8 dec 2017
Finally, US President Donald Trump pulled the plug.
The so-called peace process, two-state solution, ‘land-for-peace formula’ and all the other tired clichés have been long dead and decomposing. But Trump’s announcement on Wednesday to officially recognize Jerusalem as capital of Israel has also laid to rest the illusion that the US was ever keen on achieving a just and lasting peace between Israel and its neighbors.
What is left to be said by those who have placed the Palestinian national project of liberation on hold for nearly three decades, waiting for the US to fulfill its self-designated role of an ‘honest peace broker’?
The Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared a ‘day of rage’ in response to Trump’s announcement. Way to deflect attention from the real crisis at hand: the fact that the PA has miserably failed by leasing the fate of Palestine to Washington, and, by extension to Israel as well.
The Recent Love Affair
“I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” Trump said in Washington. The embattled president has done what many had asked him not to do. But the truth is, US foreign policy has been bankrupt for years. It was never fair, nor did it ever intend to be so.
Trump’s words from Washington were a tamed version of his statement before the Israel lobby last year.
In March 2016, Republican presidential candidate Trump delivered his famous speech before the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Then, he revealed the type of politician he truly is. By Washington’s standards, he was a ‘good politician’, devoid of any values.
In his speech he made many promises to Israel. The large crowd could not contain their giddiness.
Of the many false claims and dangerous promises Trump made, a particular passage stood unique, for it offered early clues to what the future administration’s policy on Israel and Palestine would look like. The signs were not promising:
“When the United States stands with Israel, the chances of peace really rise and rises exponentially. That’s what will happen when Donald Trump is president of the United States,” he declared, a fraudulent statement that was preceded with a loud applause and ended with even a louder cheer.
“We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem,” he announced. The mixed cheers and applause were deafening.
The truth is, however, Trump’s love affair with Israel is actually relatively recent. He had made several pronouncements in the past that in fact irked Israel and its powerful backers in the US. But when his chances of becoming the Republican nominee grew, so did his willingness to say whatever it takes to win Israel’s approval.
But isn’t this the American way of doing politics?
Now that Trump is president, he is desperate to maintain the support of the very constituency that brought him to the White House in the first place. The rightwing, conservative, Christian-evangelical constituency remains the foundation of his troubled presidency.
So, on December 4, Trump picked up the phone and began calling Arab leaders, informing them of his decision to announce a move that has been delayed for many years: relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Arabs fumed, or needed to play that part, for such a move would surely create further destabilization in a region that has been taken on a destructive course for years. Much of that instability is the outcome of misguided US policies, predicated on unwarranted wars and blind support for Israel.
Moreover, the pro-US Middle Eastern camp has itself been struggling under constant conflict, internal splits and a growing sense of American abandonment.
Why Jerusalem
If Trump declares Jerusalem the capital of Israel, it will seem that a cornerstone of US foreign policy in the Middle East has been removed. There can be no talk about a ‘two-state solution’, a ‘Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital’, and all the other platitudes that defined the US political discourse in the region for decades.
Worse, United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 have served as the trademark of US approach regarding what has been termed the ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict’ since 1967. The resolutions call for Israeli withdrawal from the territories it occupied since the war of 1967. Since then, East Jerusalem has been recognized by international law and even by every country that extended diplomatic ties with Israel as an integral part of the Occupied Territories.
Trump’s recent decision constitutes a total US reversal in its approach, not only regarding its own working definition of peacemaking, but to the entire Middle East, considering that Palestine and Israel have been at the center of most of the region’s conflicts.
It may have appeared that in March 2016, when Trump elatedly announced his intentions to relocate his country’s embassy to Jerusalem, he spoke like every American politician would: making lofty promises that cannot be kept.
Perhaps, but there are factors that made this embassy move an attractive option for the Trump administration:
The US is currently experiencing unprecedented political instability and polarization. Talks of impeaching the president are gaining momentum, while his officials are being paraded before Department of Justice investigators for various accusations, including collusion with foreign powers.
Under these circumstances, there is no decision or issue that Trump can approach without finding himself in a political storm, except one issue, that being Israel. Being pro-Israel has historically united the US’s two main parties, the Congress, the media and many Americans, lead among them Trump’s political base.
Indeed, when the Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995, purportedly violating its legislative role, Trump’s interest in politics was quite haphazard and entirely personal.
Collusion
The Congress has gone even further. Attempting to twist the arm of the White House, it added a clause, giving the administration till May 1999, to carry out the Congress’s diktats or face a 50 percent cut in the State Departments’ budget allocated to “Acquisition and Maintenance of Buildings Abroad.”
It was an impossible ultimatum. The US, by then, had positioned itself as an ‘honest peace broker’ in the peace process – a political framework that defined its entire American foreign policy outlook in the Middle East.
To avoid violating the Congress’ public law, and to maintain a thread, however thin, of credibility, every US president has signed a six-month waiver; a loophole in Section 7 of the law that allowed the White House to postpone the relocation of the embassy.
Fast forward to Trump’s AIPAC speech. His pledge to move the embassy then seemed merely frivolous and opportunistic.
That was the wrong assessment, however. Collusion between the Trump’s team and Israel began even before he walked into the Oval House. They worked together to undermine UN efforts in December 2016 to pass a resolution condemning Israel’s continued illegal settlement in the Occupied Territories, including Jerusalem.
Names of individuals affiliated with the administration’s policy towards Israel spoke volumes of the messianic nature of the government’s future outlook. David Friedman, Trump’s bankruptcy attorney was picked as US Ambassador in Israel; Jason Greenblatt was appointed as the administration’s top Middle East negotiator. Both men were known for their extremist, pro-Israel views – views that were seen as dangerous even by mainstream US media.
Chosen to lead the ‘peace’ efforts was Trump’s son-in-law and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s good friend, Jared Kushner. Trump’s dedication to Israel was clearly not fleeting.
By accepting Israel’s illegal annexation of Occupied East Jerusalem, Trump ends an American political gambit that lasted decades; supporting Israel unconditionally, while posing as a neutral, honest party.
Although his move is aimed at appeasing Israel, its US allies in government, and his base of fundamentalists and conservatives, he is also shedding a mask that every US president has worn for decades.
However, Trump’s decision, while it will upset the delicate political equilibrium in the Middle East, will neither cancel nor reverse international law. It simply means that the US has decided to drop the act, and walk wholly into the Israeli camp, further isolating itself from the rest of the world by openly defying international law.
And by doing so, it will, oddly enough, negate the paradoxical role it carved for itself in the last 50 years – that of peacemaker.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara.
The so-called peace process, two-state solution, ‘land-for-peace formula’ and all the other tired clichés have been long dead and decomposing. But Trump’s announcement on Wednesday to officially recognize Jerusalem as capital of Israel has also laid to rest the illusion that the US was ever keen on achieving a just and lasting peace between Israel and its neighbors.
What is left to be said by those who have placed the Palestinian national project of liberation on hold for nearly three decades, waiting for the US to fulfill its self-designated role of an ‘honest peace broker’?
The Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared a ‘day of rage’ in response to Trump’s announcement. Way to deflect attention from the real crisis at hand: the fact that the PA has miserably failed by leasing the fate of Palestine to Washington, and, by extension to Israel as well.
The Recent Love Affair
“I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” Trump said in Washington. The embattled president has done what many had asked him not to do. But the truth is, US foreign policy has been bankrupt for years. It was never fair, nor did it ever intend to be so.
Trump’s words from Washington were a tamed version of his statement before the Israel lobby last year.
In March 2016, Republican presidential candidate Trump delivered his famous speech before the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Then, he revealed the type of politician he truly is. By Washington’s standards, he was a ‘good politician’, devoid of any values.
In his speech he made many promises to Israel. The large crowd could not contain their giddiness.
Of the many false claims and dangerous promises Trump made, a particular passage stood unique, for it offered early clues to what the future administration’s policy on Israel and Palestine would look like. The signs were not promising:
“When the United States stands with Israel, the chances of peace really rise and rises exponentially. That’s what will happen when Donald Trump is president of the United States,” he declared, a fraudulent statement that was preceded with a loud applause and ended with even a louder cheer.
“We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem,” he announced. The mixed cheers and applause were deafening.
The truth is, however, Trump’s love affair with Israel is actually relatively recent. He had made several pronouncements in the past that in fact irked Israel and its powerful backers in the US. But when his chances of becoming the Republican nominee grew, so did his willingness to say whatever it takes to win Israel’s approval.
But isn’t this the American way of doing politics?
Now that Trump is president, he is desperate to maintain the support of the very constituency that brought him to the White House in the first place. The rightwing, conservative, Christian-evangelical constituency remains the foundation of his troubled presidency.
So, on December 4, Trump picked up the phone and began calling Arab leaders, informing them of his decision to announce a move that has been delayed for many years: relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Arabs fumed, or needed to play that part, for such a move would surely create further destabilization in a region that has been taken on a destructive course for years. Much of that instability is the outcome of misguided US policies, predicated on unwarranted wars and blind support for Israel.
Moreover, the pro-US Middle Eastern camp has itself been struggling under constant conflict, internal splits and a growing sense of American abandonment.
Why Jerusalem
If Trump declares Jerusalem the capital of Israel, it will seem that a cornerstone of US foreign policy in the Middle East has been removed. There can be no talk about a ‘two-state solution’, a ‘Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital’, and all the other platitudes that defined the US political discourse in the region for decades.
Worse, United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 have served as the trademark of US approach regarding what has been termed the ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict’ since 1967. The resolutions call for Israeli withdrawal from the territories it occupied since the war of 1967. Since then, East Jerusalem has been recognized by international law and even by every country that extended diplomatic ties with Israel as an integral part of the Occupied Territories.
Trump’s recent decision constitutes a total US reversal in its approach, not only regarding its own working definition of peacemaking, but to the entire Middle East, considering that Palestine and Israel have been at the center of most of the region’s conflicts.
It may have appeared that in March 2016, when Trump elatedly announced his intentions to relocate his country’s embassy to Jerusalem, he spoke like every American politician would: making lofty promises that cannot be kept.
Perhaps, but there are factors that made this embassy move an attractive option for the Trump administration:
The US is currently experiencing unprecedented political instability and polarization. Talks of impeaching the president are gaining momentum, while his officials are being paraded before Department of Justice investigators for various accusations, including collusion with foreign powers.
Under these circumstances, there is no decision or issue that Trump can approach without finding himself in a political storm, except one issue, that being Israel. Being pro-Israel has historically united the US’s two main parties, the Congress, the media and many Americans, lead among them Trump’s political base.
Indeed, when the Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995, purportedly violating its legislative role, Trump’s interest in politics was quite haphazard and entirely personal.
Collusion
The Congress has gone even further. Attempting to twist the arm of the White House, it added a clause, giving the administration till May 1999, to carry out the Congress’s diktats or face a 50 percent cut in the State Departments’ budget allocated to “Acquisition and Maintenance of Buildings Abroad.”
It was an impossible ultimatum. The US, by then, had positioned itself as an ‘honest peace broker’ in the peace process – a political framework that defined its entire American foreign policy outlook in the Middle East.
To avoid violating the Congress’ public law, and to maintain a thread, however thin, of credibility, every US president has signed a six-month waiver; a loophole in Section 7 of the law that allowed the White House to postpone the relocation of the embassy.
Fast forward to Trump’s AIPAC speech. His pledge to move the embassy then seemed merely frivolous and opportunistic.
That was the wrong assessment, however. Collusion between the Trump’s team and Israel began even before he walked into the Oval House. They worked together to undermine UN efforts in December 2016 to pass a resolution condemning Israel’s continued illegal settlement in the Occupied Territories, including Jerusalem.
Names of individuals affiliated with the administration’s policy towards Israel spoke volumes of the messianic nature of the government’s future outlook. David Friedman, Trump’s bankruptcy attorney was picked as US Ambassador in Israel; Jason Greenblatt was appointed as the administration’s top Middle East negotiator. Both men were known for their extremist, pro-Israel views – views that were seen as dangerous even by mainstream US media.
Chosen to lead the ‘peace’ efforts was Trump’s son-in-law and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s good friend, Jared Kushner. Trump’s dedication to Israel was clearly not fleeting.
By accepting Israel’s illegal annexation of Occupied East Jerusalem, Trump ends an American political gambit that lasted decades; supporting Israel unconditionally, while posing as a neutral, honest party.
Although his move is aimed at appeasing Israel, its US allies in government, and his base of fundamentalists and conservatives, he is also shedding a mask that every US president has worn for decades.
However, Trump’s decision, while it will upset the delicate political equilibrium in the Middle East, will neither cancel nor reverse international law. It simply means that the US has decided to drop the act, and walk wholly into the Israeli camp, further isolating itself from the rest of the world by openly defying international law.
And by doing so, it will, oddly enough, negate the paradoxical role it carved for itself in the last 50 years – that of peacemaker.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara.
7 dec 2017
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President Trump will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the American embassy there. Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada says years of US policy set the stage.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of the award-winning online publication The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. His latest book is titled The Battle for Justice in Palestine. Based in Chicago, he has written hundreds of articles on the question of Palestine in major publications including The New York Times, The Guardian and for Al Jazeera. TRNN video & transcript: AARON MATÉ: It’s The Real News. I’m Aaron Maté. After vowing, |
“America First” at home, President Trump continues to push, “Israel First,” in the Middle East. Trump has decided to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the American Embassy there. Trump told regional leaders of his plan today ahead of an expected announcement on Wednesday. Israel’s illegal occupation of east Jerusalem has been a major flashpoint in the Israel-Palestine conflict and Trump’s decision provides a new level of US support. His announcement comes just days after the indictment of Michael Flynn revealed that Trump started doing Israel’s bidding even before he took office.In December 2016, the Trump team tried and failed to undermine President Obama’s decision to allow a U.N. Security Council measure condemning Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. I’m joined now by Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the Electronic Intifada. Ali, welcome. There was just a White House briefing with reporters talking about this move to move the embassy to Jerusalem. A White House official said that this is a recognition of reality that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. Your thoughts on this announcement.
ALI ABUNIMAH: Well, it sounds like it is just an announcement in the sense that the latest says that Trump is not going to actually move the embassy yet and will sign the waiver to delay that move for at least another six months. On the other hand, it’s a recognition of a reality that the United States has helped to create, of Israeli control and occupation and incremental ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem to force the Palestinians out, to cleanse the identity of Jerusalem from its Muslim and Christian aspects and to market Israel as an exclusively Jewish and Israeli city. The US is creating the reality that it claims to be recognizing.
AARON MATÉ: The reaction that we’ve gotten so far, a lot of criticism of the decision. Turkey, for example, the leader there, President Erdoğan called it a red line that the US should not cross. Palestinian factions have called for three days of rage in response, protests over the decision. Referring to this as a red line, as opposed to all the other things that Israel has done, you pointed this out on Twitter that there’s sort of a double standard here in being outraged over symbolic acts but not seeing red lines in the many crimes that Israel’s committed up to this point.
ALI ABUNIMAH: Exactly. I mean, there was a statement today from the Organization of the Islamic Conference, basically 57 Muslim majority states which reaffirm that Jerusalem is occupied and that all of Israel’s measures are illegal and so on. That’s fine and it’s fine for Turkey to take that position. The trouble is that Israel has gotten away with so much for decades, forcing Palestinians out, settling and colonizing east Jerusalem, as well as the rest of the West Bank, that, the lack of international response for so many years, the failure to hold Israel accountable has really opened the way for this.The European Union, for example, is warning against this move by Trump but what have they done for all these years? They surrendered the leadership of the so-called peace process to the United States. They utterly failed to hold Israel accountable themselves. Well, this is the result of putting the United States in charge and refusing to take action yourselves.
AARON MATÉ: Do you think that this decision will finally push the Palestinian Authority to stop pretending as if it has a reliable ally in the US? I know it receives US financial support and has relied on that but how can they get away in front of their own people with continuing to cooperate with the US on things like security, “cooperation,” in the west bank when President Trump has handed them this humiliation of moving the embassy to Jerusalem?
ALI ABUNIMAH: Yes, this comes just months after Mahmoud Abbas stood side by side with Donald Trump at the White House and praised the “Wisdom,” of Donald Trump and said, “Mr. President, with you we have hope.” It really is a sort of a, yet, another humiliation for Abbas. Look, I don’t think it will change their approach. I heard PA officials today in media saying how this undermines the position of the United States as an honest broker. I mean, who but the most diluted person could have ever thought the United States was an honest broker and that you only needed this to somehow make the US seem bias? The reality is they have no other strategy.The Palestinian authority is there because of US support and Israeli support and support of the European Union and not by virtue of really having support among Palestinians. Look, back in the summer when Israel made this move to try and tighten its control over the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The Palestinians in Jerusalem surprised everyone with weeks of non-violent civil disobedience which drove Israel into retreat. That’s where I do see hope, is that despite decades of Israeli efforts to weaken the Palestinian presence in Jerusalem, to drive out Palestinian institutions in civil society, the ordinary people of Jerusalem, the ordinary Palestinian people of Jerusalem showed that they’re still determined to defend the city. That really matters.
AARON MATÉ: Ali, on the point you made about the US not being an honest broker in this conflict long before President Trump came along, I want to ask you about this supposed peace plan of Trump. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia has reportedly presented it to Mahmoud Abbas and there’s been a lot of criticism of it. There was a piece in the New York Times called, Talk of a Peace Plan That Snubs Palestinians Royals Middle East.What was interesting to me about it, is that the elements of the Saudi-Trump peace plan that people are rightfully saying is not very fair to the Palestinians, sounds exactly like the so-called generous peace plan that Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton offered Yasser Arafat in July 2000 for which Arafat was denounced for rejecting, even though it’s basically the same thing. It’s most of the illegal settlements stay in the west bank, Palestinians don’t have sovereignty over actually east Jerusalem and there’s no right of return for refugees.
ALI ABUNIMAH: You’re exactly right. It’s warmed over, rehashing of the same plans that date back to the 1990s for a Palestinian bantustan, which would be a state and name only. Palestinians living under permanent Israeli occupation apartheid, separated into little bits of territory here and there where they can say we have a stake but in reality they have no control. It even revives this laughable idea from the 1990s, the so-called Abu Dis Plan where the small village of Abu Dis, which is near Jerusalem would be renamed Al-Quds and the Palestinians could declare a capital there, instead of in the actual city of Jerusalem, which would be completely swallowed up by Israel. It really contains nothing new. By the way, Abu Dis currently is a village that a large part of whose land Israel has confiscated to use as an illegal garbage dump. According to the Trump-Jared Kushner-Saudi plan, the Palestinian capital would be essentially in a garbage dump.
AARON MATÉ: If I recall right, that Abu Dis Plan was actually presented as part of this, again, this so-called generous peace officer, peace offer that was given to Yasser Arafat for which again he was roundly condemned in liberal media here in the US by politicians for rejecting. It’s interesting to see that now revived under Trump. Finally, I-
ALI ABUNIMAH: Yeah.
AARON MATÉ: Yeah.
ALI ABUNIMAH: One thing that’s important to note that’s different now is the regional context, where you have this Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammad bin Salman, who is pressuring the Palestinians to accept things that even Abbas can’t accept. The motivation there is to liquidate the Palestinian cause and push it aside as an issue that stands in the way of a full consummation of the Saudi-Israeli alliance whose main target is this obsessive enmity that Israel and Saudi Arabia have towards Iran. The Palestinians are the sacrificial lamb in that and in this sense, Jerusalem can be seen as the Saudi dowry or wedding gift to Israel.
AARON MATÉ: We’ll leave it there. Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the Electronic Intifada. Thank you.
ALI ABUNIMAH: Thank you, Aaron.
AARON MATÉ: Thank you for joining us on The Real News.
ALI ABUNIMAH: Well, it sounds like it is just an announcement in the sense that the latest says that Trump is not going to actually move the embassy yet and will sign the waiver to delay that move for at least another six months. On the other hand, it’s a recognition of a reality that the United States has helped to create, of Israeli control and occupation and incremental ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem to force the Palestinians out, to cleanse the identity of Jerusalem from its Muslim and Christian aspects and to market Israel as an exclusively Jewish and Israeli city. The US is creating the reality that it claims to be recognizing.
AARON MATÉ: The reaction that we’ve gotten so far, a lot of criticism of the decision. Turkey, for example, the leader there, President Erdoğan called it a red line that the US should not cross. Palestinian factions have called for three days of rage in response, protests over the decision. Referring to this as a red line, as opposed to all the other things that Israel has done, you pointed this out on Twitter that there’s sort of a double standard here in being outraged over symbolic acts but not seeing red lines in the many crimes that Israel’s committed up to this point.
ALI ABUNIMAH: Exactly. I mean, there was a statement today from the Organization of the Islamic Conference, basically 57 Muslim majority states which reaffirm that Jerusalem is occupied and that all of Israel’s measures are illegal and so on. That’s fine and it’s fine for Turkey to take that position. The trouble is that Israel has gotten away with so much for decades, forcing Palestinians out, settling and colonizing east Jerusalem, as well as the rest of the West Bank, that, the lack of international response for so many years, the failure to hold Israel accountable has really opened the way for this.The European Union, for example, is warning against this move by Trump but what have they done for all these years? They surrendered the leadership of the so-called peace process to the United States. They utterly failed to hold Israel accountable themselves. Well, this is the result of putting the United States in charge and refusing to take action yourselves.
AARON MATÉ: Do you think that this decision will finally push the Palestinian Authority to stop pretending as if it has a reliable ally in the US? I know it receives US financial support and has relied on that but how can they get away in front of their own people with continuing to cooperate with the US on things like security, “cooperation,” in the west bank when President Trump has handed them this humiliation of moving the embassy to Jerusalem?
ALI ABUNIMAH: Yes, this comes just months after Mahmoud Abbas stood side by side with Donald Trump at the White House and praised the “Wisdom,” of Donald Trump and said, “Mr. President, with you we have hope.” It really is a sort of a, yet, another humiliation for Abbas. Look, I don’t think it will change their approach. I heard PA officials today in media saying how this undermines the position of the United States as an honest broker. I mean, who but the most diluted person could have ever thought the United States was an honest broker and that you only needed this to somehow make the US seem bias? The reality is they have no other strategy.The Palestinian authority is there because of US support and Israeli support and support of the European Union and not by virtue of really having support among Palestinians. Look, back in the summer when Israel made this move to try and tighten its control over the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The Palestinians in Jerusalem surprised everyone with weeks of non-violent civil disobedience which drove Israel into retreat. That’s where I do see hope, is that despite decades of Israeli efforts to weaken the Palestinian presence in Jerusalem, to drive out Palestinian institutions in civil society, the ordinary people of Jerusalem, the ordinary Palestinian people of Jerusalem showed that they’re still determined to defend the city. That really matters.
AARON MATÉ: Ali, on the point you made about the US not being an honest broker in this conflict long before President Trump came along, I want to ask you about this supposed peace plan of Trump. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia has reportedly presented it to Mahmoud Abbas and there’s been a lot of criticism of it. There was a piece in the New York Times called, Talk of a Peace Plan That Snubs Palestinians Royals Middle East.What was interesting to me about it, is that the elements of the Saudi-Trump peace plan that people are rightfully saying is not very fair to the Palestinians, sounds exactly like the so-called generous peace plan that Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton offered Yasser Arafat in July 2000 for which Arafat was denounced for rejecting, even though it’s basically the same thing. It’s most of the illegal settlements stay in the west bank, Palestinians don’t have sovereignty over actually east Jerusalem and there’s no right of return for refugees.
ALI ABUNIMAH: You’re exactly right. It’s warmed over, rehashing of the same plans that date back to the 1990s for a Palestinian bantustan, which would be a state and name only. Palestinians living under permanent Israeli occupation apartheid, separated into little bits of territory here and there where they can say we have a stake but in reality they have no control. It even revives this laughable idea from the 1990s, the so-called Abu Dis Plan where the small village of Abu Dis, which is near Jerusalem would be renamed Al-Quds and the Palestinians could declare a capital there, instead of in the actual city of Jerusalem, which would be completely swallowed up by Israel. It really contains nothing new. By the way, Abu Dis currently is a village that a large part of whose land Israel has confiscated to use as an illegal garbage dump. According to the Trump-Jared Kushner-Saudi plan, the Palestinian capital would be essentially in a garbage dump.
AARON MATÉ: If I recall right, that Abu Dis Plan was actually presented as part of this, again, this so-called generous peace officer, peace offer that was given to Yasser Arafat for which again he was roundly condemned in liberal media here in the US by politicians for rejecting. It’s interesting to see that now revived under Trump. Finally, I-
ALI ABUNIMAH: Yeah.
AARON MATÉ: Yeah.
ALI ABUNIMAH: One thing that’s important to note that’s different now is the regional context, where you have this Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammad bin Salman, who is pressuring the Palestinians to accept things that even Abbas can’t accept. The motivation there is to liquidate the Palestinian cause and push it aside as an issue that stands in the way of a full consummation of the Saudi-Israeli alliance whose main target is this obsessive enmity that Israel and Saudi Arabia have towards Iran. The Palestinians are the sacrificial lamb in that and in this sense, Jerusalem can be seen as the Saudi dowry or wedding gift to Israel.
AARON MATÉ: We’ll leave it there. Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the Electronic Intifada. Thank you.
ALI ABUNIMAH: Thank you, Aaron.
AARON MATÉ: Thank you for joining us on The Real News.
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6 dec 2017
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In a move that contradicts decades of US policy, flagrantly violates international law and signed peace agreements, and discards the Palestinian people’s basic rights, the sitting U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday unilaterally declared Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel.
The U.S. government now joins Israel as the only two countries in the world to claim that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. In 1947, when the United Nations recommended a partition plan for Palestine in order to create a Jewish state on what had been Palestinian land, the city of Jerusalem was recommended to remain an international city in which all would be welcome. |
Now, 70 years later, the U.S. administration has turned its back on that ideal in favor of an exclusive, Jewish city in which the Palestinian residents who have lived there hundreds, and, in some cases, thousands of years, can be forcibly displaced by the Israeli military and turned into refugees, to join the 5 million Palestinian refugees who already live in exile.
The move appears to be meant by Trump to enflame the tensions that he has already built between the U.S. and the Muslim world, as it comes a day after the U.S. Supreme Court decided to allow the travel ban to the U.S. that most legal experts say discriminates blatantly against Muslims.
Yousef Munayyer, Executive Director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights summarized the enormity of this decision, saying, “U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel would be a major shift in American policy and have significant implications for U.S. policy for Middle East Peace. For decades, the United States has held that this issue is one that must be mutually agreed upon by the parties, so recognizing Israel’s claims here and now ahead of an agreement is a marked shift from even the pretense of a balanced position on Jerusalem to a full backing of the Israeli position.”
Palestinians living in Jerusalem already live under martial law by the Israeli military, and face significant discrimination, underfunding of schools and services, denial of civil law and due process, and loss of land, homes and communities. Palestinians fear that this move by the U.S. administration will embolden the Israeli government and militia movement to expand their program of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the city of Jerusalem.
The move appears to be meant by Trump to enflame the tensions that he has already built between the U.S. and the Muslim world, as it comes a day after the U.S. Supreme Court decided to allow the travel ban to the U.S. that most legal experts say discriminates blatantly against Muslims.
Yousef Munayyer, Executive Director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights summarized the enormity of this decision, saying, “U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel would be a major shift in American policy and have significant implications for U.S. policy for Middle East Peace. For decades, the United States has held that this issue is one that must be mutually agreed upon by the parties, so recognizing Israel’s claims here and now ahead of an agreement is a marked shift from even the pretense of a balanced position on Jerusalem to a full backing of the Israeli position.”
Palestinians living in Jerusalem already live under martial law by the Israeli military, and face significant discrimination, underfunding of schools and services, denial of civil law and due process, and loss of land, homes and communities. Palestinians fear that this move by the U.S. administration will embolden the Israeli government and militia movement to expand their program of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the city of Jerusalem.
3 dec 2017
Pentagon and state department officials have warned US president Donald Trump of recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, saying such step would have serious dimensions, Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper claimed.
According to the newspaper, those officials expressed their belief that such step would provoke great anger among the Palestinians and lead to security instability in Israel.
The step would also make US embassies under constant security threat and would lead to legal implications, the officials added.
Trump is likely to announce during the coming day that the US recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a senior administration official said last Friday, a move that could inflame further tension in the Middle East.
Senior Palestinian officials also warned that such US move would have serious ramifications for the Palestinian question and the region.
Secretary-General of the PLO executive committee and chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said, "Any American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel will bring about the end of the Jerusalem cause. This cause is weighty and dealing with it is playing with fire."
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, said US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital would "torpedo the peace process" and "destabilize the region."
Trump could make such incendiary declaration in a speech on Wednesday, though he is expected to again delay his campaign pledge to move the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.
According to the newspaper, those officials expressed their belief that such step would provoke great anger among the Palestinians and lead to security instability in Israel.
The step would also make US embassies under constant security threat and would lead to legal implications, the officials added.
Trump is likely to announce during the coming day that the US recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a senior administration official said last Friday, a move that could inflame further tension in the Middle East.
Senior Palestinian officials also warned that such US move would have serious ramifications for the Palestinian question and the region.
Secretary-General of the PLO executive committee and chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said, "Any American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel will bring about the end of the Jerusalem cause. This cause is weighty and dealing with it is playing with fire."
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, said US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital would "torpedo the peace process" and "destabilize the region."
Trump could make such incendiary declaration in a speech on Wednesday, though he is expected to again delay his campaign pledge to move the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.
2 dec 2017
On November 18, just days before the 50th anniversary of United Nations Resolution 242, the US State Department took its first step towards severing its ties with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
The timing of this decision could not be any more profound.
The first formal contact between the US and the PLO occurred in mid-December, 1988, when US Ambassador to Tunisia, Robert H. Pelletreau Jr., picked up the phone to call the PLO headquarters in Tunis to schedule formal talks.
Palestinian PLO officials were ‘elated’ by the fact that the US made the first move, as reported by the New York Times.
This assertion, however, is quite misleading. For over a decade prior to that ‘first move’, PLO’s chairman, Yasser Arafat, had to satisfy many US demands in exchange for this low-level political engagement.
The ‘talks’ in Tunisia were prolonged, before the PLO was ready to make its final concession in secret meetings in Oslo, Norway in 1993.
Eventually, a PLO office was opened in Washington DC. It served little purpose, aside from being an intermittent platform to arrange Washington-sponsored talks between Israeli and PLO officials. For Palestinians living in the US, it was almost invisible until the US announced its decision to possibly shut it down.
The American threat followed a United Nations speech last September by Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Chairman of the PLO. From an Israeli-US perspective, Abbas committed a mortal sin for seeking the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to take Israel to task regarding its human rights violations in Occupied Palestine.
By doing so, Abbas, not only violated a peculiar US law that forbids the PLO from seeking ICC help, but also an unspoken rule that allowed the US to engage the PLO in 1988, where the US served the rule of the political and legal frame of reference for the so-called ‘peace process.’ The UN took a backseat.
But even that unequal relationship proved too much for the US government, which is moving fully and unconditionally into the Israeli camp. The Trump Administration is now working to rewrite the nature of US involvement in the Middle East, and, especially, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Unfortunately, Trump’s team has no concrete strategy and no frame of reference, aiming to change 50-years of US foreign policy – unfair to Palestinians and Arabs – but has no alternative plan of its own.
Almost a year ago, Trump made a promise to Israel to be a more trustworthy ally than President Barack Obama, who gave Israel more money than any other US president in history. Obama, however, had violated a golden rule in the US-Israeli relationship: he did not veto a UN resolution that condemned the illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian territories.
Israel panicked at that unprecedented event, not because it feared that the UN Security Council would enforce its purportedly binding resolution, but because the US had, for once, refused to shield Israel from international censure.
Even before officially taking over the White House, the Trump team attempted to prevent UNSC Resolution 2334 from passing. It failed but, come January, it took over the Israeli-Palestinian file with a vengeance, threatening to cut off funds to Palestinians, blocking their efforts from expanding their international reach, and declaring its full and unconditional support for the rightwing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
But there was more to Israeli alarm at Resolution 2334 than mere US betrayal. This Resolution – which asserted that Israeli settlements have no legal validity and constitute a flagrant violation of human rights – was partly predicated on, and clarified and added to, previous UNSC Resolution 242.
This means that 50 years of incessant Israeli attempts to absolve itself from any commitment to international law have failed miserably.
For Palestinians, and the larger Arab context, Resolution 242 marked their defeat in the war of 1967. Unsurprisingly, this Resolution has been cited in various agreements between Israel and the PLO, but only to give these agreements a veneer of international legitimacy.
However, the Oslo Accords of 1993 gave Israel the opportunity to use its leverage to bypass international law altogether: signing a peace agreement without ending its military occupation became the goal.
Against this backdrop, it is no wonder that Netanyahu was quite shocked to witness that a recommitment to Resolution 242 last year at the UNSC did not garner US opposition. Actually, the longstanding Resolution gained more substance and vigor.
The June 1967 war was Israel’s greatest military victory, and Resolution 242 enshrined a whole new world order in the Middle East, in which the US and Israel reigned supreme. Although it called for withdrawal of Israeli military from Occupied Palestinian and Arab lands, it also paved the way for normalization between Israel and the Arabs. The Camp David Agreement between Egypt and Israel was a direct outcome of that Resolution.
This is why Resolution 2334 has alarmed Israel, for it invalidated all the physical changes that Israel has made in 50 years of illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.
The Resolution called for “two democratic States, Israel and Palestine, liv(ing) side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders”.
Unlike Resolution 242, Resolution 2334 has left no room for clever misinterpretation: it references the pre-June 1967 lines in its annulment of the Israeli occupation and all the illegal settlements Israel has constructed since then.
The Resolution even cites the Fourth Geneva Convention, the UN Charter and the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion of July 2004, which stated that Israel’s barrier in the West Bank was illegal and should be dismantled.
With international law, once more, taking center stage in a conflict which the US has long designated as if its personal business, Abbas was empowered enough to reach out to the ICC, thus raising the ire of Israel and its allies in the White House.
Even if the PLO’s office is permanently shut down, the decision should not just be seen as punishing Palestinians for seeking ICC support but, ultimately, as the culmination of disastrous US diplomacy, for which the Trump Administration has no clear alternative.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle.
The timing of this decision could not be any more profound.
The first formal contact between the US and the PLO occurred in mid-December, 1988, when US Ambassador to Tunisia, Robert H. Pelletreau Jr., picked up the phone to call the PLO headquarters in Tunis to schedule formal talks.
Palestinian PLO officials were ‘elated’ by the fact that the US made the first move, as reported by the New York Times.
This assertion, however, is quite misleading. For over a decade prior to that ‘first move’, PLO’s chairman, Yasser Arafat, had to satisfy many US demands in exchange for this low-level political engagement.
The ‘talks’ in Tunisia were prolonged, before the PLO was ready to make its final concession in secret meetings in Oslo, Norway in 1993.
Eventually, a PLO office was opened in Washington DC. It served little purpose, aside from being an intermittent platform to arrange Washington-sponsored talks between Israeli and PLO officials. For Palestinians living in the US, it was almost invisible until the US announced its decision to possibly shut it down.
The American threat followed a United Nations speech last September by Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Chairman of the PLO. From an Israeli-US perspective, Abbas committed a mortal sin for seeking the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to take Israel to task regarding its human rights violations in Occupied Palestine.
By doing so, Abbas, not only violated a peculiar US law that forbids the PLO from seeking ICC help, but also an unspoken rule that allowed the US to engage the PLO in 1988, where the US served the rule of the political and legal frame of reference for the so-called ‘peace process.’ The UN took a backseat.
But even that unequal relationship proved too much for the US government, which is moving fully and unconditionally into the Israeli camp. The Trump Administration is now working to rewrite the nature of US involvement in the Middle East, and, especially, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Unfortunately, Trump’s team has no concrete strategy and no frame of reference, aiming to change 50-years of US foreign policy – unfair to Palestinians and Arabs – but has no alternative plan of its own.
Almost a year ago, Trump made a promise to Israel to be a more trustworthy ally than President Barack Obama, who gave Israel more money than any other US president in history. Obama, however, had violated a golden rule in the US-Israeli relationship: he did not veto a UN resolution that condemned the illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian territories.
Israel panicked at that unprecedented event, not because it feared that the UN Security Council would enforce its purportedly binding resolution, but because the US had, for once, refused to shield Israel from international censure.
Even before officially taking over the White House, the Trump team attempted to prevent UNSC Resolution 2334 from passing. It failed but, come January, it took over the Israeli-Palestinian file with a vengeance, threatening to cut off funds to Palestinians, blocking their efforts from expanding their international reach, and declaring its full and unconditional support for the rightwing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
But there was more to Israeli alarm at Resolution 2334 than mere US betrayal. This Resolution – which asserted that Israeli settlements have no legal validity and constitute a flagrant violation of human rights – was partly predicated on, and clarified and added to, previous UNSC Resolution 242.
This means that 50 years of incessant Israeli attempts to absolve itself from any commitment to international law have failed miserably.
For Palestinians, and the larger Arab context, Resolution 242 marked their defeat in the war of 1967. Unsurprisingly, this Resolution has been cited in various agreements between Israel and the PLO, but only to give these agreements a veneer of international legitimacy.
However, the Oslo Accords of 1993 gave Israel the opportunity to use its leverage to bypass international law altogether: signing a peace agreement without ending its military occupation became the goal.
Against this backdrop, it is no wonder that Netanyahu was quite shocked to witness that a recommitment to Resolution 242 last year at the UNSC did not garner US opposition. Actually, the longstanding Resolution gained more substance and vigor.
The June 1967 war was Israel’s greatest military victory, and Resolution 242 enshrined a whole new world order in the Middle East, in which the US and Israel reigned supreme. Although it called for withdrawal of Israeli military from Occupied Palestinian and Arab lands, it also paved the way for normalization between Israel and the Arabs. The Camp David Agreement between Egypt and Israel was a direct outcome of that Resolution.
This is why Resolution 2334 has alarmed Israel, for it invalidated all the physical changes that Israel has made in 50 years of illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.
The Resolution called for “two democratic States, Israel and Palestine, liv(ing) side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders”.
Unlike Resolution 242, Resolution 2334 has left no room for clever misinterpretation: it references the pre-June 1967 lines in its annulment of the Israeli occupation and all the illegal settlements Israel has constructed since then.
The Resolution even cites the Fourth Geneva Convention, the UN Charter and the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion of July 2004, which stated that Israel’s barrier in the West Bank was illegal and should be dismantled.
With international law, once more, taking center stage in a conflict which the US has long designated as if its personal business, Abbas was empowered enough to reach out to the ICC, thus raising the ire of Israel and its allies in the White House.
Even if the PLO’s office is permanently shut down, the decision should not just be seen as punishing Palestinians for seeking ICC support but, ultimately, as the culmination of disastrous US diplomacy, for which the Trump Administration has no clear alternative.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle.