Palestinians took to the streets across Palestine on Wednesday to demonstrate against US President Donald Trump's Mideast peace plan.

Trump has boasted that his Middle East plan will find support but most experts believe its unabashed backing of Israel and tough conditions for the creation of a Palestinian state mean it is doomed to fail.

“It is a non-starter,” said Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The Palestinians have rejected it out of hand as have Israeli settlers who are opposed to any form of Palestinian sovereignty,” he said.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has no intention to negotiate over the plan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who joined Trump for the announcement at the White House on Tuesday, appears to be counting on Abbas to reject it, Cook said.

The White House coordinated with Israel on the plan which gives the green light to Netanyahu to annex much of the West Bank, a path he has already indicated his cabinet will soon take.

“It is meant to help Prime Minister Netanyahu survive his current political and legal struggles as well as to shore up support for President Trump among pro-Israel voters in his re-election campaign,” said Michele Dunne, a former State Department specialist on the Middle East now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “There is no sign whatsoever that the plan will lead to negotiations,” she said.

The Trump administration spent three years working on the 180-page plan. The Palestinian leadership has boycotted Trump’s efforts, considering him biased after major steps such as recognizing disputed Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

“At a tactical level there are some good ideas, but without the promise of statehood for the Palestinians, they are meaningless,” Cook said.

Dunne said the fundamental headline of the plan is that it sets Israel’s eastern border all the way alongside Jordan. (The Jordan Valley, pictured above) “All the rest is details. Whatever the plan gives to Palestinians is provisional, conditional and long-term - in other words, probably will not happen,” she said.

The White House “vision” said that Israel would not implement it until it approves of the rulers of Gaza, the densely populated coastal strip led by the Islamist militant movement Hamas. “Unless and until Hamas is removed or disarms/renounces violence/recognizes Israel as a nation-state of the Jewish people, the Palestinians get zero from the plan. Hamas has veto power,” tweeted Henry Rome, an analyst at the Eurasia Group risk consultancy.

For some observers, the fundamental goal of the Trump plan is to change in the long-term the parameters of a settlement to be more favorable to Israel. Israeli annexation in the West Bank would present a fait accompli to the Palestinians in the guise of a peace plan.