Trump-proposed so-called ‘Deal of Century’ means selling Islamic countries

Leader’s top adviser

TEHRAN, (MNA) – Top Adviser to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution for International Affairs Ali Akbar Velayati said that Trump administration’s peace plan of ‘Deal of Century’ is the sale of Islamic countries.

The liar president of the United States in cooperation with the Zionist regime has orchestrated a plan that is actually the sale of Islamic countries and is much more similar to the Crusades.

He made the remarks in a news conference held late on Thu. in a reaction to the Trump’s unveiling of the ‘Deal of Century’.

While condoling the martyrdom anniversary of Hazrat Fatemeh (PBUH), he said, “today, Islamic world is facing the very important issue. The dream of US and Zionist regime will not come true. They thought that after the assassination of Iran’s IRGC top commander Lt. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the Resistance Front has been weakened.”

Not only the Resistance Front has not been weakened after the US assassination of Lt. Gen. Soleimani, but also the Axis of Resistance has been strengthened, Velayati stressed.

He pointed to the massive funeral procession of Martyr Gen. Soleimani and his comrades both in Iraq and Iran and added, “the magnificent funeral procession of Iran’s top commander Gen. Soleimani and Second-in-Command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in Iran and Iraq was the first strong slap hit against the US and the global arrogance.”

Turning to the liberation of Syria’s Idlib city, he said, “victories of the Resistance Front will be continued in the world and today, the unity and amity among Palestinian people is unique of its kind. Therefore, they [US and Zionist regime] should know that their so-called peace plan will doom to failure.”

Jerusalem al-Quds not for sale: Senior cleric

TEHRAN, (MNA) – Addressing the Friday prayers sermon in Tehran, Iranian senior cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahhedi Kermani said the US would "take the dream of implementing the so-called Deal of Century to the grave."

He named Trump's Deal of Century "a betrayal and a disgrace', saying "it is a unilateral decision by the Israeli regime and the US and some Arab countries."

"The Palestinian nation will reject the plan, for sure, and will continue the fight to end this occupation," he added. 

"Enemies seek to disarm the Resistance and put pressure on it but Americans must know that this may not come true," the senior cleric noted.

Reiterating that the US plots are doomed to failure, he said "by getting united and supporting those who seek freedom, we will neutralize conspiracies of the occupiers, for we are not the terrorists here, but the ones fighting the terrorists."

He further stressed that the United States would "take the dream of implementing the so-called Deal of Century to the grave."

Trump on Tuesday unveiled his so-called deal of the century, negotiated with Israel but without the Palestinians.

Palestinian leaders, who severed all ties with Washington in late 2017 after Trump controversially recognized Jerusalem al-Quds as the capital of the Israeli regime, immediately rejected the plan, with President Mahmoud Abbas saying it “belongs to the dustbin of history.”

Following the unveiling, thousands of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip took to the streets to strongly condemn the plan.

Meanwhile, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani slammed the deal as “the most despicable plan of the century.”

The plan also raised strong condemnation from Bahrain, Turkey, Syria and Lebanon. 

Trump aims at diverting public opinion by unveiling ‘Deal of Century’: expert

TEHRAN, (MNA) – Lebanese presidential adviser Amal Abou Zeid said that US President Donald Trump seeks to divert public opinion from his current political situation by unveiling the ‘Deal of the Century’.

US officials, especially President Donald Trump, have ramped up efforts in recent days to unveil the so-called 'Deal of the Century' in a bid to eliminate the Palestinian issue. Trump has also invited the Israeli regime's Prime Minister to attend the ceremony. 

An adviser to Lebanese president and former MP Amal Abou Zeid noted that “There is no doubt that Trump’s effort to resolve the Palestinian issue is based on the principle of non-recognition of the right of the Palestinian nation to have an independent state; a right recognized by international assemblies and resolutions.”

“Inviting Netanyahu to Washington is nothing more than Trump's attempt to affect the US Senate regarding what is going on against him. The Senate is currently trying to remove Donald Trump from power, and Trump is calling for Netanyahu to seriously gain the support of the Jewish-Zionist lobby in the United States,” he added.

He further pointed to Lebanon’s stance on the Deal of the Century, noting that “speaking about the aforementioned Deal by the US is a direct threat against Lebanon’s situation because creating an alternative country for Palestinian refugees raises fear and concern which are not in line with Lebanon’s interest. It will deny the Palestinian refugees their right of returning to their homeland.”

Highlighting the stance of Arab states on the Deal, Amal Abou Zeid said that “US insistence on making the deal stems from the fact that they are well aware of the turbulent situation in the Arab world and know that these countries are politically fragmented and suffering from many economic, political and social problems so that we do not see a comprehensive and unified stance of the Arab States regarding the Palestinian’s right of having their own country.”

Referring to Jordan’s stance on Deal of the Century, the Advisor maintained that “it is crystal clear that the Deal may cause some changes in the geographical map of Jordan as some Palestinian territories will be joined to this country and will be under its control which can threaten Jordan in the future.”

“The success of the deal and its implementation by the US require the approval of Palestinian National Authority as well as Palestinian people and their political representatives. This is the key to implement the deal because if the sides involved do not agree on the terms and do everything in their power to oppose it and protect their rights, the Deal will not be successful”, he added.

“The Palestinian people will use all legitimate means such as Resistance to counter these suspicious efforts”, the adviser emphasized.

Middle East peace plan from paper pharaoh and fake Moses

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu was slapped corruption charges this week while he was hobnobbing with US President Donald Trump in Washington. Bibi has, apparently, done his homework in psychology. He knew the quickest way to get round Trump was to flatter him.  

Addicted to praise, Trump is incapable of understanding that there is a great deal of deception if someone praises him too much. In a June 16, 2017 article, USA Today opinion columnist Windsor Mann wrote, “Flattery is Trump’s cocaine — he’s addicted to it — and, like cocaine, it’s not always genuine.”

Rarely does he get sincere praises from honest people. So, Trump often self-praises himself. 

On Tuesday, when Trump announced his Middle East peace plan, Bibi was superlative in his praises. As the drama unfolded in a White House room full of sycophants ready with applauses to ego massage praise-addict Trump and insincere Netanyahu, it became obvious that the peace plan was not worth the paper it was written on.  It also became clear that Trump did not have a thorough knowledge of the Middle East, for he failed to identify a typo in the text on the teleprompter. He read al-Aqsa as al-Aqua. 

Many believe that the timing of the announcement was aimed at bolstering the political base of both Trump and Netanyahu – Trump embroiled in an impeachment battle was trying to appease pro-Israeli evangelical Christian voters, a key component of his support base, while Netanyahu used the occasion to go one-up over his political rival Benny Gantz in Israel’s election battle of the right-wings.

When Trump, the House of Representative-convicted constitutional criminal, and Netanyahu, a suspect in a corruption case -- a paper pharaoh and fake Moses – make a plan, it will be far from being value-based. 

No wonder, the peace plan they unveiled promotes anything but peace and is an agenda to legalise Israel’s illegal land grab on the West Bank. 

No wonder peace analysts are unanimous in condemning the Trump plan as ‘dead on arrival’.
 It is just bovine excreta! It is one-sided and a travesty of justice in breach of the hallowed legal principle Audi alteram partem which requires that the other side also be listened to.

There was no Palestinian side in this ex-parte ruling that Trump’s Zionist-son-in-law Jared Kushner was instrumental in drafting. 

If there is one US president who cares no two hoots about the Palestinians, it is Trump.  He stopped aid to Palestine and his country’s annual US$ 360 million contribution to the United Nations Relief Work Agency which cares for more than five millions Palestinian refugees. 

Trump, Khusner and Netanyahu could not find a single Palestinian to endorse the plan made by Zionists for Zionists to continue their crimes in Palestine.

Pro-American Arab states, however, have welcomed the peace effort but avoided extending support for the content of the plan. Key regional powers Turkey and Iran, meanwhile, have given an outright thumps down to Trump’s plan, which declares Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel, thus ignoring the Palestinians’ aspiration of making East Jerusalem their future capital. The Palestinians are condescendingly told they can have their capital anywhere east of Jerusalem. 

Rejecting the Trump plan, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Jerusalem and “all our rights are not for sale and are not for bargain.”

The Palestinians have dismissed the plan as Balfour 2.0, whereby one country (the United States) is trying to hand over chunks of another’s country (Palestine) to a third country (Israel) just as Britain in 1917, through an atrocious colonial act of injustice, allowed the Zionist movement to set up a homeland in Palestine.

In 1947, the United Nations adopted a partition plan that unfairly divided historic Palestine, giving the Jews who were a little more than 30 percent of Palestine’s population, 55 percent of the land. Most of them were European migrants who came to Palestine following the 1917 Balfour declaration. The indigenous Palestinians who were about 67 percent of the population were given 45 percent of the land. 

The Trump plan will leave the Palestinians with a mere 15 percent of historic Palestine. In other words, 85 percent of Palestine will come under Israel’s sovereignty while the balance to be declared as the State of Palestine will be bits and pieces of territory – or Bantustans connected by tunnels and roads guarded by the Israeli military.

Trump’s plan was unofficially conveyed to Arab leaders more than two years ago. This came after the Trump administration on December 6, 2017 recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital. At the US-sponsored Middle East economic conference in Bahrain in June last year, the plan was partially unveiled by Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East envoy Kushner. The Palestinians boycotted the event where they were promised billions in development aid if they accepted the plan.

To promote the plan, Kushner partnered Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. On December 3, 2017, a New York Times report said the Saudis had summoned Palestinian President Abbas to force him to accept Trump’s plan, where, instead of Jerusalem, the neighbouring town of Abu Dis that overlooks the Dome of the Rock mosque, was offered as the Palestinian capital.  When news leaked out that the Saudis were backing Trump’s plan and had no qualms over al-Aqsa-- Islam’s third holiest site --being placed under Israeli sovereignty, the Saudi royals became jittery, fearful of the reaction on the Arab streets.  King Salman invited Abbas to Saudi Arabia again and assured his support for the Palestinians’ stand.  Abbas’ Saudi visits indicated that the Saudi establishment is divided over the Palestinian issue. Once the old king becomes history, the kingdom is likely to endorse Trump’s plan.

In December 2017, after Trump misused the US veto to quash yet another United Nations mechanism to bring peace to Palestine, the world community overwhelmingly passed a UN General Assembly resolution asking nations not to establish diplomatic missions in the historic city of Jerusalem. They did so, defying Trump’s threat to developing nations that they would face an aid cut if they voted for the Jerusalem resolution. Just as the then US president George W. Bush’s 2003 Middle East peace roadmap, Trump’s plan, touted as the deal of the century, is bound to collapse, because it is not founded on justice. It is the fraud of the century. It ignores international law, numerous UN resolutions, principles of justice, and norms of decency.  Sri Lanka, as a true friend of Palestine, should not endorse Trump’s plan which promotes chaos and conflict instead of peace. 

The Exploitation of Pascua Lama Is One Example of Chile’s Neoliberal Exploitation

 Ramona WADI

The Chilean courts have indicated yet another valid reason as to the importance of sustaining the protests staged across the country to eliminate the dictatorship era’s neoliberal politics. An appeal to halt the Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold’s Pascua Lama project has been rejected by the Chilean Supreme Court, despite objections due to water contamination and damage to the environment and indigenous communities in the Huasco Valley.

This decision runs contrary to the environmental court order issued in 2018 to permanently close the Pascua Lama mining site on the Chilean border. Since 2013, Barrick Gold had its gold and silver mining project suspended as indigenous communities mobilised to protect their environment and livelihood. In January 2019, the mining giant was fined $11.5 million. Earlier in 2013, Barrick Gold was also fined over $16 million for environmental offences, including water contamination.

With this latest court ruling, the Pascua Lama mining project, which seeks to extract gold, silver and copper over a period of 17 years, is set to proceed. Environmental activists and indigenous communities depending upon glacier water for irrigation have persistently protested the project, which will damage the glaciers due to the gold, silver and copper deposits being located underneath the ice. In 2006, Barrick Gold had proposed moving the glacier ice from the Toro 1, Toro 2 and the Esperanza glaciers to facilitate their exploitation of the region’s resources.

Indigenous communities are not giving up their struggle. With major projects planned for the Huasco Valley, the area is becoming known as a sacrificial zone, due to the environmental and health impact the mining projects will have upon the population. Quintero is another town officially known as a sacrificial zone due to industrial pollution of the area which has resulted in health and environmental hazards for the locals.

It is not without reason that the community was cautious over the January 2018 decision to definitely close the Pascua Lama project. Chile is known as an investor friendly country when it comes to multinational companies, to the detriment of the indigenous populations whose livelihood is dependent upon farming. Since the 1990s, which coincided with the fall of dictator Augusto Pinochet and the Chilean transition to democracy, mining companies played into Chilean politics by supporting the Concertacion governments. In return for such support, subsequent governments from the dictatorship onwards made concessions to foreign mining companies that paved the way for the country’s exploitation of natural resources.

Pascua Lama’s predicament is by no means the sole controversy in Chile, although it is the most prominent due to the ongoing mobilisation and court rulings. In 2018, Augusto Pinochet Hiriart, the son of former dictator Pinochet, requested a mining permit for a 65 hectare area in Quilpue, the Valparaiso region, to mine copper, gold, silver and other minerals. Quilpue’s mayor objected to the application and requested the municipal tribunal to take ethics into consideration, given the problems the region is facing with drought and high levels of pollution.

Since the protests in Chile started, mining has been adversely affected as workers went on strike and joined the nationwide mobilisation. Analysts have blamed a possible increase of unemployment upon the protests, rather than the Chilean governments’ refusal, since the transition to democracy, to create the conditions for social justice.

The Chilean people’s call for justice is reminiscent of the Popular Unity manifesto, in which left-wing President Salvador Allende had promised the party would “establish its strength and authority in the support provided by the organised people.”

In Pascua Lama, the indigenous communities’ struggle for their survival must not be overlooked, but rather referenced to strengthen the protest narratives which have catapulted Chile into the possibility of altering its political horizons.

Ramona WADI

Ramona Wadi is an independent researcher, freelance journalist, book reviewer and blogger. Her writing covers a range of themes in relation to Palestine, Chile and Latin America.

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ChileIndigenous PeoplesLatin America

Trump's "Deal of the Century" based on Ignorance, must be Ignored!

Iqbal Jassat

When Donald Trump announced his so-called “deal of the century” for Palestine yesterday, it was obvious that an ignorant character like him cannot be taken seriously on such an important issue. No wonder his most enthusiastic cheerleaders were Arab royals famous for their “academic credentials.”

Thus, as expected, masses of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and millions of their compatriots living in squalor as refugees across the Arab world would be appalled if not livid that the Trump regime has announced a process to extinguish their legitimate rights by gifting the occupying colonial regime with its so-called "deal of the century".

What the plan calls “Palestine” includes Gaza, a much-constricted West Bank without Jerusalem, and minus the Jordan Valley.

It will comprise only 15% of historic Palestine. Not surprisingly, Palestinians across the entire political spectrum have repudiated this nonsensical plan.

Previously and in utter contempt of several UN Security Council Resolutions, the Trump regime handed to Israel complete control of Jerusalem and Syria's Golan Heights.

It has now stripped Palestinians of all rights.

Rights including the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees; right to freedom; right to justice; right to equality and dignity, which are all sacrosanct, have just been trampled under by Trump in collusion with an over-zealous Benjamin Netanyahu.

Unsurprisingly, the politics of patronage to Zionist Israel dominated Trump's "historic moment".

After all, playing roughshod with Palestinian rights and lives has defined all regimes in the White House.

This conduct is consistent with Israeli policies that has for more than seven decades resorted to gross human rights violations such as ethnic cleansing, mass murders, siege, occupation, detention without trial and apartheid.

Notwithstanding the mockery of humane values, Trump's determination to endear himself to the Zionists, has driven him to bulldoze what remains of his own tattered reputation.

The Trump bravado that accompanied his latest betrayal of Palestine, has not only brought shame to America, it has also exposed the hypocrisy of US allies in Europe and the Middle East.

Their inability to challenge his repugnant abuse of power is confirmation of their supportive role in allowing Israel's persecution and oppression of Palestinians.

Ironically the timing of this so-called "deal" has not been lost. Minutes before the Trump circus started, reports confirmed that Netanyahu has been formally indicted on charges of bribery and fraud and breach of trust in three separate corruption cases.

Concurrently, Trump faces the axe as his impeachment trial gathers momentum. Whether the case against him is flimsy or not, the fact is that his reputation is severely damaged and deeply compromised.

Two thugs in warm embrace of each other in a shameful display of how to destroy an international order that was painstakingly put together following the 2nd World War, stood together.

Unilateral bulldozing of global institutions was on stark display at the press conference, cheered on by sycophants which included ambassadors from leading Arab sell-outs: Bahrain, Oman and the Emirates.

As South Africans having erased discredited Bantustans from their map post-1994, we can smell the entrenchment of Bantustans miles away.

Trump's deal is thus no less than a crazy move to legitimize the Occupied Palestinian Territories officially as Apartheid-era Bantustans.

That the "deal" is a scam designed to undermine Palestine's just freedom struggle is clear. Evidence of it is not only buried in obscure details, but also in the smug face of Netanyahu.

While the Trump initiative is being hailed by racist white supremacists who are the flip side of Zionists and disappointedly yet again funded by unelected Arab despots, Palestinian leaders have rightly condemned it outright. One can be sure that the Arab street too will denounce it.

Almost immediately following Trump's announcement, Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas rejected it. And contrary to Trump's expectations, Abbas declared that he will be traveling to Gaza to meet with Hamas and Islamic Jihad to close ranks in opposition to the deal.

This move by Abbas, even if it is a symbolic gesture by Fatah, is an indication that neither disarming the Resistance nor demilitarizing Gaza is an option for him.

On the contrary, renewed solidarity among Palestinian factions point to the first substantial sign of rejection in toto of what Netanyahu has described as a "good plan for Israel".

The illegal annexation of Palestinian land particularly in the Occupied West Bank where Israel has, in violation of UN Resolutions, built racial enclaves known as "Settlements" has emerged as the single most important gift by Trump in this "deal of the century".

Thus, in this expanded Israel, Zionist dream of an exclusive Jewish regime is pitted against the reality of a stateless, dispossessed and disenfranchised indigenous Palestinian population.

Trump's incredible folly in pursuing a doomed deal which many analysts have described as dead on arrival (DOA), deserves rebuke from all quarters unafraid to speak truth to power.

Colonialism must be confronted, not celebrated as seen at the White House. And the same applies to Apartheid.

Thus, a proper response to Trump regime’s one-sided “plan” should be to ignore it.

Once the media hype subsides in the next few days, people with self-respect and intelligence should pay no attention to a “plan” presented by an ignoramus trying to save his own skin!

Iqbal Jassat

Donald TrumpIsraelIsrael settlementsJewish settlementPalestineTump's Deal

The Steal of the Century: A Last-Ditch Effort to Cement an Illegal Occupation

BY JULIA KASSEM

*President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020, in the East Room of the White House to unveil details of the Trump administration’s Middle East Peace Plan. Credit: Shealah Craighead/ The White House

Trump unveiled his and his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s "Deal of the Century," categorically rejecting the sovereignty and will of the Palestinian people, in fulfillment of ‘Israel’s’ full-scale occupation and colonization scheme to finish off the West Bank and extinguish any prospect of Palestinian territorial, governmental, or military sovereignty.

The proposal, a Trump-style business deal meant to save face while cutting losses following US failures in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, comes at the helm of Netanyahu’s push to annex all of the West Bank and close off a complete occupation of Palestine. As ‘Israel’ underwent years of failures with respect to its plans for external colonization, such as in south Lebanon and Syria in the occupied Golan’s Quneitra and Daara, it buckled down with its moves in total internal annexation and expropriation. Israel did this in the vein of Oslo, picking up where Yitzhak Rabin had left off with signing off the carved-out administrative and security zones in the West Bank to be set aside for a gradual and further procession of ethnic and territorial cleansing of Palestine actualized in the current “Deal of the Century.”

Though the political portion of the deal just unveiled following last June’s announcement of the economic portion, the parts that have been revealed before Tuesday, involving the multi-billion dollar development plans allocated to both Occupied Palestine and the Arab states around it, speaks for itself and exemplifies the material interest underlying any possible political proposal. The plan was brokered last June in Bahrain, a tiny oil-rich island hosting US naval 5th fleet and the US’s first military base established one year before ‘Israel’ in 1947, where years of a relentless uprising against oppression have been hopelessly stifled by the Gulf regime and its neocolonial order.

The plans build upon these age-old schemes and initiatives by enabling ‘Israel’ to annex all of Jerusalem, and over a third of the post-Oslo Area C subdivision in the West Bank, which, under the 1993 agreement had placed it under total ‘Israeli’ security and military domain.

In the largest illegal land-grab since the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, ‘Israel’ would also be allowed to claim nearly every illegal settlement built in the West Bank. Included in this is the Jordan Valley, with, along with Jerusalem, carved out to extend and overreach the Zionist entity’s claims over Palestine’s eastern boundary and isolate Palestinians from their regional neighbors.

From the December 2017 declaration to declare Jerusalem as capital of the Occupying Entity rather than Palestine, to the mobilization to build an additional 10,000 illegal settlements in the last year alone, any lip service given to an unguaranteed halt to settlements has already been surmounted by the largest and most violent cases of land expropriation and forced removal Palestinians had to face since 1967. Just last month, a disabled man in East Jerusalem witnessed his home demolished for the first time in 20 years. West Bank Palestinians, especially in Jerusalem, are continuing to be forced out of their homes in droves, with demolitions and forced removals especially high in the last two years. Palestinian residents and families in East Jerusalem have even been forced to demolish their own homes as Israel remains committed towards its relentless pursuit to seize Jerusalem--a practice commonplace before Israel’s anticipation of the Deal, but unprecedented in frequency since then.The plan claims to offer Palestinians some concessions in proposing a halt to all new settlements and sparing 15 locations in the West Bank from further settlement. However, the plan as it exists does not guarantee or ensure a complete moratorium on settlement-building; an irrelevant concession either way given the Deal’s nefarious demand of ensuring US recognition of all current and exiting illegal settlements and annexation of Jerusalem, all illegal under international law but with most recent settlements officially greenlit by the US in November 2019. Before the deal, an uptick of massive illegal settlement construction, daily violations and instructions of the Al-Aqsa mosque, a higher and more aggressive than usual uptick of forced removals and demolishment, and self-declared annexations by the Occupying entity were so endemic to US policy towards Palestine under the Trump administration where violence, occupation, and expropriation had operated more incrementally before. 2018 saw the US’s attempts at slashing UNRWA, a service that not only provides aid to displaced Palestinians but also recognizes their right to return under international law, the opening of a US Embassy in Jerusalem, the shutting-down of PLO offices in DC, and more aid cut to Palestinian programs, services, and institutions, including the Palestinian Authority in February 2019. This helped seal the deal for the upcoming deal, laying the groundwork that would ultimately position any concession a net gain in ‘Israel’s’ favor.

These propositions, a means of continuing an age-old project with added characteristics of a renewed, neoliberal development deal, is meant to cement economically what is becoming unsalvageable politically. The deal calls for Palestinians to completely rescind the infrastructure for self-defense and resistance alike, adding to their already feeble military capabilities diminutive in land and absent in air and sea. Though this predictably calls upon resistance groups in Gaza to disarm, it will also force the Palestinian Authority, who post Oslo served as the useful Palestinian containment apparatus of the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF), to also demilitarize.

Though the deal is meant to salvage some semblance of a pre-determined destiny imposed upon the will of the Palestinian people, it rather signals a grave level of defeat on the part of the American empire and its ‘Israeli’ and Gulf allies in the Middle East. The US-‘Israel’-Gulf axis is losing militarily in the Middle East and the Deal of the Century has been the US’s attempts at saving face in the region and consolidating its neocolonial hold on West Asia. Predictably, the shared political interests of Saudi Arabia, the UAE,

Nonetheless, the effects of the Steal-of-the-Century have already proven to backfire. As the “two-state solution” framework long upholding the discourse of the liberal peace shatters to pieces, Palestinians and their Arab neighbors in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria’s Golan under similar situations of military occupation and aggression will further actualize their right to resist, having long exhausted all diplomatic and legal avenues for peace and sovereignty.

The Deal comes as huge swaths of territory in Yemen, east of Sana’a and Idlib and Aleppo. in Syria are being liberated. Palestinians have rallied in Gaza, Ramallah, and elsewhere to mobilize a mass resistance and rejection of ‘Israel’s’ impunity with theft. And this solidarity extends and will expand past Palestinian boundaries into other Arab struggles; Sayyed Abdelmalik Al-Houthi, leader of the Ansarallah movement in Yemen that has resisted Saudi Arabian aggression for years,  just called upon “all people of the region” to act in counter to the “Deal of the Century,” which he called a “US initiative to prop up Israeli occupation with Saudi and UAE money.” Hezbollah, honoring these efforts in popular resistance, regarded “resistance” as the “only option to liberate the land and restore the sanctities” in a recent statement condemning the American administration’s decision and the complicitness of its Arab allies, vowing that the Palestinian people will resist overturning the deal before it can act on its depraved vision.

The $50 billion Trump is proposing to Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Occupied Palestine is not an investment or a package to the Arabs. It’s a bribe, and a package serving only ‘Israel’ and its allies. The Trump administration mistakenly expects complicities of the Arabs of the region with this money, similar to that of its Gulf allies when given such transactions for development and arms deals alike. Yet, the mounting resistance against the Deal--and the reaffirmations from Palestinians that have long declared that Palestine is not for sale, have taken root to uproot occupation and colonization. For better or for worse, the two-state solution is dead--so it’s past time for the US, ‘Israel’, and the Gulf to face up to phasing out of its overstayed un-welcome in the region; lest all regional forces of progress, resistance, and anti-colonialism appropriately take it upon themselves to do so.

 Deal of the Century

JULIA KASSEM

Kassem is a Lebanon-based writer specializing in the politics of austerity and the Middle East in general. Her work can be found on Counterpunch, Mintpressnews, Mondoweiss, TruthOut, among others.

Why Trump Can’t Save Israel

BY TIM ANDERSON

*President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020, in the East Room of the White House to unveil details of the Trump administration’s Middle East Peace Plan. Credit: Shealah Craighead/ The White House

Despite Trump’s apparent show of strength in the cynical ‘Peace to Prosperity’ plan, he is actually helping Netanyahu destroy Israel, the European colony in Palestine.

Palestinian envoy to Britain Husam Zomlot said the announcement was a “piece of political theatre” and will push the situation “over the cliff and into apartheid”. Hamas rejected the plan as "nonsense” (RT 2020). Netanyahu, who has always been focussed on the expansion of ‘Greater Israel’, said that the Zionist state owes both Kushner and Trump “an eternal debt of gratitude”.

Trump’s ‘Peace to Prosperity’ plan (“A vision to improve the lives of the Palestinian and Israeli people”) is a revised version of the 2019 Kushner plan (the so-called “deal of the century”), which offered an illusory promise of long term money (mostly Gulf Arab money) in exchange for political surrender. The new version speaks of a “realistic two state solution” – because “Israel has now agreed to terms for a future Palestinian State” – with a tiny Palestinian statelet cramming the majority Arab population of historic Palestine into 15% of the land. Israel would control the vast majority of the West Bank (White House 2020). With no sovereign powers for the statelet, this deliberately enhances the status quo of a single state.

Trump’s latest plan follows a series of initiatives hostile to Palestinian and Syrian interests: breaching international law to recognize Jerusalem as a Zionist possession, breaching international law to annex the Syrian Golan, trying to legitimize the multiple Israeli colonies on the West Bank, demanding (in the Kushner plan) an effective Palestinian surrender on statehood and adopting the IHRA claim that any anti-Israel criticism is ‘racist’ and so illegitimate (IHRA 2016).

At this stage in the history of the colony, the 72 year old illusion of a ‘two state solution’ remains the main obstacle to a democratic Palestine. Trump’s plan seems an ‘advance’ on the Kushner Plan, in trying to keep that illusion alive. A majority of liberal Jews in the USA, in for example, still hold to the two state illusion. But Netanyahu and his colleagues have always wanted it all.

The more astute Zionist leaders know this. Former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert recognized that “if the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights … the State of Israel is finished” (Olmert 2007).The problem for the more ambitious zionists is two-fold: (1) Palestinians have resisted, by guerrilla warfare and by not going away, and now slightly outnumber Jewish Israelis in historic Palestine; (2) destruction of the two state myth, and widespread recognition that there is only a single apartheid state, will bring a dramatic collapse in Israeli legitimacy across the world.

Historically, Israel as a sectarian European colony, has always relied on substantial ethnic cleansing. On 3 December 1947, as the campaign intensified, Zionist leader David Ben Gurion told his party faithful that the “40% non-Jews in the areas allocated to the Jewish state” was “not a solid basis for a Jewish state .. only a state with at least 80% Jews is a solid and viable state” (Pappe 2006: 76).

Read also: The European Colony in Palestine

For that reason, Ben Gurion’s ‘Plan Dalet’ of March 1948 called for operations “destroying villages (by setting fire to them, by blowing them up, and by planting mines in their debris) and especially of those population centers which are difficult to control … [the operations required are] encirclement of the villages, conducting a search inside them. In case of resistance, the armed forces must be wiped out and the population expelled outside the borders of the state” (Pappe 2006: 68; Vidal 1997).

That plan was carried out and featured the Deir Yassin massacre of 9 April, where 107 villagers were killed, and a series of expulsions in which 531 villages and eleven urban neighborhoods were destroyed and 800,000 became refugees (Pappe 2006: xiii; Vidal 1997).

Yet despite this ethnic cleansing, military domination and annexations, Israeli agencies confirm that the current Arab population of historic Palestine (Arab Israelis plus those on the West Bank and in Gaza) is roughly equal to the population of Jewish Israelis.

A report from Jerusalem in 2011 showed that the Palestinian population of that city had risen from 25.5% in 1967 to 38% in 2009 (AIC 2011: 10, 12). The Jewish Virtual Library shows that the Jews of Israel / 1948 Palestine have declined from a peak of 88.9% in 1960 to 74.7% in 2017 (JVL 2017). In parallel, officials from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics and the military run civil administration of the Occupied Territories (COGAT) say that the Arab population of Gaza, the West Bank and Arab [second class] citizens of Israel, along with residents of the annexed East Jerusalem municipality, add up to 6.5 million, about the same number as “Jews living between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean” (Heller 2018).

For all the apparent advances of Israeli power, Palestinian resistance has enhanced both the ‘demographic threat’ to Israel and the colony’s illegitimacy, in the international sphere.

In that context, Trump and Netanyahu are building an even more extreme illegitimacy, by consolidating a more openly apartheid state. In a report commissioned for the UN several years back, legal scholars Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley (2017), made it clear that Israel had already become an ‘apartheid state’, which is a crime against humanity. The international community had a responsibility to dismantle such a regime, they said.

Richard Falk, who had been a Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine for the UN, said that Palestine was wining the legitimacy battle: “Palestine is winning what in the end is the more important war, the struggle for legitimacy, which is most likely to determine the political outcome”. In the context of anti-colonial struggles, he continues, citing Vietnam, Algeria and Iraq, “the side with the greater perseverance and resilience, not the side that controlled the battlefield, won in the end” (Falk 2014).

Ironically it is the Palestinian Authority (PA), paid and contracted by the US and the Israeli regime, that helps keeps alive the illusion of two states. The PA blocks a clear and unified Palestinian strategy to dismantle apartheid Israel in favor of a single democratic state.

But where the PA has failed, Netanyahu and Trump are succeeding. While Israeli expansion has been blocked by the Lebanese resistance in the north and the resistance of Gaza in the south, Netanyahu has persisted with a steady colonization of the West Bank, undermining any viable Palestinian state.

Now Trump has added to this drive, offering only the fig leaf of a powerless ghetto on a small part of the West Bank and in Gaza. Israel’s contempt for the people of Gaza is plain. This is reminiscent of the failed Bantustan Homelands solution offered by apartheid South Africa, just before that regime collapsed (SAHO 2020). More open apartheid in Palestine will mean the death of Israel. Thank you Trump and  Netanyahu.

References

AIC (2011) ‘Jerusalem: facts and figures’, Alternative Information Center, December, Jerusalem and Beit Sahour, Palestine

Anderson, Tim (2008) The Future of Palestine, Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies, 7 August, online: https://counter-hegemonic-studies.net/future-palestine-1/

Falk, Richard (2014) ‘On ‘Lost Causes’ and the Future of Palestine’, The Nation, 16 December, online: https://www.thenation.com/article/lost-causes-and-future-palestine/

Falk, Richard and Virginia Tilley (2017) Palestine - Israel Journal of Politics, Economics, and Culture; East Jerusalem Vol. 22, Issue 2/3, 191-196; also available here: https://counter-hegemonic-studies.net/israeli-apartheid/

Heller, Jeffrey (2018) ‘Jews, Arabs nearing population parity in Holy Land: Israeli officials’, Reuters, 27 march, online: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-population/jews-arabs-nearing-population-parity-in-holy-land-israeli-officials-idUSKBN1H222T

IHRA (2016) ‘Working Definition of Antisemitism’, online: https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/working-definition-antisemitism

JVL (2017) ‘Demographics of Israel: Jewish & Non-Jewish Population of Israel/Palestine (1517 - Present), Jewish Virtual Library, online: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-and-non-jewish-population-of-israel-palestine-1517-present

Olmert, Ehud (2007) ‘Olmert to Haaretz: Two-state Solution, or Israel Is Done For’, Haaretz, 29 November, online: https://www.haaretz.com/1.4961269

Pappe, Ilan (2006) The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Publications, London

Pappe, Ilan (2014) ‘Israel’s incremental genocide in the Gaza ghetto’, Electronic Intifada, 13 July, online: https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-incremental-genocide-gaza-ghetto/13562

RT (2020) ‘Trump proposes a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine in ‘win-win opportunity’ for both sides’, 28 January, online: https://www.rt.com/news/479412-trump-two-state-solution-israel/

SAHO (2020) ‘The Homelands’, South African History Online, online: https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/homelands

Vidal, Dominique (1997) ‘The expulsion of the Palestinians re-examined’, le Monde Diplomatique, December, online: https://mondediplo.com/1997/12/palestine

White House (2020) ‘President Donald J. Trump’s Vision for Peace, Prosperity, and a Brighter Future for Israel and the Palestinian People’, 28 January, online: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trumps-vision-peace-prosperity-brighter-future-israel-palestinian-people/

 Deal of the Century

TIM ANDERSON

Dr. Tim Anderson is Director of the Sydney-based Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies. He has worked at Australian universities for more than 30 years, teaching, researching and publishing on development, human rights and self-determination in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East. In 2014 he was awarded Cuba’s medal of friendship. He is Australia and Pacific representative for the Latin America based Network in Defence of Humanity. His most recent books are: Land and Livelihoods in Papua New Guinea (2015), The Dirty War on Syria (2016), now published in ten languages; Countering War Propaganda of the Dirty War on Syria (2017) and Axis of Resistance: towards an independent Middle East (2019).