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Thursday March 28, 2024

Trump and the Palestinians

By M Saeed Khalid
February 19, 2017

Donald Trump is busy in doing what his predecessors did: performing the ritual of pledging allegiance to the state of Israel. He has already received the Israeli prime minister in the White House, to solemnise the pledge.

And like other US presidents in several decades, he has proceeded to explore options to settle the Israeli-Palestinian dispute – the root cause of America’s malentendu with the Arab and Muslim world. President Trump has, in fact, gone beyond all that by wishing to move away from the two-state solution accepted by the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Arabs and the international community, including the US. Welcome to the celebrity reality show of the billionaire diplomat-in-chief!

As it often happens with Donald, his wishful contribution to the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute also came tumbling down before it could gain traction. By the time he stood next to Israel’s Netanyahu at a press conference, the US president was fumbling for words. He was open to both the one-state or two-state solutions – whichever was acceptable to both – and advised the Israeli premier that both sides would need to make compromises.

Netanyahu – who has been nominally supporting the two-state solution – had no problem in endorsing Trump’s view, saying he preferred to deal with substance rather than labels. But he repeated his conditions that the Palestinians should recognise Israel as a Jewish state and that Israel must maintain security control over the entire West Bank. Both declared that Palestinian hate was a major obstacle to peace. To Netanyahu, hate is the source of conflict.

Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has been reportedly enlisting Arab states in the region that have issues with Iran, to help broker a settlement with the Palestinians. The CIA director, Mike Pompeo, met President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Tuesday to establish first official contact with the Trump administration. According to The New York Times, “it is not at all clear that Palestinians would ever accept an arrangement that did not leave them with a state of their own”.

The Palestinians are not totally averse to a one-state solution provided it is a democratic, and not Zionist, one – as proclaimed by Netanyahu. However, Knesset Ahmad Tibi, the Palestinian deputy speaker of the Israeli parliament, demanded that a solution must put an end to occupation. He claimed that if a state was established on a one man, one vote basis, he could defeat the likes of Netanyahu to becoming Israel’s prime minister.

Trump did show concern for the Palestinians by softly telling the Israeli leader to hold back on settlements for a while. Becoming a little more assertive, he stressed that Israel would have to be flexible in any future peace talks. “As with any successful negotiation, both sides will have to make compromises,” he said.

The US has also put aside Trump’s promise to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Trump’s electoral bombast over fixing China, renegotiating Nafta, stopping Muslims from entering the US and building a wall to stop illegal immigration from Mexico, have all failed to produce quick results.

The quest for peace between Israel and Palestine could prove equally, if not more, intractable. Trump must learn that diplomatic negotiations are different from making commercial deals and haste can lead to waste by delaying progress. Trump will soon find out that the primary reason for failure to reach a ‘deal’ will be Israel’s refusal to end its occupation of Palestinian lands.

A remarkable expose of the hopeless situation in the occupied lands was made by Gideon Levy of Israel’s daily, ‘Haaretz’, while addressing the Israel lobby in Washington. He bluntly told the audience that Israel was hopelessly addicted to occupation and there was no chance of change in the Israeli society as they had been brainwashed to live in a state of denial. According to Levy, Israel had established an apartheid regime in the Palestinian lands of Gaza and the West Bank.

Levy had more shockers as he recounted that, as the “chosen” people, the Israelis were entitled to do whatever they desired, like acting as victims when they were the occupiers.

The Palestinians were dehumanised and treated like animals or worse. Israel ignored international law and institutions at will. In yet another sobering comment, Levy said Israel would continue to behave as it does as long as it was supported by American money and weapons. The change, he concluded, had to take place in the US because Israel was lost.

The Palestinians have every reason to be concerned by a solution pushed by Trump. They want more information about the so-called one-state solution. If it is democratic, the Palestinians are hopeful that they will be in the majority. But the fear is that Israel wants to create an apartheid regime like South Africa whereby the Jewish minority will rule over the Arab majority.

The Palestinians are concerned about Trump’s choice of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as the negotiator for the dispute. He has been widely challenged for being partial towards Israel. Trump’s nominee as the ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, is a supporter of more settlements. He would be more of an Israeli ambassador rather than behave like a US envoy to Tel Aviv.

In the end, all this may have little relevance because diehards like Netanyahu are not interested in a solution despite Trump’s keenness to score in the international arena. Israel’s strategy is based on confrontation, not on peace. Like his predecessors, President Trump will also realise that Israel is the main obstacle to peace.

Email: saeed.saeedk@gmail.com