19 feb 2020
The Israeli Ministry of Housing announced Tuesday that it plans to construct thousands of new Israeli settlement units in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Kafr Aqab, in violation of international law and all past signed peace agreements, and even violating the Trump-Kushner Plan, which had designated the neighborhood as part of the fast-shrinking Palestinian territory.
The Trump-Kushner ‘Deal of the Century’ had considered Kafr Aqab as one of the few Palestinian areas to be left under Palestinian control.
But the Israeli Ministry of Housing has other plans for the land in question, including displacing the existing Palestinian population and replacing them with Jewish-only settlements.
According to the Israeli paper Ha’aretz, the new settlement “will be built on the lands of Qalandiya Airport, up to the separation wall, so that the wall separates the new settlement neighborhood and Palestinian areas in the Jerusalem area, such as Kafr Aqab.”
The plan for the new settlement includes about 1,200 acres, and will include the construction of 6 to 9 thousand housing units, with shopping centers comprising an additional 300,000 square meters.
The Israeli Ministry of Housing claims that the land is owned by the state and the National Fund for Israel, but acknowledges that a large proportion of the land is owned by individual Palestinian owners.
According to the plan, ownership will be redistributed in the area before the licenses are issued, without the consent of the landowners.
The settlement plan includes lands at the airport “Atarot” (Qalandia), which was closed by the Israeli authorities when the Second Intifada broke out in September 2000.
Haaretz pointed out that the settlement plan was drawn up several years ago, and it was frozen on more than one occasion due to international political pressure rejecting settlement in the occupied territories in 1967.
This included opposition from the previous American administration, headed by Barack Obama at the time, who opposed settlement expansion in Jerusalem.
According to Haaretz, “the Trump peace plan’s chapter on Jerusalem includes a section titled ‘Special Tourist Area.’
The plan specifies that ‘The State of Israel should allow for the development by the State of Palestine of a special tourism zone in Atarot, in a specific area to be agreed upon by the parties.’
“This zone, according to the peace plan, ‘should be a world class tourist zone that should support Muslim tourism to Jerusalem and its holy sites,’ and would include restaurants, shops, hotels, cultural centers, and other tourism facilities, along with ‘state-of-the-art public transportation that provides easy access to and from the holy sites.’”
But with this announcement from the Israeli Housing Ministry, it seems that Israeli officials are already thwarting the proposal for a Palestinian tourist area in Atarot, by pre-emptively constructing a colonial settlement that encompasses the entire neighborhood around Atarot and displaces the thousands of Palestinian residents who live there.
According to Middle East Eye, 60,000 residents have kept their Jerusalem ID cards – and have kept paying taxes – they have stopped receiving most services from the municipality .
And the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem reports, “Israeli policy in East Jerusalem is geared toward pressuring Palestinians to leave, thereby shaping a geographical and demographic reality that would thwart any future attempt to challenge Israeli sovereignty there. Palestinians who do leave East Jerusalem, due to this policy or for other reasons, risk losing their permanent residency and the attendant social benefits.
Since 1967, Israel has revoked the permanent residency of some 14,500 Palestinians from East Jerusalem under such circumstances.”
Israel to build 9,000 settler homes on ruins of Qalandiya airport
The Israeli housing ministry has begun advancing a master plan to build a massive Jewish neighborhood in an east Jerusalem area that appears to be earmarked in the US administration’s peace plan for a Palestinian tourism center, according to different news reports.
On February 9, the ministry submitted a building plan that would see some 9,000 housing units constructed at the site of the former Qalandiya airport (known by Israelis as Atarot airport) near the Jerusalem neighborhood of Kafr Aqab, which has been inoperative since the breakout of the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000.
The new Jewish neighborhood in Qalandiya would break a long stretch of Palestinian urban areas extending from the east Jerusalem neighborhoods of Beit Hanina and Shu’afat north to Kfar Aqab, Qalandiya and Ramallah on the other side of the security barrier.
The project will still need to be authorized in several other planning stages that can take several years, but the submission of the building plan marks a significant step toward construction after several years of delays due to lack of funds, according to Israeli news reports.
The housing ministry claims the site designated for construction is mostly on state land, but parts of the new neighborhood would sit on parcels privately owned by Palestinians, which requires the demolition of at least 15 families’ homes, Haaretz website reported.
In a statement denouncing the Qalandiya building plan, the Peace Now settlement watchdog said the construction would prevent the establishment of a viable Palestinian state with a capital in east Jerusalem.
“Benjamin Netanyahu wants to deal yet another fatal blow to the prospect of a two-state solution. The planned settlement neighborhood is a wedge at the heart of Palestinian urban continuity between Ramallah and east Jerusalem, which prevents the establishment of a viable Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital,” the watchdog said in a statement.
The Trump-Kushner ‘Deal of the Century’ had considered Kafr Aqab as one of the few Palestinian areas to be left under Palestinian control.
But the Israeli Ministry of Housing has other plans for the land in question, including displacing the existing Palestinian population and replacing them with Jewish-only settlements.
According to the Israeli paper Ha’aretz, the new settlement “will be built on the lands of Qalandiya Airport, up to the separation wall, so that the wall separates the new settlement neighborhood and Palestinian areas in the Jerusalem area, such as Kafr Aqab.”
The plan for the new settlement includes about 1,200 acres, and will include the construction of 6 to 9 thousand housing units, with shopping centers comprising an additional 300,000 square meters.
The Israeli Ministry of Housing claims that the land is owned by the state and the National Fund for Israel, but acknowledges that a large proportion of the land is owned by individual Palestinian owners.
According to the plan, ownership will be redistributed in the area before the licenses are issued, without the consent of the landowners.
The settlement plan includes lands at the airport “Atarot” (Qalandia), which was closed by the Israeli authorities when the Second Intifada broke out in September 2000.
Haaretz pointed out that the settlement plan was drawn up several years ago, and it was frozen on more than one occasion due to international political pressure rejecting settlement in the occupied territories in 1967.
This included opposition from the previous American administration, headed by Barack Obama at the time, who opposed settlement expansion in Jerusalem.
According to Haaretz, “the Trump peace plan’s chapter on Jerusalem includes a section titled ‘Special Tourist Area.’
The plan specifies that ‘The State of Israel should allow for the development by the State of Palestine of a special tourism zone in Atarot, in a specific area to be agreed upon by the parties.’
“This zone, according to the peace plan, ‘should be a world class tourist zone that should support Muslim tourism to Jerusalem and its holy sites,’ and would include restaurants, shops, hotels, cultural centers, and other tourism facilities, along with ‘state-of-the-art public transportation that provides easy access to and from the holy sites.’”
But with this announcement from the Israeli Housing Ministry, it seems that Israeli officials are already thwarting the proposal for a Palestinian tourist area in Atarot, by pre-emptively constructing a colonial settlement that encompasses the entire neighborhood around Atarot and displaces the thousands of Palestinian residents who live there.
According to Middle East Eye, 60,000 residents have kept their Jerusalem ID cards – and have kept paying taxes – they have stopped receiving most services from the municipality .
And the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem reports, “Israeli policy in East Jerusalem is geared toward pressuring Palestinians to leave, thereby shaping a geographical and demographic reality that would thwart any future attempt to challenge Israeli sovereignty there. Palestinians who do leave East Jerusalem, due to this policy or for other reasons, risk losing their permanent residency and the attendant social benefits.
Since 1967, Israel has revoked the permanent residency of some 14,500 Palestinians from East Jerusalem under such circumstances.”
Israel to build 9,000 settler homes on ruins of Qalandiya airport
The Israeli housing ministry has begun advancing a master plan to build a massive Jewish neighborhood in an east Jerusalem area that appears to be earmarked in the US administration’s peace plan for a Palestinian tourism center, according to different news reports.
On February 9, the ministry submitted a building plan that would see some 9,000 housing units constructed at the site of the former Qalandiya airport (known by Israelis as Atarot airport) near the Jerusalem neighborhood of Kafr Aqab, which has been inoperative since the breakout of the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000.
The new Jewish neighborhood in Qalandiya would break a long stretch of Palestinian urban areas extending from the east Jerusalem neighborhoods of Beit Hanina and Shu’afat north to Kfar Aqab, Qalandiya and Ramallah on the other side of the security barrier.
The project will still need to be authorized in several other planning stages that can take several years, but the submission of the building plan marks a significant step toward construction after several years of delays due to lack of funds, according to Israeli news reports.
The housing ministry claims the site designated for construction is mostly on state land, but parts of the new neighborhood would sit on parcels privately owned by Palestinians, which requires the demolition of at least 15 families’ homes, Haaretz website reported.
In a statement denouncing the Qalandiya building plan, the Peace Now settlement watchdog said the construction would prevent the establishment of a viable Palestinian state with a capital in east Jerusalem.
“Benjamin Netanyahu wants to deal yet another fatal blow to the prospect of a two-state solution. The planned settlement neighborhood is a wedge at the heart of Palestinian urban continuity between Ramallah and east Jerusalem, which prevents the establishment of a viable Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital,” the watchdog said in a statement.
18 feb 2020
Office of the High Commissioner of the United Nations published a report, on Friday, by Michael Lynk, Special Rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, welcomed the newly released settlement database.
Lynk stated that “While the release of the database will not, by itself, bring an end to the illegal settlements and their serious impact upon human rights, it does signal that sustained defiance by an occupying power will not go unanswered,” describing the move as an “important initial step towards accountability and the end to [Israeli] impunity.”
All 240 Israeli settlements are a “significant source of human rights violations against the protected Palestinian population in the occupied territory,” Lynk said, adding that “thousands of hectares of Palestinian land have been expropriated, thousands of Palestinian homes have been destroyed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced, and natural resources confiscated.”
Lynk concluded, saying “Given the designation of civilian settlements in occupied territory as a war crime under the 1998 Rome Statute, it is imperative that states accept their international legal responsibilities and end all trade with these sources of human rights violations.”
Lynk stated that “While the release of the database will not, by itself, bring an end to the illegal settlements and their serious impact upon human rights, it does signal that sustained defiance by an occupying power will not go unanswered,” describing the move as an “important initial step towards accountability and the end to [Israeli] impunity.”
All 240 Israeli settlements are a “significant source of human rights violations against the protected Palestinian population in the occupied territory,” Lynk said, adding that “thousands of hectares of Palestinian land have been expropriated, thousands of Palestinian homes have been destroyed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced, and natural resources confiscated.”
Lynk concluded, saying “Given the designation of civilian settlements in occupied territory as a war crime under the 1998 Rome Statute, it is imperative that states accept their international legal responsibilities and end all trade with these sources of human rights violations.”
17 feb 2020
Foreign Ministers from the European Union (EU) are expected to discuss US President Donald Trump’s “Deal of the Century” and deliberate countermeasures to the plan on February 17, during a meeting in Brussels, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The paper reported that the decisions are still unclear. However, the EU will publicly condemn the so-called “deal,” and may adopt a decision which reforms the EU vision of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
According to Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency, Israeli ambassadors in Europe have, for weeks, reportedly been lobbying for the success of the plan presented last month by US President Donald Trump, in a bid to convince EU leaders to accept and promote the unpopular diplomatic gambit.
The decisions of the European Union are taken by unanimous consensus of the member states of the Union. However, Israel circumvents such decisions by exploiting its relations with some of the Union’s member states, such as Hungary, which has thwarted many similar decisions in the past and is expected to continue in this pattern.
Ha’aretz quoted sources familiar with the contents of the talks as saying that Israeli delegates claim they are ready to resume “negotiations” with the Palestinians, and that the European Union’s opposition to Trump’s deal will encourage Palestinian rejection.
Following the release of the US president’s proposal, the EU announced that it will study the deal. But, last week, European Union Foreign Minister Josip Borrell announced his rejection of the deal, following comments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of his intention to annex the settlements and the Jordan Valley to Israel.
EU external affairs spokesperson Peter Stano said that the EU remains committed to a two-state solution within the 1967 borders, noting that Monday’s meeting will look into “how best to respond to further developments on the ground.”
The paper reported that the decisions are still unclear. However, the EU will publicly condemn the so-called “deal,” and may adopt a decision which reforms the EU vision of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
According to Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency, Israeli ambassadors in Europe have, for weeks, reportedly been lobbying for the success of the plan presented last month by US President Donald Trump, in a bid to convince EU leaders to accept and promote the unpopular diplomatic gambit.
The decisions of the European Union are taken by unanimous consensus of the member states of the Union. However, Israel circumvents such decisions by exploiting its relations with some of the Union’s member states, such as Hungary, which has thwarted many similar decisions in the past and is expected to continue in this pattern.
Ha’aretz quoted sources familiar with the contents of the talks as saying that Israeli delegates claim they are ready to resume “negotiations” with the Palestinians, and that the European Union’s opposition to Trump’s deal will encourage Palestinian rejection.
Following the release of the US president’s proposal, the EU announced that it will study the deal. But, last week, European Union Foreign Minister Josip Borrell announced his rejection of the deal, following comments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of his intention to annex the settlements and the Jordan Valley to Israel.
EU external affairs spokesperson Peter Stano said that the EU remains committed to a two-state solution within the 1967 borders, noting that Monday’s meeting will look into “how best to respond to further developments on the ground.”
16 feb 2020
The US government has appointed members of a committee tasked with mapping out areas of the occupied West Bank that Israel plans to annex as part of President Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed “Deal of the Century.”
A senior Trump administration official told Israel Hayom daily that US ambassador to Israel David Friedman will lead the joint committee.
“Honored to serve on the Joint Committee,” tweeted Friedman Saturday. “Looking forward to getting started right away,” he said.
Other committee members will include Friedman’s senior adviser Aryeh Lightstone, and Scott Leith, a US National Security Council expert on Israel.
Israeli members will include tourism minister Yariv Levin and Israeli ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer, PNN reports.
The committee was announced by Trump last month during the unveiling of his scheme, which would see Israel control swathes of the West Bank in violation of the fundamental rights of the Palestinians.
Trump said the joint committee would be formed to “convert the conceptual map into a more detailed and calibrated rendering so that recognition can be immediately achieved.”
There is still no set timeline for when the committee will finish its work, but Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pressured by right-wing lawmakers in recent weeks to announce the immediate annexation of all settlements before Israelis head to the polls.
Three weeks ago, both Netanyahu and Friedman said that Israel would be able to do so before the election, and Netanyahu planned to turn the issue into the cornerstone of his re-election campaign.
Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, who is believed to be the architect of the so-called “Vision for Peace,” has said the US administration and Israel had decided to wait until a team was formed to examine the maps, and that he hoped Israel would wait until after the election.
On January 28, Trump unveiled his plan negotiated with Israel but without Palestinians, as one side of any agreement, being involved in the process.
Palestinian leaders immediately rejected the plan, with President Mahmoud Abbas saying it “belongs in the dustbin of history.”
They view the deal as a colonial plan meant to unilaterally control Palestine in its entirety and remove Palestinians from their homeland.
A senior Trump administration official told Israel Hayom daily that US ambassador to Israel David Friedman will lead the joint committee.
“Honored to serve on the Joint Committee,” tweeted Friedman Saturday. “Looking forward to getting started right away,” he said.
Other committee members will include Friedman’s senior adviser Aryeh Lightstone, and Scott Leith, a US National Security Council expert on Israel.
Israeli members will include tourism minister Yariv Levin and Israeli ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer, PNN reports.
The committee was announced by Trump last month during the unveiling of his scheme, which would see Israel control swathes of the West Bank in violation of the fundamental rights of the Palestinians.
Trump said the joint committee would be formed to “convert the conceptual map into a more detailed and calibrated rendering so that recognition can be immediately achieved.”
There is still no set timeline for when the committee will finish its work, but Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pressured by right-wing lawmakers in recent weeks to announce the immediate annexation of all settlements before Israelis head to the polls.
Three weeks ago, both Netanyahu and Friedman said that Israel would be able to do so before the election, and Netanyahu planned to turn the issue into the cornerstone of his re-election campaign.
Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, who is believed to be the architect of the so-called “Vision for Peace,” has said the US administration and Israel had decided to wait until a team was formed to examine the maps, and that he hoped Israel would wait until after the election.
On January 28, Trump unveiled his plan negotiated with Israel but without Palestinians, as one side of any agreement, being involved in the process.
Palestinian leaders immediately rejected the plan, with President Mahmoud Abbas saying it “belongs in the dustbin of history.”
They view the deal as a colonial plan meant to unilaterally control Palestine in its entirety and remove Palestinians from their homeland.
14 feb 2020
An overwhelming majority of the European Union’s parliamentary lawmakers have censured a US-devised Middle East proposal on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying the contentious plan flies in the face of international law.
During a session in Strasbourg, on Tuesday, EU lawmakers said the plan that the administration of US President Donald Trump has drawn up, in cooperation with Israel, runs contrary to international law and is biased towards Tel Aviv.
Dutch MEP Kati Piri denounced the American scheme as “one-sided, illegal and intentionally provocative,” adding that it is aimed at “legalizing settlement and annexation of the West Bank,” while risking “more suffering for the Palestinian people.”
What the US president calls the “Deal of the Century” is “a cynical plan of two far-right leaders seeking support ahead of elections,” she stressed, referring to Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Similarly, Spanish MEP Manu Pineda called the US proposal the “Fraud of the Century.”
Belgian MEP Hilde Vautmans also urged the EU to use its “credibility to intervene as an honest broker” and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to initiate a peace conference.
The European Union has already rejected Trump’s self-proclaimed “peace plan” for the Middle East.
Only a small number of lawmakers backed Trump’s plan, during the debate.
Slovenian politician Tanja Fajon warned that the “EU should not reject the deal because it hates Trump.”
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also addressed the session, saying Israel’s possible annexation of the Jordan Valley under the plan — drawn up by the US administration, in cooperation with Israel — could fuel Palestinian anger and protests.
“This may happen …You can be sure it’s not going to be peaceful,” he said.
Borrell also noted that Trump’s Middle East plot challenges international parameters.
“The proposals tabled two weeks ago clearly challenge the internationally agreed parameters. It is difficult to see how this initiative can bring both parties back to the table,” he said. “I made this point to my (US) interlocutors: we need to ask ourselves whether this plan provides a basis for progress or not.”
The EU foreign policy chief further expressed his vocal support for “a negotiated two-state solution” to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in accordance with international law.
“This means a two-state solution based on the parameters set, in the Council Conclusions of July 2014, that meets Israeli and Palestinian security needs and Palestinian aspirations for statehood and sovereignty, ends the occupation that began in 1967, and resolves all permanent status issues in order to end the conflict,” he added.
Trump released his controversial deal on January 28, during an event at the White House, alongside Netanyahu, in Washington.
The so-called ‘Vision for Peace’ — which all Palestinian groups have unanimously rejected — bars Palestinian refugees from returning to their homeland while enshrines Jerusalem al-Quds as “Israel’s undivided capital” and allows the regime to annex settlements and the Jordan Valley.
Addressing the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas reiterated his rejection of Trump’s initiative, PNN further reports.
He said that the proposal would bring neither peace nor stability and would rather leave the Palestinians with a state resembling “Swiss Cheese.”
Meanwhile, a poll conducted by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) found that 94 percent of Palestinian people are against the US initiative and only 4 percent support it.
According to the survey, the results of which were published on Tuesday, 64 percent of the Palestinians believe that the US plan should be met with an armed intifada (uprising).
During a session in Strasbourg, on Tuesday, EU lawmakers said the plan that the administration of US President Donald Trump has drawn up, in cooperation with Israel, runs contrary to international law and is biased towards Tel Aviv.
Dutch MEP Kati Piri denounced the American scheme as “one-sided, illegal and intentionally provocative,” adding that it is aimed at “legalizing settlement and annexation of the West Bank,” while risking “more suffering for the Palestinian people.”
What the US president calls the “Deal of the Century” is “a cynical plan of two far-right leaders seeking support ahead of elections,” she stressed, referring to Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Similarly, Spanish MEP Manu Pineda called the US proposal the “Fraud of the Century.”
Belgian MEP Hilde Vautmans also urged the EU to use its “credibility to intervene as an honest broker” and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to initiate a peace conference.
The European Union has already rejected Trump’s self-proclaimed “peace plan” for the Middle East.
Only a small number of lawmakers backed Trump’s plan, during the debate.
Slovenian politician Tanja Fajon warned that the “EU should not reject the deal because it hates Trump.”
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also addressed the session, saying Israel’s possible annexation of the Jordan Valley under the plan — drawn up by the US administration, in cooperation with Israel — could fuel Palestinian anger and protests.
“This may happen …You can be sure it’s not going to be peaceful,” he said.
Borrell also noted that Trump’s Middle East plot challenges international parameters.
“The proposals tabled two weeks ago clearly challenge the internationally agreed parameters. It is difficult to see how this initiative can bring both parties back to the table,” he said. “I made this point to my (US) interlocutors: we need to ask ourselves whether this plan provides a basis for progress or not.”
The EU foreign policy chief further expressed his vocal support for “a negotiated two-state solution” to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in accordance with international law.
“This means a two-state solution based on the parameters set, in the Council Conclusions of July 2014, that meets Israeli and Palestinian security needs and Palestinian aspirations for statehood and sovereignty, ends the occupation that began in 1967, and resolves all permanent status issues in order to end the conflict,” he added.
Trump released his controversial deal on January 28, during an event at the White House, alongside Netanyahu, in Washington.
The so-called ‘Vision for Peace’ — which all Palestinian groups have unanimously rejected — bars Palestinian refugees from returning to their homeland while enshrines Jerusalem al-Quds as “Israel’s undivided capital” and allows the regime to annex settlements and the Jordan Valley.
Addressing the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas reiterated his rejection of Trump’s initiative, PNN further reports.
He said that the proposal would bring neither peace nor stability and would rather leave the Palestinians with a state resembling “Swiss Cheese.”
Meanwhile, a poll conducted by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) found that 94 percent of Palestinian people are against the US initiative and only 4 percent support it.
According to the survey, the results of which were published on Tuesday, 64 percent of the Palestinians believe that the US plan should be met with an armed intifada (uprising).
12 feb 2020
|
Maybe something good will come out of the Trump plan, after all. By pushing the Middle East peace process to its logical conclusion, Donald Trump has made crystal clear something that was supposed to have been obscured: that no US administration has ever really seen peace as the objective of its “peacemaking”.
The current White House is no exception – it has just been far more incompetent at concealing its joint strategy with the Israelis. But that is what happens when a glorified used-car salesman, Donald Trump, and his sidekick son-in-law, the schoolboy-cum-businessman Jared Kushner, try selling us the “deal of the century”. Neither, it seems, has the political or diplomatic guile normally associated with those who rise to high office in Washington. |
During an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria this week, Kushner dismally failed to cloak the fact that his “peace” plan was designed with one goal only: to screw the Palestinians over.
The real aim is so transparent that even Zakaria couldn’t stop himself from pointing it out. In CNN’s words, he noted that “no Arab country currently satisfies the requirements Palestinians are being expected to meet in the next four years – including ensuring freedom of press, free and fair elections, respect for human rights for its citizens, and an independent judiciary.”
Trump’s senior adviser suddenly found himself confronted with the kind of deadly, unassailable logic usually overlooked in CNN coverage. Zakaria observed:
Isn’t this just a way of telling the Palestinians you’re never actually going to get a state because … if no Arab countries today [are] in a position that you are demanding of the Palestinians before they can be made a state, effectively, it’s a killer amendment?
Indeed it is.
In fact, the “Peace to Prosperity” document unveiled last week by the White House is no more than a list of impossible preconditions the Palestinians must meet to be allowed to sit down with the Israelis at the negotiating table. If they don’t do so within four years, and quickly reach a deal, the very last slivers of their historic homeland – the parts not already seized by Israel – can be grabbed too, with US blessing.
Preposterous conditions
Admittedly, all Middle East peace plans in living memory have foisted these kinds of prejudicial conditions on the Palestinians. But this time many of the preconditions are so patently preposterous – contradictory even – that the usually pliable corporate press corps are embarrassed to be seen ignoring the glaring inconsistencies.
The CNN exchange was so revealing in part because Kushner was triggered by Zakaria’s observation that the Palestinians had to become a model democracy – a kind of idealized Switzerland, while still under belligerent Israeli occupation – before they could be considered responsible enough for statehood.
How was that plausible, Zakaria hinted, when Saudi Arabia, despite its appalling human rights abuses, nonetheless remains a close strategic US ally, and Saudi leaders continue to be intimates of the Trump business empire? No one in Washington is seriously contemplating removing US recognition of Saudi Arabia because it is a head-chopping, women-hating, journalist-killing religious fundamentalist state.
But Zakaria could have made an even more telling point – was he not answerable to CNN executives. There are also hardly any western states that would pass the democratic, human rights-respecting threshold set by the Trump plan for the Palestinians. Nor, of course, would Israel.
Think of Britain’s flouting last year of a ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague that the Chagos Islanders must be allowed to return home decades after the UK expelled them so the US could build a military base on their land. Or the Windrush scandal, when it was revealed that a UK government “hostile environment” policy was used to illegally deport British citizens to the Caribbean because of the color of their skin.
Or what about the US evading due process by holding prisoners offshore at Guantanamo? Or its use of torture against Iraqi prisoners, or its reliance on extraordinary rendition, or its extrajudicial assassinations using drones overseas, including against its own citizens?
Or for that matter, its jailing and extortionate fining of whistleblower Chelsea Manning, despite the Obama administration granting her clemency. US officials want to force her to testify against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for his role in publishing leaks of US war crimes committed in Iraq, including the shocking Collateral Murder video.
And while we’re talking about Assange and about Iraq…
Would the records of either the US or UK stand up to scrutiny if they were subjected to the same standards now required of the Palestinian leadership.
Impertinent questions
But let’s fast forward to the heart of the matter. Angered by Zakaria’s impertinence at mildly questioning the logic of the Trump plan, Kushner let rip.
He called the Palestinian Authority a “police state” and one that is “not exactly a thriving democracy”. It would be impossible, he added, for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians until the Palestinians, not Israel’s occupying army, changed its ways. It was time for the Palestinians to prioritize human rights and democracy, while at the same time submitting completely to Israel’s belligerent, half-century occupation that violates their rights and undermines any claims Israel might have to being a democracy.
Kushner said:
If they [the Palestinians] don’t think that they can uphold these standards, then I don’t think we can get Israel to take the risk to recognize them as a state, to allow them to take control of themselves, because the only thing more dangerous than what we have now is a failed state.
Let’s take a moment to unpack that short statement to examine its many conceptual confusions.
First, there’s the very obvious point that “police states” and dictatorships are not “failed states”. Not by a long shot. In fact, police states and dictatorships are usually the very opposite of failed states. Iraq was an extremely able state under Saddam Hussein, in terms both of its ability to provide welfare and educational services and of its ruthless, brutal efficiency in crushing dissent.
Iraq only became a failed state when the US illegally invaded and executed Saddam, leaving a local leadership vacuum that sucked in an array of competing actors who quickly made Iraq ungovernable.
Oppressive by design
Second, as should hardly need pointing out, the PA can’t be a police state when it isn’t even a state. After all, that’s where the Palestinians are trying to get to, and Israel and the US are blocking the way. It is obviously something else. What that “something else” is brings us to the third point.
Kushner is right that the PA is increasingly authoritarian and uses its security forces in oppressive ways – because that’s exactly what it was set up to do by Israel and the US.
Palestinians had assumed that the Oslo accords of the mid-1990s would lead to the creation of a sovereign state at the completion of that five-year peace process. But that never happened. Denied statehood ever since, the PA now amounts to nothing more than a security contractor for the Israelis. Its unspoken job is to make the Palestinian people submit to their permanent occupation by Israel.
The self-defeating deal contained in Oslo’s “land for peace” formula was this: the PA would build Israeli trust by crushing all resistance to the occupation, and in return Israel would agree to hand over more territory and security powers to the PA.
Bound by its legal obligations, the PA had two possible paths ahead of it: either it would become a state under Israeli license, or it would serve as a Vichy-like regime suppressing Palestinian aspirations for national liberation. Once the US and Israel made clear they would deny the Palestinians statehood at every turn, the PA’s fate was sealed.
Put another way, the point of Oslo from the point of view of the US and Israel was to make the PA an efficient, permanent police state-in-waiting, and one that lacked the tools to threaten Israel.
And that’s exactly what was engineered. Israel refused to let the Palestinians have a proper army in case, bidding to gain statehood, that army turned its firepower on Israel. Instead a US army general, Keith Dayton, was appointed to oversee the training of the Palestinian police forces to help the PA better repress internal dissent – those Palestinians who might try to exercise their right in international law to resist Israel’s belligerent occupation.
Presumably, it is a sign of that US program’s success that Kushner can now describe the PA as a police state.
Freudian slip
In his CNN interview, Kushner inadvertently highlighted the Catch-22 created for the Palestinians. The Trump “peace” process penalizes the Palestinian leadership for their very success in achieving the targets laid out for them in the Oslo “peace” process.
Resist Israel’s efforts to deprive the Palestinians of statehood and the PA is classified as a terrorist entity and denied statehood. Submit to Israel’s dictates and oppress the Palestinian people to prevent them demanding statehood and the PA is classified as a police state and denied statehood. Either way, statehood is unattainable. Heads I win, tails you lose.
Kushner’s use of the term “failed state” is revealing too, in a Freudian slip kind of way. Israel doesn’t just want to steal some Palestinian land before it creates a small, impotent Palestinian state. Ultimately, what Israel envisions for the Palestinians is no statehood at all, not even of the compromised, collaborationist kind currently embodied by the PA.
An unabashed partisan
Kushner, however, has done us a favor inadvertently. He has given away the nature of the US bait-and-switch game towards the Palestinians. Unlike Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk and Aaron David Miller – previous American Jewish diplomats overseeing US “peace efforts” – Kushner is not pretending to be an “honest broker”. He is transparently, unabashedly partisan.
In an earlier CNN interview, one last week with Christiane Amanpour, Kushner showed just how personal is his antipathy towards the Palestinians and their efforts to achieve even the most minimal kind of statehood in a tiny fraction of their historic homeland.
He sounded more like a jilted lover, or an irate spouse forced into couples therapy, than a diplomat in charge of a complex and incendiary peace process.
He struggled to contain his bitterness as he extemporized a well-worn but demonstrably false Israeli talking-point that the Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”.
He told Amanpour: “They’re going to screw up another opportunity, like they’ve screwed up every other opportunity that they’ve ever had in their existence.” tweet
The reality is that Kushner, like the real author of the Trump plan, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would prefer that the Palestinians had never existed. He would rather this endless peace charade could be discarded, freeing him to get on with enriching himself with his Saudi pals.
And if the Trump plan can be made to work, he and Netanyahu might finally get their way.
This article first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilizations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.
The real aim is so transparent that even Zakaria couldn’t stop himself from pointing it out. In CNN’s words, he noted that “no Arab country currently satisfies the requirements Palestinians are being expected to meet in the next four years – including ensuring freedom of press, free and fair elections, respect for human rights for its citizens, and an independent judiciary.”
Trump’s senior adviser suddenly found himself confronted with the kind of deadly, unassailable logic usually overlooked in CNN coverage. Zakaria observed:
Isn’t this just a way of telling the Palestinians you’re never actually going to get a state because … if no Arab countries today [are] in a position that you are demanding of the Palestinians before they can be made a state, effectively, it’s a killer amendment?
Indeed it is.
In fact, the “Peace to Prosperity” document unveiled last week by the White House is no more than a list of impossible preconditions the Palestinians must meet to be allowed to sit down with the Israelis at the negotiating table. If they don’t do so within four years, and quickly reach a deal, the very last slivers of their historic homeland – the parts not already seized by Israel – can be grabbed too, with US blessing.
Preposterous conditions
Admittedly, all Middle East peace plans in living memory have foisted these kinds of prejudicial conditions on the Palestinians. But this time many of the preconditions are so patently preposterous – contradictory even – that the usually pliable corporate press corps are embarrassed to be seen ignoring the glaring inconsistencies.
The CNN exchange was so revealing in part because Kushner was triggered by Zakaria’s observation that the Palestinians had to become a model democracy – a kind of idealized Switzerland, while still under belligerent Israeli occupation – before they could be considered responsible enough for statehood.
How was that plausible, Zakaria hinted, when Saudi Arabia, despite its appalling human rights abuses, nonetheless remains a close strategic US ally, and Saudi leaders continue to be intimates of the Trump business empire? No one in Washington is seriously contemplating removing US recognition of Saudi Arabia because it is a head-chopping, women-hating, journalist-killing religious fundamentalist state.
But Zakaria could have made an even more telling point – was he not answerable to CNN executives. There are also hardly any western states that would pass the democratic, human rights-respecting threshold set by the Trump plan for the Palestinians. Nor, of course, would Israel.
Think of Britain’s flouting last year of a ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague that the Chagos Islanders must be allowed to return home decades after the UK expelled them so the US could build a military base on their land. Or the Windrush scandal, when it was revealed that a UK government “hostile environment” policy was used to illegally deport British citizens to the Caribbean because of the color of their skin.
Or what about the US evading due process by holding prisoners offshore at Guantanamo? Or its use of torture against Iraqi prisoners, or its reliance on extraordinary rendition, or its extrajudicial assassinations using drones overseas, including against its own citizens?
Or for that matter, its jailing and extortionate fining of whistleblower Chelsea Manning, despite the Obama administration granting her clemency. US officials want to force her to testify against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for his role in publishing leaks of US war crimes committed in Iraq, including the shocking Collateral Murder video.
And while we’re talking about Assange and about Iraq…
Would the records of either the US or UK stand up to scrutiny if they were subjected to the same standards now required of the Palestinian leadership.
Impertinent questions
But let’s fast forward to the heart of the matter. Angered by Zakaria’s impertinence at mildly questioning the logic of the Trump plan, Kushner let rip.
He called the Palestinian Authority a “police state” and one that is “not exactly a thriving democracy”. It would be impossible, he added, for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians until the Palestinians, not Israel’s occupying army, changed its ways. It was time for the Palestinians to prioritize human rights and democracy, while at the same time submitting completely to Israel’s belligerent, half-century occupation that violates their rights and undermines any claims Israel might have to being a democracy.
Kushner said:
If they [the Palestinians] don’t think that they can uphold these standards, then I don’t think we can get Israel to take the risk to recognize them as a state, to allow them to take control of themselves, because the only thing more dangerous than what we have now is a failed state.
Let’s take a moment to unpack that short statement to examine its many conceptual confusions.
First, there’s the very obvious point that “police states” and dictatorships are not “failed states”. Not by a long shot. In fact, police states and dictatorships are usually the very opposite of failed states. Iraq was an extremely able state under Saddam Hussein, in terms both of its ability to provide welfare and educational services and of its ruthless, brutal efficiency in crushing dissent.
Iraq only became a failed state when the US illegally invaded and executed Saddam, leaving a local leadership vacuum that sucked in an array of competing actors who quickly made Iraq ungovernable.
Oppressive by design
Second, as should hardly need pointing out, the PA can’t be a police state when it isn’t even a state. After all, that’s where the Palestinians are trying to get to, and Israel and the US are blocking the way. It is obviously something else. What that “something else” is brings us to the third point.
Kushner is right that the PA is increasingly authoritarian and uses its security forces in oppressive ways – because that’s exactly what it was set up to do by Israel and the US.
Palestinians had assumed that the Oslo accords of the mid-1990s would lead to the creation of a sovereign state at the completion of that five-year peace process. But that never happened. Denied statehood ever since, the PA now amounts to nothing more than a security contractor for the Israelis. Its unspoken job is to make the Palestinian people submit to their permanent occupation by Israel.
The self-defeating deal contained in Oslo’s “land for peace” formula was this: the PA would build Israeli trust by crushing all resistance to the occupation, and in return Israel would agree to hand over more territory and security powers to the PA.
Bound by its legal obligations, the PA had two possible paths ahead of it: either it would become a state under Israeli license, or it would serve as a Vichy-like regime suppressing Palestinian aspirations for national liberation. Once the US and Israel made clear they would deny the Palestinians statehood at every turn, the PA’s fate was sealed.
Put another way, the point of Oslo from the point of view of the US and Israel was to make the PA an efficient, permanent police state-in-waiting, and one that lacked the tools to threaten Israel.
And that’s exactly what was engineered. Israel refused to let the Palestinians have a proper army in case, bidding to gain statehood, that army turned its firepower on Israel. Instead a US army general, Keith Dayton, was appointed to oversee the training of the Palestinian police forces to help the PA better repress internal dissent – those Palestinians who might try to exercise their right in international law to resist Israel’s belligerent occupation.
Presumably, it is a sign of that US program’s success that Kushner can now describe the PA as a police state.
Freudian slip
In his CNN interview, Kushner inadvertently highlighted the Catch-22 created for the Palestinians. The Trump “peace” process penalizes the Palestinian leadership for their very success in achieving the targets laid out for them in the Oslo “peace” process.
Resist Israel’s efforts to deprive the Palestinians of statehood and the PA is classified as a terrorist entity and denied statehood. Submit to Israel’s dictates and oppress the Palestinian people to prevent them demanding statehood and the PA is classified as a police state and denied statehood. Either way, statehood is unattainable. Heads I win, tails you lose.
Kushner’s use of the term “failed state” is revealing too, in a Freudian slip kind of way. Israel doesn’t just want to steal some Palestinian land before it creates a small, impotent Palestinian state. Ultimately, what Israel envisions for the Palestinians is no statehood at all, not even of the compromised, collaborationist kind currently embodied by the PA.
An unabashed partisan
Kushner, however, has done us a favor inadvertently. He has given away the nature of the US bait-and-switch game towards the Palestinians. Unlike Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk and Aaron David Miller – previous American Jewish diplomats overseeing US “peace efforts” – Kushner is not pretending to be an “honest broker”. He is transparently, unabashedly partisan.
In an earlier CNN interview, one last week with Christiane Amanpour, Kushner showed just how personal is his antipathy towards the Palestinians and their efforts to achieve even the most minimal kind of statehood in a tiny fraction of their historic homeland.
He sounded more like a jilted lover, or an irate spouse forced into couples therapy, than a diplomat in charge of a complex and incendiary peace process.
He struggled to contain his bitterness as he extemporized a well-worn but demonstrably false Israeli talking-point that the Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”.
He told Amanpour: “They’re going to screw up another opportunity, like they’ve screwed up every other opportunity that they’ve ever had in their existence.” tweet
The reality is that Kushner, like the real author of the Trump plan, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would prefer that the Palestinians had never existed. He would rather this endless peace charade could be discarded, freeing him to get on with enriching himself with his Saudi pals.
And if the Trump plan can be made to work, he and Netanyahu might finally get their way.
This article first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilizations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.