“Deal of the Century” or Aeon of Disasters?
Jamal Kanj writes:
The Trumpian hyperbole marketing brand had generated unrealistic expectations for the “Deal of the Century”. For over a year and a half, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has been making promises but missed at least three dates to unveil the “secret” plan.
Assisted by two bona fide Zionists, special envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Kushner’s only political experience with Palestine/Israel is his family’s tax deductible contributions to building Jews-only colonies.
Kushner’s predisposed conviction and his parochial bias were palpable in a 2 June 2019 interview with Axios on HBO. In the interview, he opined that Palestinians were not “capable of governing” themselves or become free from Israeli occupation.
… the goal of Kushner’s gathering is not to offer economic support to Palestinians, but rather to provide a cover-up for opening the doors of Arab capitals to Israeli officials.
After more than a year of hyped promotion, Kushner’s Zionist team revealed a scaled down version of Trump’s “concrete plan” Evident in the leaked conference agenda, the goal of Kushner’s gathering is not to offer economic support to Palestinians, but rather to provide a cover-up for opening the doors of Arab capitals to Israeli officials.
Israel gets the reward of the illusionary peace upfront while the United States tantalises to the Arabs a peace process that may never materialise. Deferring and circumventing political process are archetypical Israeli trademark strategies that seek to harvest the fruits before the tree blossoms. Hence, the fruits of the US-proposed miniature workshop in Bahrain.
In the Oslo accord of 1993 the Palestine Liberation Organisation agreed to recognise Israel, in advance, over 78 per cent of historical Palestine. There was no reciprocal Israeli obligation towards the PLO on the remaining 22 per cent (the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza).
A quarter of a century later, peace has not blossomed and the only implemented sections of the Oslo accords have been the PLO’s recognition of Israel. In addition, the accords relieved Israel of administering the lives of five million Palestinians, and gave it security coordination and the outsourcing – free of cost – of security in the occupied territories to the Palestinian Authority.
Meanwhile, Israel continued to violate and effectively bury the Oslo accords under new expansive Jew-only colonies, changing the demographics of the population in areas allotted for the future Palestinian state.
Ten years after the Oslo accords, George W. Bush proposed a Road Map for peace. To placate Israeli reservations, Bush rewarded Israel, in advance, with an official American letter agreeing to annex Jews-only colonies in the West Bank as part of any future peace agreement.
Israel crushed Bush’s Road Map under the bulldozers of yet more Jews-only colonies. The American letter remains the sole outcome of the Road Map. Greenblatt and Friedman are using Bush’s letter to advocate Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank and Jerusalem.
… for a quarter of a century since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority Israel has systematically strangled the very economy it (and now Kushner) claims to champion.
Kushner’s economic peace is an age-old Israeli-contrived gas bubble intended to allow Israel to skirt around compliance with international law and UN resolutions. Shimon Peres floated the idea to equivocate Israel’s commitments under the Oslo accords. Current Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu revived it in 2009 to sidestep the American (Bush and Obama) administration’s support for a two-state solution.
Yet, for a quarter of a century since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority Israel has systematically strangled the very economy it (and now Kushner) claims to champion.
Since 1993 the European Union invested billions of dollars in economic infrastructure, including an airport and seaport, in Gaza. In 2002, after the failure of Camp David, Israel obliterated both facilities, denying Palestinians access to trade and fishing.
To further stifle the economy, Israel erected walls separating farmers from their olive groves and farms, dotted the West Bank with intrusive military checkpoints that encumber the movement of goods, divided towns and cities, and misappropriated tax money held on Palestinian imports.
Kushner and Israel’s invented economic peace is a political shenanigan intended to sedate the bird-cage (walled) economy, or leverage it in the form of collective punishment to suppress resistance and subjugate Palestinians.
As with the Oslo accords, the Road Map, and now ahead of rolling out the political plan for the “Deal of Century”, Trump conferred on Israel another advance installment by recognising Jerusalem as its capital, cutting financial aid to the Palestinians, including UN agencies helping the refugees, and recognizing the illegal annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights without any Israeli concession.
In addition to normalising contacts between the Arabs attending the Manama workshop and Israel (another advance installment), Kushner’s plan would relegate the cost of the caged Palestinian economy to Arab countries, gifting Israel yet more freebies without negotiation.
Kushner economic peace workshop is a false allure to salve Palestinian (and Arab) capitulation before rolling out the aeon of all political disasters.
