Throwing Abbas Under the Bus

Paul Hemphill 2 Comments

You’re sposed to sit on you ass and nod at stupid things
Man that’s hard to do
But if you don’t they’ll screw you
And if you do they’ll screw you too
And I’m standing in the middle of the diamond all alone
I always play to win when it comes to skin and bone
Warren Zevon, Bill Lee

The details of US President Donald Trump’s “ultimate deal” for resolving the intractable Israel-Palestine conflict have been leaked, surmised or imagined – no one can be sure at this stage – for a while now. And it is one that the Palestinians would never agree to.

We provide below a selection of articles that discus the intimations, imperfections and implications of the plan that will ostensibly succeed where all other efforts have foundered because as Donald Trump has stated many times, “that is what I do”.

The US has lost its credibility as an “honest broker”, if it ever was one, that is. It is impossible to be a mediator in a conflict or develop a credible peace plan when one side refuses to even talk to you. Palestinian leaders have not met with senior U.S. officials for the past six months, not since Trump announced that he would move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Move, it did! And now there are hints that the plan actually takes Jerusalem off the negotiating table.

The Palestinians are in a bind. If they reject the deal, especially one accepted by Israel, the Israeli government could once again argue that it has no partner on the Palestinian side, and move towards annexing large parts of the West Bank, which indeed a number of Israeli openly advocate, rendering the ever-receding prospect of the two-state solution impossible. The end result would push the sides even further apart.

The dice are loaded and the deal is rotten in what is a win-lose game. The nationalists and settlers would would be delighted, and the Palestinians on one hand and the Israeli opposition on the other would be simultaneously cut out and boxed in.

Veteran Middle East correspondent and long time Lebanese resident Robert Fisk pulls no punches. “Is there no humiliation left for the Palestinians?” he asks. Soon to be granted the ultimate deal that, in Jared Kushner’s word, “will give them and their future generations new opportunities, more and better paying jobs and prospects for a better life.” Is Trump’s son-in-law – “adviser” on the Middle East, real estate developer and US investor – delusional? After three Arab-Israeli wars, tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths and millions of refugees, does Jared Kushner really believe that the Palestinians will settle for cash?… How can he humiliate an entire Arab people by suggesting that their freedom, sovereignty, independence, dignity, justice and nationhood are merely “politicians’ talking points”. “ The Palestinians, he states, will not be bought for a fistful of dollars Saudi, US or EU.

Yes they can, and maybe, they will …Maybe the prospect of a quiet, normal life with jobs for young (important given the depressingly high youth unemployment) and old and brass in pocket, might persuade ordinary Palestinians to accept the political and economic normalisation of what would be occupation-lite.

Meanwhile, there are reports that”moderate” Arab countries are supporting the US’s diktat. The current US-Gulf-israel nexus was a work-in-progress during the Obama years and whilst Donald Trump was but a candidate, and now he has delegated carriage of the “ultimate deal” to his neophyte, demonstratively pro-Israeli son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The plan is to remove the Palestinian problem off the table so that they can concentrate on their real enemy, Shiite Iran.

As for those ostensible “Moderates”, the term is an oxymoron. Saudi and the Gulf emirs are tyrants, autocrats and complicit lick-spittles who’d sell out the Palestinians (and the Israelis too, if they could) if they could conscript American blood and treasure in their perennial Sunni grudge match with Shi’a Iran. King Abdullah of Jordan is wise not to trust this shady bunch. With domestic troubles of his own, and over half of his subjects of Palestinian descent, he has good reason to be careful. Dependent on foreign aid, however, he would be vulnerable to US and Saudi pressure. Pressure is also being exerted on Egypt’s dictator al Sissi. Whilst needful of US and Saudi cash, he is probably wary of stirring up further trouble at home with the economic situation still dire, the Islamist threat in the Sinai unabated, and Gaza presenting a clear and present powder-keg on the eastern border. He has enough stuff to deal with without buying into an anti-Iranian alliance and a deal that the Palestinian will not accept. Neither Trump, Israel nor the Gulf plutocrats are popular on the Arab street.

There is talk of Saudi Arabia pumping money into a resurgent, potentially Singaporean Palestine (they do gild this hallucinatory lily). But this doesn’t gel with reports that the kingdom is in financial straits and has enough trouble at the moment at home, with Yemen, and with an ascendant Iran. Overweening crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, however, often ventures where angels fear to tread. That he has peremptorily “summoned” King Abdullah and Abbas to Riyadh with no apparent success (much like that farce with the Lebanese prime minister), might suggest that he has less influence over his fellow Arabs than he or his American pals imagine.

Meanwhile, corrupt, coopted and ailing old Abbas and his very unpopular PA, watching the Kushner caravan bumping over the rocky ground of Middle Eastern politics, would perhaps be wise to hang out for a fairer deal – should that deal ever come along.

It’s going to be an interesting journey.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/palestine-jared-kushner-ultimate-plan-israel-donald-trump-jerusalem-right-to-return-a8420836.html
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/06/18/donald-trumps-new-world-order
Kushner’s Peace Plan Is a Disaster Waiting to Happen
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/jared-kushner-latest-middle-east-tour-180624111143134.html
Mohammed bin Salman Has Thrown the Palestinians Under the Bus

Read other posts about Israel and Palestine in In The Howling Infinite in A Middle East Miscellany:

https://howlinginfinite.com/eastward-aye-he-wandered-reflections-on-the-middle-east/

Author’s Note: 
Whenever In That Howling Infinite posts commentaries such as this, people ask why I rarely forward my own opinion on the issues I am presenting or discussing. On the contrary, I would argue that my views are fairly transparent in in the subjects I chose to engage with, the words I use, and the vein in which I use them.
With respect to my numerous posts about Israel and Palestine, and the Middle East in general, I  come to my conclusions from a political science and sociology perspective – that’s where my academic experience came from – and a background in conflict resolution, supported by study and travel. If I do on occasions display any particular bias, it. originates in my longtime interest, understanding and affection for the history, politics and culture of the region, of its geography and archeology, and  of its people of all faiths and nationalities that I make my observations.
I am presently working on a piece that encapsulates my thoughts on this complex and controversial subject. But meanwhile, here is a brief exposition.
I do believe that the systematic dispossession of almost a million Palestinians and the destruction of half of their towns and villages in 1948 is Israel’s original sin. It is the primal stain that colours and corrupts all that followed. And yet, if not for the actions, often daring, often brave, often questionable, and often deplorable, of the politicians and soldiers of 1948 – and of the generations that followed –  Israel would not exist today. This paradox is addressed sympathetically by Avi Shalit in My Promised Land, referred to above, and scathingly by ‘new history’ scholar Ilan Pappe in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.   
The Occupation, fifty years old this year, which grew out of the unexpectedly total victory of June 1967, has taken on strategic, ideological and indeed messianic dimensions by many in the  Israeli government and political elite. It compounded the original sin, deepened the primal stain, released the demons of messianic fervour, and wounded Israel’s soul. The settlements locked the nation into the the colonialist project. With the close-call of the Yom Kippur War, the violence and murder of the first and second Intifadat, and present Palestinian jaquerie, Israel’s heart has not just hardened, it has become sclerotic.
I admit that I have always been sympathetic towards Israel – from my first visit in 1972. But it is not a blinkered viewpoint. I am deeply critical of Israeli politics and policies, and have no respect for many of its leaders.
Ayelet Shaked, the nationalist’s La Passionaria, and her boss Naftali Bennett do not not represent ALL Israelis! They hold extremist views just like we in UK, US, and Australia have parties and individuals with extremist views. But there are hundreds of thousands of Israelis who oppose the present government and long for justice and peace. And if – a very big “if” – Arab Israelis and the Israeli left could work together, they could obtain a majority in the Knesset and change Israel’s politics.
Yet meanwhile, Binyamin Netanyahu and his nationalist allies call all the shots, the Israelis continue to control and exploit the land, its people, and its resources, whilst varying degrees of annexation are on the cards. The settlements are an abomination, as are the policies and practices of the state and its occupying army, as described by Lyons and others. There’s no escaping these facts.
But I am likewise critical of Palestinian governance, politics and politicians. Hamas and the PA are on the nose in their respective fiefdoms, and if a moderate “third force” were to arise – and survive, because sure as hell, they would risk being murdered – Palestinians who just want a quiet, normal life, adequate services, and opportunities for their children, and Israelis who want likewise, might – just might – reject their extremist, dogmatic, entrenched leaders and reach some form of modus vivendi.
Palestinians themselves have to take control of their own lives, kick out their corrupt leaders, cease inculcating their children with hatred and jihadism, and use all that international good will and dollars to build a viable economy that can provide jobs, opportunities, and security, economic and physical to the people. Only this way will they be inoculated against cronyism, corruption and extremism. And yet, the dead hand of a moribund, patriarchal, conservative and ethnocentric culture holds them back –  but that is the subject of another, future discussion for In That Howling Infinite.
Today, the ‘powers that be’, defenders and beneficiaries of a status quo that looks more like a cul de sac, predominate over a dispiriting array of competing, clamouring factions, left, right, nationalist, secular, tribal, Haredi, and Islamist alike. New, young, brace, local voices in both Israel and Palestine, are not heard.
So what happens next?
I get that question too. And I am perennially reluctant to venture an answer beyond one that runs like “on the one hand…but then on the other”.  I inevitably fall back on Robert Fisk’s response to the same question with regard to the calamitous freezing over of the Arab Spring and the fall and rise again of the same old autocrats and tyrants: “my crystal ball is broken”. It’s a cop out, really, but just as cogent as that famous line in that UK spy drama Spooks: “What’s gong to happen to me?” “Bad things!”
One thing is for sure: as songwriter Warren Zevon sang, “the hurt gets worse, and the heart get harder”.
October 8th 2017

 

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