US Contempt for Palestinian Rights, Int’l Laws, UN Resolutions

By: Kayhan Int’l 

Decades of deceit by the US finally saw its dropping of the mask of hypocrisy to reveal its ugly face of ingrained hostility towards the long-oppressed Palestinian people, their denied birthrights and their usurped homeland, to the devilish delight of the Zionist regime.

Last Monday’s message from Washington endorsing the building of illegal Jewish townships in the West Bank of River Jordan by the illegitimate entity Israel, is not only a violation of UN resolutions and international laws regarding the 1967 occupied territories, but it shattered the misplaced hopes of some Arab leaders that the US might one day formally force the Zionist regime to grant independence to a mini Palestinian state.

The announcement by Mike Pompeo – a gangster who possess as US Secretary of State – rejected the 1978 State Department legal opinion deeming the Israeli settlements in the West Bank as "inconsistent with international law”, by citing President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 pro-Israeli personal assessment that these were not "inherently illegal.”

No US president, however, including Reagan, had reversed the 1978 State Department ruling, although unlike President Jimmy Carter who had described the Israeli townships as "illegal”, the incumbents in the White House, as part of their barely-concealed animosity towards the Palestinians, had referred to the Jewish settlements as merely "obstacles to peace”.

For politically-keen observers Pompeo’s pronouncement was no surprise and might be a prelude to declaration of the entire West Bank as Israeli territory in view of the fact that the administration of Donald Trump is actually run through remote control by the Zionist war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu and unofficially takes orders from the US president’s Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner – the evil mind behind the not yet fully disclosed ‘deal of the century’ (read conspiracy of the century) regarding the chronic question of Occupied Palestine.

Whatever pretensions that Washington had as ‘honest broker’ on the issue of Palestine had already been exposed in December 2017 as false and deceitful when Trump called the occupied Islamic city of Bayt al-Moqaddas "capital of Israel” and in 2018 shifted the US embassy to this usurped peace of holy land.

Earlier this year in March, he further trampled international laws and UN resolutions by endorsing the Zionist regime’s illegal annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights, which all previous US administrations had considered occupied territory.

According to International law, an occupying power cannot build townships on occupied territories; and the West Bank, as well as the eastern part of Bayt al-Moqaddas and the Golan Heights, are regarded occupied territories, as per UN resolutions.

The latest act of lawlessness by the US was repudiated by the European Union, which issued an official statement stating that its position "on Israeli settlement policy in the occupied Palestinian territory is clear and remains unchanged: all settlement activity is illegal under international law”.

EU Foreign Policy Chief, Italy’s Federica Mogherini, was quick to release a statement, saying: "The EU calls on Israel to end all settlement activity, in line with its obligations as an occupying power.”

Palestinians were naturally furious and called the US move "law of the jungle”. Others termed it "a shameful decision that highlights the extent to which the Trump administration has departed from international consensus – including withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, criminal breach of the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action) on Iran’s nuclear rights followed by economic terrorism against the Islamic Republic, and unilateral cancellation of the strategic arms treaty with Moscow.”

Irrespective of the international condemnations of repeated American contempt of Palestinian rights, it is time for the Palestinian people to wake up to realities, instead of being lulled by verbal expressions of support from the EU or the UN.

Only armed resistance against the crimes and terrorism of the Zionist regime, is the solution to their procrastinated problems, which will end only with the end of Israel, as emphasized time and again by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Kushner Plan Aims to Assert Colonial Privilege over Quds: Australian Prof.

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A senior professor and political analyst based in Australia said the economic plan raised by US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in a recent conference in Bahrain, was part of attempts to assert colonial privilege over al-Quds and the Syrian Golan.

“Washington and Tel Aviv are trying to consolidate the apartheid colony in Palestine, in face of tremendous rejection worldwide,” Professor Tim Anderson said in an interview with the Tasnim News Agency.

“The Kushner Plan follows closely attempts to assert colonial privilege over al Quds/Jerusalem and over the Syrian Golan,” he added.

Professor Tim Anderson is a distinguished author and 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; and Countering War Propaganda of the Dirty War on Syria (2017). His next book Axis of Resistance is due out in 2019.

The following is the full text of the interview:

Tasnim: Bahrain hosted the so-called "Peace to Prosperity" conference to discuss what the US has described as the economic part of President Donald Trump's "deal of the century", a plan which aims to consign the Palestinian cause to oblivion. The Palestinian leadership boycotted the meeting on June 25 and 26 in Manama, leading critics to question the credibility of the event. In your opinion, what goals are the US and Israel pursuing by holding the conference? Would they reach their goals?

Anderson: Washington and Tel Aviv are trying to consolidate the apartheid colony in Palestine, in face of tremendous rejection worldwide. The Kushner Plan follows closely attempts to assert colonial privilege over al Quds/Jerusalem and over the Syrian Golan. None of this changes international law. Nevertheless, the best ally in this has been Riyadh, which uses the Bahrain regime as a ‘front man’ and promises some finance after the dirty deed is done.

Which dirty deed? The Zionists have made no secret about it: give up the entire project of Palestinian nationhood. Their ambassador in New York, Dany Danon asks rhetorically ‘What’s wrong with Palestinian surrender?’ (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/opinion/palestinian-peace-bahrain-conference.html).

Most of the world these days would respond, ‘what is wrong with equal rights for all in Palestine?’ Few propositions are as straight forward, now that the Netanyahu regime has effectively destroyed any remaining illusions over a possible ‘two-state solution’. Indeed, as Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley pointed out two years back (https://counter-hegemonic-studies.net/israeli-apartheid/), dismantling the apartheid system, where more than half the population lacks equal citizenship, is mandated by international law.

The Kushner plan involves a promise of investment money, after Palestine surrenders. According to Reuters, there would be a “global investment fund to lift the Palestinian and neighboring Arab state economies, and fund a $5 billion transportation corridor to connect the West Bank and Gaza”. However this would only take place after the peace/surrender deal, the money would be spread across ten years and half of it would go to Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-plan-exclusive/exclusive-white-houses-kushner-unveils-economic-portion-of-middle-east-peace-plan-idUSKCN1TN0ES).

There is a threat behind this blackmail. If Palestine does not surrender, the resistance will be hunted down and killed. Whatever the rhetoric, this ‘deal of the century’ was meant to be a ‘win-win’ for Israel, and a ‘lose-lose’ for Palestine.

Fortunately, even much of the US corporate media has branded the ‘deal’ as ‘dead on arrival’ (DOA). They recognize that the Kushner Plan has no support from Palestinians, who were not even represented at the conference.

Tasnim: Some analysts say that the Trump administration’s focus on an economic plan, led by his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, is a strategic mistake that could stymie the peace negotiations even before they begin. What is your assessment of the US approach to the conflict and the future of the plan? Is it practical at all?

Anderson: There can be no practical impact of a plan in which no-one believes. Kushner’s proposal has pre-conditions which will not be met, so the hedged money promises will never materialize. The Israeli media observed that the Palestinian Authority regarded the Bahrain stunt as a ‘stunning failure’ for Trump administration (https://www.timesofisrael.com/pa-calls-bahrain-conference-a-stunning-failure-for-trump-administration/). The resistance news site al Manar notes the Israeli media’s disappointment that the conference “Failed to Oblige Palestinians to Concede” and that “the absence of all the Palestinian forces has mainly contributed to the failure of Al-Manama conference” (https://english.almanar.com.lb/771047).

It is quite obvious that the US undermined, rather than built, Palestinian confidence, by encouraging Netanyahu’s relentless land theft and ethnic cleansing, and by backing the illegal claims over al Quds/Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan. There has been little to appeal to even the most demoralized Palestinian leader.

However the latest impasse, in some respects, may serve to further discredit the US and Saudi roles, and to enhance the anti-apartheid, ‘One Democratic State’ campaign.

Tasnim: Israeli occupation forces have killed 84 Palestinians during the first half of 2019, including eight women and 19 children, according to local media reports. On Friday, Israeli forces once again opened fire on Palestinians taking part in the peaceful “Great March of Return” protests, along the separation fence between the besieged Gaza Strip and occupied territories. According to media reports, more than 270 people, including 52 children, have been killed since the demonstrations began in March 2018. Most of the dead and the thousands wounded were unarmed civilians against whom Israel was using excessive force. Why has the international community, particularly the Western mainstream media, made a muted response to the Tel Aviv regime’s crimes against Palestinians so far?

Anderson: At a political level we see little immediate change, as there are entrenched positions over Palestine and even the exposure of Zionist atrocities can seem to have little impact at the political level. However there is a groundswell of change, and the colonists are worried.

We see a big Israeli campaign to block a change of government in Britain, where large sections of the British Labor Party are rejecting Zionist influence. Zionists fear to lose the support of the original sponsor of their colony, the British state, should a government led by Jeremy Corbyn come to office.

In the US, there is a shift away from Zionism by liberal Jews. They have been influenced by the staunch Palestinian resistance and exposure of Israeli crimes. This is a gradual movement of ‘liberal Zionists’ towards a more anti-Zionist position, using their own logic.

For example, two US academics who call themselves “lifelong Zionists” explain that they have chosen to boycott Israel out of “love for Israel and a desire to save it”.

Clearly, these ‘liberals’ have some dream which does not sit well with the reality of a Netanyahu-led apartheid state. In any case, they go on to say “we are refusing to travel to Israel, boycotting products produced there and calling on our universities to divest and our elected representatives to withdraw aid to Israel … until Israel seriously engages with a peace process that either establishes a sovereign Palestinian state or grants full democratic citizenship to Palestinians living in a single state” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-zionist-case-for-boycotting-israel/2015/10/23/ac4dab80-735c-11e5-9cbb-790369643cf9_story.html).

Whatever their logic, these ‘left Zionists’ effectively lend support to the ‘One Democratic State’ proposal, urged by Palestinian activists (https://counter-hegemonic-studies.net/amal-odsp-1/). Importantly, their call was run in the US establishment paper, the Washington Post.

Similarly, the US anti-war group ‘Jewish Voices for Peace’ has recently declared itself anti-Zionist. This has led to an avalanche of Zionist accusations that they are “self-haters”, “anti-Jewish”, representing “far-left antisemitism”, and so on. Other media highlights young Jewish liberals who now claim to be anti-Zionist (https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/new-faces-jewish-american-resistance-israel). The result is that a large split is opening up between Israeli Jews (who mostly support President Trump) and the US liberal Jews (who mostly hate Trump), whose self-image is offended by an ugly apartheid state.

All this is important in terms of undermining the foreign support on which the Zionist colony depends. Nevertheless, the bedrock of hope for the future remains the steadfast Palestinian resistance. Remaining and resisting, strengthening links with their regional allies, the Arab and Muslim population of Palestine now outnumbers the Jewish Israeli population. Jewish emigration is now greater than that of Arabs. Many Israelis have dual nationality and are finding life easier in Europe and the USA. The contradictions of Zionist apartheid are starker than ever, and that is opening doors for the future.

The Day After: What if Israel Annexes the West Bank?

by RAMZY BAROUD

Photograph Source: Mr. Kate – CC BY-SA 3.0

Calls for the annexation of the Occupied West Bank are gaining momentum in both Tel Aviv and Washington. But Israel and its American allies should be careful what they wish for. Annexing the Occupied Palestinian Territories will only reinforce the current rethink of the Palestinian strategy, as opposed to solving Israel’s self-induced problems.

Encouraged by the Donald Trump administration’s decision to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Israeli government officials feel that the time for annexing the entirety of the West Bank is now.

In fact, “there is no better time than now” was the exact phrase used by former Israeli Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, as she promoted annexation at a recent New York conference.

Certainly, it is election season in Israel again, as Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, failed to form a government following the last elections in April. So much saber-rattling happens during such political campaigns, as candidates talk tough in the name of ‘security’, fighting terrorism, and so on.

But Shaked’s comments cannot be dismissed as fleeting election kerfuffle. They represent so much more, if understood within the larger political context.

Indeed, since Trump’s advent to the White House, Israel has never – and I mean, never – had it so easy. It is as if the rightwing government’s most radical agenda became a wish list for Israel’s allies in Washington. This list includes the US recognition of Israel’s illegal annexation of Occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem, of the Occupied Syrian Golan Heights, and the dismissal of the Palestinian refugees’ right of return altogether.

But that is not all. Statements made by influential US officials indicate initial interest in the outright annexation of the Occupied West Bank or, at least, large parts of it. The latest of such calls was made by US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman.

“Israel has the right to retain some … of the West Bank,” Friedman said in an interview, cited in the New York Times on June 8.

Friedman is deeply involved in the so-called ‘Deal of the Century’, a political gambit championed mostly by Trump’s top advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The apparent idea behind this ‘deal’ is to dismiss the core demands of the Palestinians, while reassuring Israel regarding its quest for demographic majority and ‘security’ concerns.

Other US officials behind Washington’s efforts on behalf of Israel include US Special Envoy to the Middle East, Jason Greenblatt, and former US Ambassador to the UN, Nicki Haley. In a recent interview with the Israeli rightwing newspaper, Israel Hayom, Haley said that the Israeli government “should not be worried” regarding the yet-to-be fully revealed details of the ‘Deal of the Century.’

Knowing Haley’s love-affair with – and brazen defense of – Israel at the United Nations, it should not be too difficult to fathom the subtle and obvious meaning of her words.

This is why Shaked’s call for the annexation of the West Bank cannot be dismissed as typical election season talk.

But can Israel annex the West Bank?

Practically speaking, yes, it can. True, it would be a flagrant violation of international law, but such a notion has never irked Israel, nor stopped it from annexing Palestinian or Arab territories. For example, it occupied East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in 1980 and 1981 respectively.

Moreover, the political mood in Israel is increasingly receptive to such a step. A poll conducted by the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, last March revealed that 42% of Israelis back West Bank annexation. This number is expected to rise in the following months as Israel continues to move to the right.

It is also important to note that several steps have already been taken in that direction, including the Israeli Knesset’s (parliament) decision to apply the same civil laws to illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank as to those living in Israel.

But that is where Israel faces its greatest dilemma.

According to a joint poll conducted by Tel Aviv University and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in August 2018, over 50% of Palestinians realize that a so-called two-state solution is no longer tenable. Moreover, a growing number of Palestinians also believe that co-existence in a single state, where Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs (Muslims and Christians, alike) live side by side, is the only possible formula for a better future.

The dichotomy for Israeli officials, who are keen on maintaining Jewish demographic majority and the marginalization of Palestinian rights, is that they no longer have good options.

First, they understand that the indefinite occupation of Palestinian territories cannot be sustained. Ongoing Palestinian resistance at home, and the rise of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement abroad is challenging Israel’s very political legitimacy across the world.

Second, they must also be aware of the fact that, from an Israeli Jewish leaders’ point of view, annexing the West Bank, along with millions of Palestinians, will multiply the very ‘demographic threat’ that they have been dreading for many years.

Third, the ethnic cleansing of whole Palestinian communities – the so-called ‘transfer’ option – as Israel has done upon its founding in 1948, and again, in 1967, is no longer possible. Neither will Arab countries open their borders for Israel’s convenient genocides, nor will Palestinians leave, however high the price. The fact that Gazans remained put, despite years of siege and brutal wars, is a case in point.

Political grandstanding aside, Israeli leaders understand that they are no longer in the driver’s seat and, despite their military and political advantage over Palestinians, it is becoming clear that firepower and Washington’s blind support are no longer enough to determine the future of the Palestinian people.

It is also clear that the Palestinian people are not, and never were, passive actors in their own fate. If Israel maintains its 52-year old Occupation, Palestinians will continue to resist. That resistance will not be weakened, or quelled, by any decision to annex the West Bank, in part or in full, the same way that Palestinian resistance in Jerusalem did not cease since its illegal annexation by Tel Aviv four decades ago.

Finally, the illegal annexation of the West Bank can only contribute to the irreversible awareness among Palestinians that their fight for freedom, human rights, justice and equality can be better served through a civil rights struggle within the borders of one single democratic state.

In her blind arrogance, Shaked and her rightwing ilk are only accelerating the demise of Israel as an ethnic, racist state, while opening up the stage for better possibilities than perpetual violence and apartheid.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London, 2018). He earned a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, UCSB.

Palestine Is Being Led to the Crematorium

by RAOUF HALABY

Would one employ a convicted pedophile to work in an early childhood center? Would one employ a convicted felon with a mile-long record to be a Boy Scout Master? And, would one employ a convicted serial killer to patrol school hallways?

How silly of me; of course not.

Donald Trump, the consummate-narcissist-in-chief, the one who loves to make a spectacle of every decision he makes and every policy he pontificates, and the one who loves to hold court while he signs a miscellany of edicts with maximum media pageantry, appointed his wet-behind-the-ears Harvard-purchased admission school boy as the Near East negotiator.

I just love to watch Donald Trump’s fanfare as he signs his name – always using bold script to fill up the page. Methinks that the longer he’s in office, the larger his signatures get. The consummate self-centered promoter, Trump revels in exhibiting his egotistical calligraphic scribblings.

A word of caution to those who have allergies, should they be invited to such a ceremony, they need make sure that their sniffling and coughing is done either before, or immediately after they exit the imperial rotunda. Someone’s opined that Trump does not like weak people, and anyone with a cough or a sniffle is banished (for the whole world to witness) from the inner sanctum by a ruler who’s also been accused of being a germaphobic.

Kushner is a real estate wheeler dealer who’s been accused of leveraging his business with loans from a variety of sources, including Emirati, Saudi, and Gulf nations, and oil tycoons with deep pockets eager to buy favor with Donald Trump. In return, Trump’s Iran policy is dictated by Israel and her new BFF’s; Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia’s MBS have placed U.S./Iran policy in the Trump/Pompeo/Bolton crosshairs. Why not? If you can sucker the school yard bully to fight your wars, you’re home scot free. Think Iraq, Syria, Libya and soon – Iran.

While many former Presidents and Secretaries of State have miserably failed to broker a peace agreement between Palestinians and Israel, the Palestinians’ forever brutal masters and occupiers, Donald Trump appointed his inept son-in-law as the gatekeeper and master of ceremonies for the Bahrain so-called Peace conference.

Jared Kushner is an avowed hardcore Zionist. His family’s friendship with Netanyahu spans decades. Observers have pointed out that Netanyahu’s overnight stays at the Kushner house were the indoctrinating sessions on which young Kushner was suckled and cut his teeth, visits that inculcated the young apprentice with the same Bibi Netanyahu venom of hatred, anger, vengeance, and bigotry that have become Israel’s trademark.

As a prelude to the Trump/Kushner crematorium in which the dream of a free and independent Palestinian state has been deposited, Trump moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; he severed diplomatic relations with the Palestinian leadership; he cut off UNRWA funding to starve an already emaciated population under the most brutal occupation of the last 50 years, he warned the entire world that should Israeli violations/violators of human rights abuses and brutalities be held accountable for their crimes at an international tribunal, the U.S. would retaliate in a variety of ways (including his favorite weapons – freezing diplomatic relations, the implementation of sanctions, tariffs, and embargoes, and possibly annihilation); he shut down the PLO office in Washington, D.C.; and he recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights for which he was rewarded by Netanyahu, his like-minded bosom buddy, for having a Jewish community on the Golan Heights named after him.

Who knows, perhaps a Trump Golan Golf Course of the Century will soon be part of the “Ultimate Deal.”

Now wouldn’t this be the sweetheart real estate deal of The Century?

I wish someone had kept a detailed record of Trump’s obsession and preoccupation with money. Only recently he told Chuck Todd that “his only interest in the Middle East are [sic.] preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and protecting Israel and Saudi Arabia.” As for Saudi Arabia’s MBS having to account for the barbaric use of a hack saw to surreptitiously dispose journalist Khashoggi’s mutilated corpse, Trump would not have any of that.

During the interview Trump affirmed the following: “That’s all [money] I care about. … Look, Saudi Arabia is buying $400 billion worth of things from us. That’s a very good thing.” The actual purchases are more like $15 billion, yet one more manufactured fact that only Trump could fabricate. Furthermore, Saudi money “means something to me, it’s a producer of jobs, [and they are] a big buyer, [for this reason I am] willing to overlook [Saudi] bad behavior.” To drive his point home, he assured Todd that he would “Take their money, Take their money, Chuck.”

If “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby,” then for sure Trump’s proposed Deal of the Century (Palestine/Israel proposed peace) is all about taking “their money.”

Recently Reporter Eli Clifton observed the following about the Benjamins used to buy/influence Trump’s foreign policy vis à vis Palestine, Israel and Iran:

Those funds came from Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer and Bernard Marcus, donors who have made no secret, both through public statements and funding think tanks that support military action against Iran, of their desire for the United States to destroy the Islamic Republic.

Adelson, who alongside his wife Miriam are the biggest donors to Trump and the GOP, contributed $205 million to Republicans [with $130 million to Trump’s campaign] in the past two political cycles and reportedly sent $35 million to the Future 45 Super PAC that supported Trump’s presidential bid.

The above does not include tens of millions of dollars’ worth of tax free contributions to fund illegal Israeli settlements and other Zionist projects at home and abroad.

Masquerading as a Kushnerized version of a peace proposal, the plan is a version of the Clinton/Bush/ Rabin/Sharon/Netanyahu/Zionist plan with one exception – it is a plan on steroids to legitimize apartheid, place the Palestinians under permanent occupation, and make them the orphans of the Middle East in perpetuity.

The Clinton peace deal forced the Palestinians to become economically dependent on Israel for every aspect of their lives. Israel collected taxes on Palestinian goods and dispensed the funds when and if they wished. Israel controlled all borders, security, education, health care, electric grids, water resources, the use and development of natural resources, economic growth, and infrastructure. Under Bush the Dumber, Tony Blair, Bush’s Poodle, spent years pretending to develop the decimated Palestinian infrastructure caused by Israel’s Nazi policies. Needless to say, while Blair got rich off his Balfourian (after Lord Balfour) scheme, a scheme which gave Israel the cover to steal more land and to impose sanctions on the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza (especially Gaza, the world’s largest open air prison in which over 2 million people are caged), he helped cement and institutionalize Israeli apartheid. Above all, Blair’s criminal policies condoned, excused, and ameliorated Israel’s brutality by making it palatable to his European EU compadres.

Obama inherited a Palestinian patient so brutalized and, instead of changing course by pumping life into a by-now body on life support, he was outmaneuvered by Netanyahu at every turn. For eight years Obama, ever the docile servant, played field hand to Bibi Netanyahu, carrying his water, begging, cajoling, pleading, and apologizing. One of the most humiliating White House scenes is the embarrassingly demeaning confrontation during which the Netanyahu-lecturing-Obama-episode too place. Barack Obama, the President of the most powerful nation on the face of this earth blinked. Emboldened, Bibi Netanyahu, the prime minister of a tiny country whose survival is solely dependent on American beneficence, went on to address an equally servile Congress that gave him 67 standing ovations.

In his final weeks in office Obama played his last cowardly Israel hand; he gifted Israel a guaranteed 38 billion precious tax payer dollars. Like Casey’s final stand at the bat, he struck out; how servile the Mighty Obama became. After all, the Presidential library must be built in Chicago, and donors have to be courted to write checks in the millions of Benjamins.

So Kushner is proposing a $50 billion dollar scheme to cinch the Deal of the Century.

Like a shrewd real estate investor, he is using the OPM formula (Other People’s Money scheme) to cough up the $50 billion dollars. Some 10 billion will go to Egypt, and another 7 billion to Jordan – to buy their complicity. I call this hushing the opposition with Benjamins.

The rest of the funds will (supposedly) be invested in West Bank/Gaza infrastructure projects. The mercurial behavior of Gulf Arabs, EU, and U.S. donors, as evidenced by their reneging on previous financial commitments to Palestinians, makes this a very iffy proposition.

And finally, will the Israelis, who’ve always cashed in on Palestinian misery by stealing their lands, their cultural heritage, and their natural resources, and by ruining their lives and killing them with impunity, exploit this proposal by becoming the brokers, deciders, planners, controllers, exchequers, arbitrators, and the-go-between of this, The Deal of Century?

Rest assured that Trump is looking for his cut.

As long as this Deal of the Century does not address the aspirations of a free and independent Palestine state, the Palestinians will forever live in servitude, humiliation, and degradation.

For the Palestinians it ain’t about the Benjamins; rather, it is about dignity, independence, freedom, the birthright of all the brutalized peoples of the world.

Donald Trump chose three politically inexperienced men to concoct the “Ultimate Deal” scheme. None of them has served in the diplomatic core, and their only qualifications are: they are Jewish, they are ardent Zionists, they’ve supported (verbally and financially) Illegal Israeli settlements, they’ve been very vocal about their support of Israeli policies, their antipathy for Palestinians mirrors Israeli thinking, and , likely, they hold dual American and Israeli citizenships. Above all, they are Trump’s fixers, confidents, and bail bonders.

I doubt that the troika of Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt, and David Friedman are the sole planners in a hands-off Trump foreign policy that is dictated to him by the likes of Bolton, Pompeo, Lindsey Graham, and Stephen Miller who, much like Rasputin, lurks in the shadowy hallways of the White House.

The first is Trump’s son-in-law, the second was/is Trump’s lawyer and executive vice president and Chief Legal Council to The Trump organization. The third is Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer and now U.S. Ambassador to Israel.

I have no doubt that Benjamin Netanyahu, along with MBS and other Emirati and Bahraini characters (in a less active role) are the planners of this scheme. How ironic it is that proposed funding (mostly Arab money) is rewarding Israel for its 71 years of the theft of Palestine and its long history of transgressions against the Palestinian people, the orphans of the Arab world.

For his Ultimate Deal of the Century Donald Trump has chosen the wrong set of characters. And that is precisely why his plan, like most of his other “tremendous” real estate schemes, will fail.

The man who boasts about using bankruptcy as “a good business practice” is about to embark on his biggest failure of the century.

Raouf J. Halaby is a Professor Emeritus of English and Art. He is a writer, photographer, sculptor, an avid gardener, and a peace activist. 

US-Led Bahrain Conference Dismissive of Palestinian Rights: American Analyst

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An American political analyst described the US administration’s so-called “deal of the century” plan as “dreadful” and said the ongoing conference organized by the US in Bahrain to promote the plan ignores the Palestinians’ fundamental rights.

“The June 25 - 26 Peace to Prosperity conference in Bahrain ignores fundamental Palestinian rights — what they’ve been denied since the infamous 1917 Balfour Declaration,” Chicago-based Stephen Lendman told Tasnim in an interview.

Stephen Lendman is a writer, syndicated columnist, activist, News TV personality, and radio show host. He currently writes for MoneyNewsNow.com and VeteransToday.com and hosts, since 2007, a progressive radio show at The Progressive Radio News Hour on The Progressive Radio Network.

The following is the full text of the interview:

Tasnim: Bahrain is hosting the so-called "Peace to Prosperity" conference to discuss what the US has described as the economic part of President Donald Trump's "deal of the century", a plan which aims to consign the Palestinian cause to oblivion. The Palestinian leadership has boycotted the meeting on June 25 and 26 in Manama, leading critics to question the credibility of the event. In your opinion, what goals are the US and Israel pursuing by holding the conference? Would they reach their goals?

Lendman: I’ve written much on Trump’s dreadful deal of the century, a scheme to benefit the US and Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people. It’s unrelated to regional peace, equity and justice, notions the US and Israel abhor. The June 25 - 26 Peace to Prosperity conference in Bahrain ignores fundamental Palestinian rights — what they’ve been denied since the infamous 1917 Balfour Declaration. Calling for the establishment of a nation for Jews (on stolen Palestinian land) was a high crime against humanity.

Endless conflict, occupation, dispossession, and repression, along with social and cultural fragmentation, define conditions for beleaguered Palestinians – over 100 years of suffering, no end of it in prospect, the world community dismissive of their rights.

Discussing Trump’s economic part of the plan puts the cart before the horse. Palestinian officials are justifiably boycotting the conference. The scheme in its entirety ignores fundamental final status issues, including Palestinian self-determination, illegal Israeli occupation, settlements, borders, air and water rights, other resources, the right of diaspora Palestinians to return to their homeland, and East Jerusalem (al-Quds) as the exclusive Palestinian capital.

The economic part of the plan has nothing to do with aiding millions of long-suffering Palestinians. A global investment fund of whatever amount will benefit the US, other Western, and Israeli corporate interests exclusively, neoliberal harshness intended for ordinary Palestinians — along with continued subjugation under Israel’s repressive boot. The plan was dead before arrival. Trump’s anti-Palestinian agenda since taking office alone doomed it.

Tasnim: Some analysts say that the Trump administration’s focus on an economic plan, led by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, is a strategic mistake that could stymie the peace negotiations even before they begin. What is your assessment of the US approach to the conflict and the future of the plan? Is it practical at all?

Lendman: Key for Palestinians is restoring their fundamental political rights. With their own land and self-determination to run it, they’d be free to develop their resources and build a functioning economy with far greater potential than Trump’s deal of the century, offering nothing to ordinary Palestinians than the unacceptable status quo.

Trump’s reluctance to release the plan is because it’s so one-sided, put together by Zionist ideologues Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt — dismissive of Palestinian rights.

Tasnim: On Friday, Israeli forces once again opened fire on Palestinians taking part in the peaceful “Great March of Return” protests, along the separation fence between the besieged Gaza Strip and occupied territories, injuring at least 79 peaceful protesters. According to media reports, more than 270 people, including 52 children, have been killed since the demonstrations began in March 2018. Most of the dead and the thousands wounded were unarmed civilians against whom Israel was using excessive force. Why has the international community, particularly the Western mainstream media, made a muted response to the Tel Aviv regime’s crimes against Palestinians so far?

Lendman: Since Great March of Return/Lift the Siege protests began on March 30, 2018, hundreds of nonviolent Gazans were killed, over 26,000 others injured, many seriously with no world community intervention to stop the carnage.

It’s part of Israel’s slow-motion genocide against the Strip’s two million people. Western establishment media, especially in the US, one-sidedly support Israel, permitting the Jewish state to get away with mass murder and much more, accountability never forthcoming. As long as the US supports Israel, nothing positive is forthcoming. Over 70 years of dispossession from their land, along with over 50 years of brutal occupation, could continue endlessly.

I and others call what’s going on US and Israeli slow-motion genocide of the Palestinian people — one of history’s greatest high crimes.

The US’s Middle East ‘peace summit’ is nonsense. Palestinians are right to boycott it

Ian Black

The Trump administration is notoriously biased towards Israel, and its $50bn offer to Palestinians pointedly avoids land rights

I

n the toxic history of the enduring conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, the Palestinians have often been accused of “never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity”. This familiar charge has been repeated in the runup to an extraordinary event taking place in the Gulf state of Bahrain, convened by the US and starting on Tuesday.

The Manama “workshop” – downgraded from “conference” to lower already rock-bottom expectations – is designed to discuss the “Peace to Prosperity” plan unveiled by the White House on Saturday. The document, the result of two years’ work by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has already been subject to a torrent of undiplomatic abuse. Palestinians have made clear that they will not attend Manama – apart from the odd businessman prepared to defy a broad national consensus that unusually unites Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip.

 

Nor does the word 'occupation' appear anywhere [in the US deal], except with reference to 'occupational mobility'

Trump’s hostility to the Palestinians and blatant bias towards Israel have been clear from the moment he entered the Oval Office: the transfer of the US embassy to Jerusalem, the slashing of aid to UNRWA (the agency that assists Palestinian refugees), the closure of the PLO mission in Washington and recognition of Israel’s annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights have all been bleak and damaging landmarks. The president’s disruptive moves have undermined the longstanding international consensus that the only way to resolve the world’s most intractable conflict is to create a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel – thus finally granting equal rights to both peoples who are doomed, whether they like it or not, to share the Holy Land.

The infinitely more difficult political part of Trump’s characteristically named “ultimate deal” has yet to be published. With another election looming in Israel in October (after April’s poll failed to produce a new government) it faces further delay and may not see the light of day before the 2020 US election. But the economic element laid out in the Peace to Prosperity document presents a surreal, even fantastic vision. Its headline figure of investing $50bn (£39bn) in the infrastructure of the West Bank and Gaza (as well as Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon) is contained in a slick but superficial brochure that might be advertising a real estate deal to private equity firms.

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Property rights are mentioned, but there is no reference whatsoever to the illegal Israeli settlements scattered across the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel appears a few times but only in a list of neighbouring countries. Palestine – as opposed to Palestinians – is not mentioned either. Nor does the word “occupation” appear anywhere, except with reference to “occupational mobility” – hampered on the ground by endless Israeli checkpoints.

Illustrations show recipients of previous US aid that has been axed by Trump, including the Bereaved Families Forum, an organisation working for reconciliation between Israeli and Palestinian victims of violence. Previous efforts to sell a vision of economic peace, by the past Quartet envoy Tony Blair or John Kerry, US secretary of state under Barack Obama, have failed – and are ignored. Dubai and Singapore are nevertheless cited as exemplary regional hubs.

The understandable fear on the Palestinian side is that this rights-free approach is a precursor to Israeli moves to annex parts of the West Bank, with that likelihood signalled on the eve of the last election by Benjamin Netanyahu and echoed by David Friedman, the controversial US ambassador to Israel who has worked closely with Kushner.

“Palestine,” as one senior PLO official quipped, “has a CEO called Mahmoud Abbas, and Trump wants to break his back. And, yes, we may have lost the Americans but we have kept everyone else.”

Unlike the Palestinians, representatives of Arab states will be in Manama – though at a low level and only after apparently insisting that Israeli officials (as opposed to businessmen) would not be invited. The Saudis, Emiratis, Qatar and Kuwait will be there, as will Egypt and Jordan, feeling that given their dependence on the US, especially as tensions soar over Iran, they had little choice. Bahrain, after all, is home to the US Fifth Fleet. “What alternative did we have?” shrugged one regional diplomat. But that is still a far cry from the fantasy peddled by Netanyahu and apparently believed by Kushner and Trump, that the Gulf states – still sensitive to popular sentiment despite their autocratic nature – would openly abandon the Palestinian cause.

Kushner himself said in an interview that “the current status quo is not a sustainable situation”. That is certainly correct. But otherwise his plan – money for peace replacing land for peace – is bizarre nonsense and as such has been widely and rightly rejected. Boycotting Bahrain is not another missed opportunity by the Palestinians, but instead signals a rare, determined and united effort to insist that their economic needs – real and urgent – do not trump their fundamental rights.

• Ian Black is a former Middle East editor of the Guardian

Jared Kushner's 'deal of the century' fails to materialise in Bahrain

Martin Chulov Middle East correspondent

Senior adviser to Trump found no interest in his proposals for ending Israel/Palestine conflict

Jared Kushner speaks at the Peace to Prosperity Workshop
 in Manama. Photograph: AP

In the end, the ‘deal of the century’ was little more than a failed clearance sale. Jared Kushner arrived in Bahrain touting bedrock principles at untenable discounts. And even then there were no buyers.

The conference that was supposed to offer a new way out of the malaise of the Israel/Palestine conflict provided little of the sort. Its central premise of prosperity as a precursor to a lasting solution barely appeared to register on either side of the separation wall.

In Ramallah and Gaza, there was very little interest in the Trump administration’s proposals. Even in Israel, local media played down the gathering and did nothing to ramp up expectations.

The $50bn (£39bn) pledged, effectively as a start-up fund for the region’s Palestinians, was less than enthusiastically received in Jordan, Egypt and in Lebanon – where leaders in Beirut, not usually inclined to turn away from a $6bn money pot, dismissed the pitch as a shameless bribe.

Economic incentives to integrate Palestinian communities around the region and revitalise the West Bank and Gaza economy were widely viewed as redundant in the glaring absence of a political dimension that could turn such pledges in to realities.

No-one wanted to talk politics in Manama. In the place of a formula that had underwritten peace initiatives for decades came the expectation that the Trump Administration should be trusted to deliver a just and equitable peace, if and when a political dimension comes around.

To say such a demand was a tough sell would be one of the year’s great understatements. The current US administration has been overwhelmingly supportive of the Israeli agenda and openly dismissive of the Palestinians – a fact that led to a boycott of the workshop by Palestinian leaders.

Kushner arrived in Manama as the self-styled envoy who could shake things up, and finally bring traction to a peace process that had gone nowhere in the past decade and had shown real signs of disintegrating.

Casting himself as a disruptor who would find new ways to revitalise a moribund issues, he did indeed make bold moves – all of them in support of Israeli interests to which he is ideologically aligned. Kushner’s one hint of his political stance came when he said the Arab peace initiative, brokered 17 years ago by former monarch King Abdullah, was no longer viable.

That concession brought into question the internationally agreed formula of a two-state solution. While dismissing the Arab initiative as a vehicle for a two-state solution does not mean the latter is dead, critics in Ramallah and across the region were quick to draw that inference.

“Frankly, we demand an independent Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967,” said Ashraf Jabari, chair of the Palestinian Business Network. Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, said of Kushner’s plan: “It is totally divorced from reality. The elephant in the room is the occupation itself.”

Abandoning such a foundational platform would take the conflict into unchartered waters, and be sure to raise the ire of much of the global community. It would also beg the question of what could possibly come next that either side could accept as a viable model.

The Palestinian position ahead of the conference was as weak as it has ever been; the US had withdrawn humanitarian aid funding, shuttered its missions in the West Bank and Gaza, and kicked out its diplomats from Washington. Its economy has stagnated, political structures broken down and the rule of law across the territories continues to be tested.

In short, the Palestinians are in no state to negotiate, even if they were minded to. With Kushner having revealed his hand in Manama, there is now at least more clarity about what to expect for the remainder of this administration.

Now comes the guessing game of just how far the US will go if it gets no buy in to its plan. An Iran-style economic strangulation, a push for regime change or more of the same steadily tightening occupation, with no one in Washington raising a fuss about human rights or deteriorating living conditions.

As the conference wound down, Tony Blair, who bought into the notion of economic growth being a reboot for the Palestinian economy during his time as head of the Quartet a decade ago, stressed to Kushner the need to abide by the principles of two states and for economic and political initiatives to give heft to any plans. He failed to draw a commitment, and the conference ended with a pledge that whatever comes next will be “fair and just” for both sides.

“It’s absolutely foolish to believe you can have economics without sound politics, but it’s likewise completely futile to think politics will work without economics buttressing it,” Blair told the gathering.

There was little reason to take such a claim on face value before the Bahrain summit, and even less so now.