Very long, but extremely informative.
Miriam
Trump’s Bipartisan Support for Eradicating the Palestinian Cause
June 17, 2019
The U.S. is now formally supporting Israel’s efforts at economic
pacification, writes Jonathan Cook.
By JonathanCook
Jonathan-Cook.net
The White House’s prolonged financial bullying of the Palestinian
Authority, the Palestinians’ government-in-waiting, has reached the point
where there are now credible warnings that it is close to collapse. The
crisis has offered critics further proof of the administration’s seemingly
chaotic, often self-sabotaging approach to foreign policy matters.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials charged with resolving the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict have demonstrated ever more blatant bias, such as the recent claims
by David Friedman, the ambassador to Israel, that Israel is “on the side of
God” and should have the “right to retain” much of the West Bank.
Critics view the Trump administration’s approach as a dangerous departure
from the traditional U.S. role of “honest broker.”
Such analyses, however common, are deeply misguided. Far from lacking a
strategy, the White House has a precise and clear one for imposing a
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - President Donald Trump’s
“deal of the century.” Even without publication so far of a formal
document, the plan’s contours are coming ever more sharply into relief, as
its implementation becomes observable on the ground.
Friedman during 2018 visit to Nazareth. (Matty Stern/U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv)
Repeated delays in announcing the plan are simply an indication that Trump’
s team needs more time to engineer a suitable political environment for the
plan to be brought out of the shadows.
Further, the Trump administration’s vision of the future for Israelis and
Palestinians - however extreme and one-sided - has wide, bipartisan support
in Washington. There’s nothing especially “Trumpian” about the
administration’s emerging “peace process.”
Choking Off Aid
Paradoxically, that was evident last week, when leading members of the U.S.
Congress from both sides of the aisle introduced a bill to boost the ailing
Palestinian economy by $50m. The hope is to create a “Partnership Fund for
Peace” that will offer a financial fillip to Israelis and Palestinians
seeking to resolve the conflict - or, at least, that is what is being
claimed.
This sudden concern for the health of the Palestinian economy is a dramatic
and confusing U-turn. Congress has been an active and enthusiastic partner
with the White House in choking off aid to the PA for more than a year.
Mohammad Shtayyeh, the Palestinian prime minister, told The New York Times
last week that the PA was on the brink of implosion. “We are in a
collapsing situation,” he told the newspaper.
The PA’s crisis comes as no surprise. Congress helped initiate it by
passing the Taylor Force Act in March 2018. It requires the U.S. to halt
funding to the PA until it stops paying stipends to some 35,000 families of
Palestinians jailed, killed or maimed by Israel.
Brink of Collapse
Previous U.S. administrations might well have signed a waiver to prevent
such legislation from going into effect - just as presidents until Trump
blocked a congressional law passed in 1995 demanding that the U.S. move its
embassy to Jerusalem.
But the Trump White House is not interested in diplomatic face-saving or
reining in the pro-Israel zealotry of U.S. legislators. It fervently and
explicitly shares the biases that have long been inherent in the U.S.
political system.
In line with the Taylor Force Act, the White House has cut off vital funds
for Palestinians, including to UNRWA, the United Nations’ refugee agency
for Palestinians, and to hospitals in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.
The decision by Congress to throttle the PA has had further repercussions,
leaving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exposed domestically. Not
daring to be seen as less anti-PA than U.S. legislators, Netanyahu
implemented his own version of the Taylor Force Act earlier this year.
Since February, he has withheld a portion of the taxes Israel collects on
behalf of the PA, the vast bulk of its income, equal to the stipends
transferred to the Palestinian families of prisoners and casualties of
Israeli violence - or those who Israel and the U.S. simplemindedly refer to
as “terrorists.”
That, in turn, has left Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, in an
impossible position. He dare not be seen accepting an Israeli diktat that
legitimizes withholding Palestinian money, or one that defines as
“terrorists” those who have sacrificed the most for the Palestinian cause.
So he has refused the entire monthly tax transfer until the full amount is
reinstated.
Now, just as these various blows against the PA finally threaten to topple
it, the U.S. Congress suddenly prepares to step in and bail out the
Palestinian economy with $50m. What on earth is going on?
Neighborhood in West Bank city of Ariel. (Ori via Wikimedia Commons)
‘Money for Quiet’
The small print is telling. The PA, the Palestinians’ fledgling government,
is not eligible for any of the U.S. Congress’s promised largesse.
If the legislation passes, the money will be handed to “Palestinian
entrepreneurs and companies,” as well as non-governmental organizations,
willing to work with the U.S. and Israel on “people-to-people
peace-building” programs and “reconciliation between Israelis and
Palestinians.”
In other words, the legislation is actually designed as another strike
against the Palestinians’ existing leadership. The PA is being bypassed yet
again, as the U.S. and Israel try to bolster an alternative economic, rather
than political, leadership.
This move by U.S. representatives is not occurring in a vacuum. Since the
effective collapse of the Oslo accords nearly two decades ago, Washington
has sought to downgrade a national conflict that needs a political solution
into a humanitarian crisis that needs an economic one.
It is a variation on Netanyahu’s long-standing goal to smash the
Palestinian national struggle and replace it with “economic peace.”
Where once the goal of peacemaking was “land in exchange for peace” - that
is, a Palestinian state in return for an end to hostilities - now the aim is
“money in exchange for quiet.” The U.S. is now formally supporting
Israel’s efforts at economic pacification.
Outrage at New Elections
The Trump administration has devised a two-stage process for neutralizing
Palestinians.
Firstly, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has been tasked with winning
over Arab states, particularly those in the oil-rich Gulf, to stump up money
for pacifying Palestinians and their neighbors.
This is the aim of an investment conference due to be held in Bahrain later
this month - the lynchpin of the “deal of the century,” not simply a
prelude to it.
That was why Trump himself was so visibly outraged at the delay caused by
Netanyahu’s decision to dissolve the Israeli parliament last month, a
reflection of his political weakness as he faces imminent corruption trials.
The new elections in Israel, Trump grumbled, were “ridiculous” and
“messed up.”
The intention of the Bahrain conference is to use tens of billions of
dollars raised by Washington to buy off opposition to the Trump deal,
chiefly from Egypt and Jordan, which are critical to the pacification
program’s success.
Any refusal by the Palestinians to surrender, either in Gaza or the West
Bank, could have major repercussions for these neighboring states.
Alternative Leaders
Secondly, Friedman is at the center of efforts to identify recipients for
the Gulf-funded handouts. He has been seeking to forge a new alliance
between the settlers, with whom he is closely aligned, and Palestinians who
may be willing to help in the pacification project. Late last year, he
attended a meeting of Palestinian and Israeli business leaders in the West
Bank city of Ariel.
Afterwards he tweeted that the business community was “ready, willing and
able to advance joint opportunity & peaceful coexistence. People want peace
and we are ready to help! Is the Palestinian leadership listening?”
Friedman has made no bones about where his - and supposedly God’s -
priorities lie, throwing his weight behind the growing clamor in Israel to
annex much of the territory that was once seen as integral to creating a
Palestinian state. With that as the administration’s lode star, the task is
now to find a Palestinian leadership prepared to stand by as the finishing
touches are put on a Greater Israel ordained by God.
Concerns in Washington about the PA’s unwillingness to comply were voiced
last week by Kushner, though he dressed them up as doubts about the
Palestinians’ ability to govern themselves. He said of the PA: “The hope
is that they, over time, will become capable of governing.” He added that
the real test of the administration’s plan would be whether Palestinian
areas became “investable.”
Kushner, second from left, in 2017, with other members of the Trump
administration, arriving as honored guest of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al
Saud, 2017, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (White House/ Shealah Craighead)
“When I speak to Palestinian people, what they want is they want the
opportunity to live a better life. They want the opportunity to pay their
mortgage,” he said.
Washington is therefore looking to influential families in the West Bank
that could potentially be recruited with bribes to serve as an alternative,
compliant leadership. In February it was reported that around 200
businesspeople, Israeli mayors and heads of Palestinian communities met in
Jerusalem “to advance business partnerships between Israeli and Palestinian
entrepreneurs”.
Corrupt Tribal Fiefdoms
It has been natural for the Trump administration to look to a business elite
- one that, it hopes, will be prepared to forgo a national solution if the
economic environment is liberalized enough to allow for new regional and
global investment opportunities.
These individuals belong to extended families that dominate the West Bank’s
major cities. Such powerful families may be prepared to assist in the
elimination of the PA, in return for a corrupt patronage system allowing
them to take control of their respective cities.
Palestinian analysts, like Samir Awad, a politics professor at Bir Zeit
University near Ramallah, have told me that the Israeli and U.S. vision of
Palestinian “autonomy” may amount to little more than a system of tribal
fiefdoms, reminiscent of Afghanistan.
There are already a few Palestinian partners emerging, such as Hebron
businessman Ashraf Jabari, who is reportedly planning to attend the Bahrain
conference.
He and other business leaders have been quietly developing ties with
counterparts in the settler movement, such as Avi Zimmerman. Together, they
have set up a joint chamber of commerce covering the West Bank.
It is precisely such initiatives that are being promoted by Friedman and
would be eligible for grants from the $50m fund the U.S. Congress is
currently legislating.
Ultimately, these Palestinian business “partners” could form an elite to
serve as an ostensible national address for the international community in
its dealings with the Palestinian people.
Sword Over PA
The PA doesn’t have to be discarded for the Trump plan to progress. But
alternative national and local leaderships need to be cultivated by
Washington to serve both as a sword hanging over the PA’s head, to
encourage it to capitulate, and as an alternative ruling class, should the
PA fail to submit to the “deal of the century.”
In short, Washington is playing a game of chicken with Abbas and the PA. It
is determined that the Palestinians will blink first.
Deeply implicated in Washington’s vision, even if largely out of sight, are
the Arab states, whose role is to strong-arm whatever Palestinian leadership
is required for the Greater Israel “deal of the century” to be
implemented.
The burden of managing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will shift once
again. When Israel occupied the Palestinian territories in 1967, it became
directly responsible for the welfare of Palestinians living there.
Since the mid-1990s, when the Palestinian leadership was allowed to return
under the Oslo accords, the PA has had to shoulder the task of keeping the
territories quiet on Israel’s behalf. Now, after the PA has refused to sign
off on Israel’s ambitions to take for itself East Jerusalem and much of the
West Bank, the PA is increasingly seen as having outlived its usefulness.
Instead, Palestinian expectations may have to be managed via another route -
through the key Arab states of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt
and Jordan. Or, as Palestinian analyst Hani al-Masri recently noted, the
Bahrain conference “foreshadows the beginning of abandoning the [Palestine
Liberation Organization] as the Palestinians’ representative, thereby
opening the door … for a new era of Arab patronage over the Palestinians to
take hold.”
Years of Imperial Overreach
Members of the Trump administration in 2017 arriving as honored guests of
King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, 2017, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (White House/
Shealah Craighead)
Under Trump, what has changed most significantly in the U.S. approach to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the urgency of Washington’s efforts to set
aside the Palestinian national struggle once and for all.
Since the Six-Day War of 1967, U.S. administrations - with the possible
exception of Jimmy Carter’s - had only a marginal interest in forcing a
settlement on Israelis and Palestinians. Aside from lip service to peace,
they were mostly content to leave the two sides to engage in an asymmetrical
struggle that always favored Israel. This was sold as “conflict
management.”
But after 15 years of U.S. imperial overreach in the Middle East - and faced
with major foreign policy setbacks in Iraq and Syria, and Israel’s related
failures in Lebanon - Washington desperately needs to consolidate its
position against rivals and potential rivals in this oil-rich region.
Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, and even Europe, are jostling in different ways
for a more assertive role in the Middle East. As it tries to counter these
influences, the U.S. wishes to bring together its main allies in the region:
Israel and the key Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia.
Although secret ties between the two sides have been growing for some time,
unresolved tensions remain over Israel’s demand that it be allowed to
maintain regional superiority in military and intelligence matters. That has
been obvious in current power battles playing out in Washington.
The Trump administration last month declared extraordinary measures to
bypass Congress so that it could sell more than $8 billion in weapons to
Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan. In retaliation, Congressional leaders
close to Israel vowed they would block the arms sales.
Splinter in Region’s Windpipe
In the White House’s view, little further progress can be made until the
Palestinian splinter stuck deep in the Middle East’s windpipe is removed.
Most Arab leaders care nothing for the Palestinian cause, and have come to
bitterly resent the way the Palestinians’ enduring struggle for statehood
has complicated their own dealings in the region, especially with Iran and
Israel.
They would enthusiastically embrace a full partnership with the U.S. and
Israel in the region, if only they could afford to be seen doing so.
But the Palestinians’ struggle against Israel - and its powerful symbolism
in a region that has experienced so much malign Western interference -
continues to serve as a brake on Washington’s efforts to forge tighter and
more explicit alliances with the Arab states.
Serious Case of Hubris
As such, the Trump administration has concluded that “conflict management”
is no longer in U.S. interests. It needs to isolate and dispose of the
Palestinian splinter. Once that encumbrance is out of the way, the White
House believes it can get on with forging a coalition with Israel and most
of the Arab states to reassert its dominance over the Middle East.
All of this will likely prove far harder to achieve than the Trump
administration imagines, as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo intimated
last week in private.
But it would be wrong nonetheless to assume that the strategy behind Trump’
s “deal of the century,” however unrealistic, is not clear-sighted in both
its aims and methods.
It would be similarly misguided to believe that the administration’s policy
is a maverick one. It is operating within the ideological constraints of the
Washington foreign policy elite, even if Trump’s “peace plan” lies at the
outer margins of the establishment consensus.
The Trump administration enjoys bipartisan backing from Congress both for
its Jerusalem embassy move and for economic measures that threaten to crush
the PA, a government-in-waiting that has already made enormous compromises
in agreeing to statehood on a tiny fraction of its people’s historic
homeland.
No doubt the Trump White House is suffering from a serious case of hubris in
trying to eliminate the Palestinian cause for good. But that hubris, however
dangerous, we should remember, is shared by much of the U.S. political
establishment.
Jonathan Cook is a freelance journalist based in Nazareth. This article is
from his website, Jonathan Cook.net.
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