Palestinian protesters clash with Israeli forces near an Israeli checkpoint
in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Dec. 7, 2017, after President Trump
recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital. (photo: Abbas Momani/AFP)
Donald Trump's Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's Capital Will Only Breed
Violence
By Robert Fisk, The Independent
07 December 17
Trump has turned away from any notion of fairness in peace negotiations and
runs with Israel's ball
was called by an Irish radio station in Dublin to respond to President
Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
What did I think was going on inside the US President's mind, I was asked?
And I replied immediately: "I don't have the key to the lunatic asylum."
What might once have seemed an outrageously over-the-top remark was simply
accepted as a normal journalistic reaction to the leader of the world's
greatest superpower. And re-listening to the speech that Trump made in the
White House, I realised I should have been far less restrained. The very
text of the document is insane, preposterous, shameful.
Goodbye Palestine. Goodbye the "two state" solution. Goodbye the
Palestinians. For this new Israeli "capital" is not for them. Trump did not
even use the word "Palestine". He talked about "Israel and the Palestinians"
- in other words, of a state and of those who do not deserve - and can no
longer aspire to - a state. No wonder I received a call in Beirut last night
from a Palestinian woman who had just listened to the Trump destruction of
the "peace process". "Remember Kingdom of Heaven?" she asked me, referring
to Ridley Scott's great movie of the 1187 fall of Jerusalem. "Well it's now
the Kingdom of Hell."
It's not the Kingdom of Hell, of course. The Palestinians have been living
in a kind of hell for a 100 years, ever since the Balfour Declaration
declared Britain's support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, when a single
sentence - in which our beloved Theresa May takes such "pride" - became a
textbook for refugeedom and the future dispossession of the Palestinian
Arabs from their lands. As usual, the Arab response this week was sickening,
warning of the "dangers" of Trump's decision, which was "unjustified and
irresponsible" - this piece of fluff produced by King Salman of Saudi
Arabia, the so-called protector of Islam's two holiest places (the third
being Jerusalem, although he didn't quite manage to point that out) - and we
can be sure that in the coming days many an "emergency committee" will be
formed by Arab and Muslim institutions to deal with this "danger". They
will, as we all know, be worthless.
But it was the linguistic analysis of Noam Chomsky when I was at university
- he later became a good friend - which I applied to the Trump speech. The
first thing I spotted was, as I mentioned above, the absence of "Palestine".
I always put the word in quotation marks because I don't believe it will
ever exist as a state. Go and look at the Jewish colonies in the West Bank
and it's clear that Israel has no intention that it should exist in the
future. But that's no excuse for Trump. In the spirit of the Balfour
Declaration - which referred to Jews but to the Arabs as "existing
non-Jewish communities in Palestine" - Trump downgrades the Arabs of
Palestine to "Palestinians".
Yet even at the start, the chicanery begins. Trump talks about "very fresh
thinking" and "new approaches". But there is nothing new about Jerusalem as
Israel's capital, since the Israelis have been banging on about this for
decades. What is "new" is that - for the benefit of his party, Christian
Evangelicals and those who claim to be American supporters of Israel - Trump
has simply turned away from any notion of fairness in peace negotiations and
run with Israel's ball. Past presidents have issued waivers against the 1995
Jerusalem Congress Act, not because "delaying the recognition of Jerusalem
would advance the cause of peace" but because that recognition should be
given to the city as a capital for two peoples and two states - not one.
Then Trump tells us that his decision "is in the best interests" of the US.
But he can't explain how - by effectively taking America out of future
"peace" negotiations and destroying any claim (admittedly dubious by now)
that the US is an "honest broker" in these talks - this will benefit
Washington. It clearly won't - though it might help Trump's party funding -
since it further lowers American power, prestige and standing across the
Middle East. Then he claims that "like every other sovereign nation", Israel
has the right to determine its own capital. Up to a point, Lord Copper. For
when another people - the Arabs rather than just the Jews - also want to
claim that city as a capital (or at least the east of it), then that right
is suspended until a final peace comes into existence.
Israel may claim all of Jerusalem as its eternal and undivided capital - as
Netanyahu also claims that Israel is the "Jewish state", despite the fact
that more than 20 per cent of the people of Israel are Muslim Arabs who live
inside its borders - but America's recognition of this claim means that
Jerusalem can never be the capital of another nation. And here's the rub. We
don't have the slightest idea of the real borders of this "capital". Trump
actually acknowledged this, in a line that went largely unreported, when he
said that "we are not taking a position on . the specific boundaries of the
Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem". In other words, he recognised the
sovereignty of a country over all of Jerusalem without knowing exactly where
that city's borders lie.
In fact, we don't have the slightest idea of just where Israel's eastern
border is. Does it lie along the old front line that divided Jerusalem? Does
it lie a mile or so to the east of east Jerusalem? Or does it lie along the
Jordan river? In which case, goodbye Palestine. Trump has awarded Israel the
right to a whole city as its capital but hasn't the slightest idea where the
eastern border of this country is, let alone the frontier of Jerusalem.
The world was happy to accept Tel Aviv as a temporary capital - as it was to
pretend that Jericho or Ramallah was the "capital" of the Palestine
Authority after Arafat arrived there. But Jerusalem was not to be recognised
as the Israeli capital even though Israel claimed it was. Then we have Trump
stating that in this "most successful" democracy, "people of all faiths are
free to live and worship according to their conscience". I trust he won't be
telling that to the more than two and a half million Palestinians in the
West Bank who are not free to worship in Jerusalem without a special pass,
or the population of besieged Gaza who cannot hope to reach the city. Yet
Trump claims his decision is merely "a recognition of reality". I suppose
his ambassador in Tel Aviv - soon, presumably, in Jerusalem (if only, so
far, in a hotel room) - believes this tosh; for it was he who claimed that
Israel only occupied "2 per cent" of the West Bank.
And this new embassy, when it is eventually completed, will become "a
magnificent tribute to peace", according to Trump. Given the bunkers into
which most US embassies in the Middle East have turned, it's going to be a
place with armoured gates and pre-stressed concrete walls and lots of inner
bunkers for its diplomatic staff. But by then, I suppose, Trump will be
gone. Or will he?
As usual, we had the Trump waffle. He wants "a great deal" for the Israelis
and Palestinians, a peace agreement that is "acceptable to both sides" -
even though this is not possible when he's recognised all of Jerusalem as
Israeli before the so-called "final status" talks, which the world still
fondly expects to take place between "both sides". But if Jerusalem is "one
of the most sensitive issues" in these talks, if there was going to be
"disagreement and dissent" about his announcement - all of which he said -
then why on earth did he make the decision at all?
Only when he descended into Blair-like verbosity - that the future of the
region was held back by "bloodshed, ignorance and terror" - did it really
become too much to stomach any more of these lies. If people are supposed to
respond to "disagreement" with "reasoned debate, not violence", what is the
recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital supposed to produce? A
"debate", for heaven's sake? Is that what to "rethink old assumptions"
means?
Enough of this twaddle. What more folly can this wretched man dream up and
lie about? So what was going on in his befuddled mind when he made this
decision? Sure, he wants to follow up on his campaign promises. But how come
he decided to honour this promise but could not bring himself to say last
April that the mass murder of a million and a half Armenians in 1917
constituted an act of genocide? He was obviously frightened of upsetting the
Turks, who deny the first industrial holocaust of the 20th century. Well,
he's sure upset the Turks now. I'd like to think he'd taken that into
account. But forget it. The guy is crackers. And it will take many years for
his country to recover from this latest act of folly.
e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
