Kamel Hawwash: Trump’s Deal of the Century, A Mirage Already Rejected by Palestinians

TEHRAN (FNA)- Academic and activist Kamel Hawwash believes that Trump administration is “naïve” to think that Palestinians would accept his so-called Deal of the Century to end their struggle in return for “economic prosperity”.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with FNA, Kamel Hawwash shared his opinion with us that the status of the holy city of Jerusalem al-Quds and the issue of the Palestinian refugees are key issues that Trump administration has tried to take off the negotiation’s table.

According to the Palestinian academic, “Israel is the child of racist ideology of Zionism” which has been designed to “put the interests of the Jewish Zionists ahead of all others, including the indigenous Palestinians”.

Kamel Hawwash is a British-Palestinian engineering professor based at the University of Birmingham. Hawwash is a longstanding campaigner for justice, especially for the Palestinian people. He is the Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and a founding member of the British Palestinian Policy Council (BPPC).

FNA has conducted an interview with Kamel Hawwash about Israel’s brutal crackdown on Palestinian protesters, the Israeli legislation known as the nation state law and also Trump’s so-called deal of the century.

Below you will find the full text of the interview.

Q: It seems that killing scores of people and maiming thousands more over the past several months aren’t an indication of what Israel thinks is enough to keep Gaza in check. Do you think Israel’s deadly clamp down on Palestinian protesters is going to end anytime soon?

A: Ever since its inception in 1948 through violence and terror, Israel has treated the indigenous Palestinians as a lesser people than Jewish Israelis. It has systematically denied all the basic rights expected by any other people. This includes the right to self-determination and the right for Palestinian refugees, expelled in 1948 to return to their homes. Since March 2018, Palestinians in Gaza have been marching peacefully to demand a lifting of the illegal and immoral siege on the beleaguered strip and to be allowed to return peacefully to their homes. Instead of meeting their peaceful and legitimate demands, Israel met their protests with deadly fire, deploying tens of snipers that shoot to kill, sometimes at distances of hundreds of meters. Among the over 200 dead have been children, journalists and medics. There are no signs that the Great March of return will end soon or that Israel will stop attacking protesters at the Gaza fence.

Q: What do you think the protests known as the ‘Great March of Return’ have accomplished so far?

A: The protests have highlighted the plight of Palestinians in Gaza but also the unjust situation all Palestinians find themselves in, nearly 72 years after their dispossession and expulsion. The GMR has also shown the world that Palestinians are resilient. They will not give up on their cause, no matter what Israel and its allies do. On the same day as the United States opened its new Embassy in Jerusalem, against all international understandings and before the ‘deal of the century’ was announced, Palestinians marched to the Gaza fence in their tens of thousands. The murder by Israel of over 60 Palestinians has not broken them. Nine months after the start of the march, they continue to protest. The GMR has also shown the world that Palestinians across all political factions can come together to face the common enemy Israel, putting aside their differences. Israel’s violent response has exposed the brutality of the extremist regime governing what many see as a rogue state.

Q: How do you think the US and some Arab states are complicit in crimes against the Palestinians especially in light of the discreet links between Israel and Saudi Arabia and some other Persian Gulf states?

A: The US funds Israel to the tune of over $3 billion per annum. It also provides Israel with a de facto veto at the UN Security Council, shielding it from accountability. It also provides it with cover for its crimes against the Palestinians, claiming it is entitled to self-defense. As an occupying power, it is not entitled to self-defense. In fact, it is obligated to protect the people it occupies and to refrain from committing crimes against them including land theft and moving its civilians into these occupied areas.

Arab states have not acted in the best interests of the Palestinian people, and some have embarked on steps to normalize relations with what is effectively an Apartheid state that occupies Arab people. Not only have Israeli sports teams performed in [Persian] Gulf States, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu recently visited Oman, followed closely by other minster visiting Oman and the UAE.

Q: In July 2018, the so-called nation state law was adopted by Israeli Knesset. What do you think the legislation shows about the nature of the regime in Tel Aviv?

A: Israel is the child of racist ideology of Zionism. It was never designed to be anything but a state that put the interests of Jewish Zionists ahead of all others, including the indigenous Palestinians. Its policies discriminate against Palestinians, whether in Gaza, East Jerusalem or the rest of the West Bank. It also discriminates against the Palestinian citizens of Israel in all areas of life, while providing a facade that claims that it is a democracy for all. The adoption of the nation state law in July entrenches its racism and articulates its own form of Apartheid. It gives the right of self-determination only to Jews, provides every Jew around the world with a right to emigrate to it but denies the right of return to Palestinian refugees. It also sees the building and expansion of settlements as a national value. With this law, Israel basically challenged the world, saying ‘I am an apartheid state, what are you going to do about it’? The world has been silent, thus providing it with a continuation of the impunity it has enjoyed.

Q: Many believe that the continuing illegal Israeli settlement activities have hammered nail after nail into the coffin of a diplomatic solution. What do you think about that?

A: Anyone who visits the occupied territories comes away questioning whether Israel has any interest in peace based on international law. Most countries believe this will come through a two state solution. However, as the number of settlers moves onwards a million and hundreds of settlements are developed connected with settler only roads and with the Apartheid Wall built deep into the occupied territories, the ‘facts on the ground’ Israel is creating have ended any prospects of a two-state solution that would meet the basic needs of Palestinians whose leadership accepted a state on 22% of their historic homeland. That is not only damaging for the prospects of peace, it also places all the countries that continue to hold out for a two-state in difficulty as they have no alternative to that. However, calls for one democratic state for all inhabitants of historic Palestine appear to be increasing.

Q: The current administration in the US has been boasting about their new plan for Palestine and even calling it the deal of the century. What do you think would be in the new deal for the Palestinians?

A: The deal of the century seems to be a mirage. No details have emerged and it has been promised for a launch for months but with no firm date. The Palestinians have already rejected a US made plan after US President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city. Jerusalem and the issue of the refugees are key final status issues that Trump has attempted to take off the negotiation’s table. With Netanyahu claiming Israel must have security control from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, there is very little that the ’deal of the century’ can compensate for exclusion of these issues from future negotiations. The deal is likely to focus on economic prosperity for Palestinians, which this naïve American administration thinks the Palestinians will accept to end their struggle. The Great March of Return has demonstrated that the Palestinians will continue to struggle, no matter what the cost until they attain their rights.  

Israel's Fifth Column

By Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D.

Referring to Israel during an interview in August 1983, U.S. Navy Admiral and former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Thomas Moorer said “I’ve never seen a President — I don’t care who he is — stand up to them. It just boggles the mind.

They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn’t writing anything down. If the American people understood what a grip these people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don’t have any idea what goes on.”

Moorer was speaking generally but he had something specific in mind, namely the June 8, 1967, Israeli attack on the American intelligence ship, U.S.S. Liberty, which killed 34 American crewmen and wounded 173 more. The ship was operating in international waters and was displaying a huge stars and stripes but Israeli warplanes, which had identified the vessel as American, even strafed the life rafts to kill those who were fleeing the sinking ship. It was the bloodiest attack on a U.S. Naval vessel ever outside of wartime and the crew deservedly received the most medals every awarded to a single ship based on one action. Yes, it is one hell of a story of courage under fire, but don’t hold your breath waiting for Hollywood to make a movie out of it.

President Lyndon B. Johnson, may he burn in hell, had ordered the recall of U.S. carrier planes sent to aid the stricken vessel, saying that he would prefer the ship go to the bottom rather than embarrass his good friend Israel. Then came the cover-up from inside the U.S. government. A hastily convened and summarily executed board of inquiry headed by Admiral John McCain, father of the senator, deliberately interviewed only a handful of crewmen before determining that it was all an accident. The sailors who had survived the attack as well as crewmen from Navy ships that arrived eventually to provide assistance were held incommunicado in Malta before being threatened and sworn to secrecy. Since that time, repeated attempts to convene another genuine inquiry have been rebuffed by congress, the White House and the Pentagon. Recently deceased Senator John McCain was particularly active in rejecting overtures from the Liberty survivors.

The Liberty story demonstrates how Israel’s ability to make the US government act against its own interests has been around for a long time. Grant Smith of IRMEP, cites how Israeli spying carried out by AIPAC in Washington back in the mid-1980s resulted in a lopsided trade agreement that currently benefits Israel by more than $10 billion per year on the top of direct grants from the U.S. Treasury and billions in tax exempt “charitable” donations by American Jews.

If Admiral Moorer were still alive, he would be told that the situation vis-à-vis Israeli power is much worse now than it was in 1983. He would be very interested in reading a remarkable bit of research recently completed by Smith demonstrating exactly how the illegal Zionist regime of Israel and its friends work from inside the system to corrupt US political process and make the American government work in support of Zionist regime's interests. He describes in some detail how the Israel Lobby has been able to manipulate the law enforcement community to protect and promote Crime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s agenda.

A key component in the Israeli penetration of the U. S. government has been President George W. Bush’s 2004 signing off on the creation of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (OTFI) within the Department of the Treasury. The group’s website proclaims that it is responsible for “safeguarding the financial system against illicit use and combating rogue nations, terrorist facilitators, WMD proliferators, money launderers, drug kingpins, and other national security threats,” but it has from its founding been really all about safeguarding Israel’s perceived interests. Grant Smith notes however, how “the secretive office has a special blind spot for major terrorism generators, such as tax-exempt money laundering from the United States into illegal Israeli settlements and proliferation financing and weapons technology smuggling into Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons complex.”

The first head of the office was Undersecretary of Treasury Stuart Levey, who operated secretly within the Treasury itself while also coordinating regularly both with the Zionist regime as well as with pro-Israel organizations like AIPAC, WINEP and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).

Levey left OTFI in 2011 and was replaced by David Cohen. It was reported then and subsequently that counterterrorism position at OTFI were all filled by individuals who were both Jewish and Zionist. Cohen continued the Levey tradition of resisting any transparency regarding what the office was up to. Smith reports how, on September 12, 2012, he refused to answer reporter questions “about the Zionist regime's possession of nuclear weapons, and whether sanctioning Iran, a signatory to the NPT, over its internationally-inspected civilian nuclear program was an example of endemic double standards at OTFI.”

Cohen was in turn succeeded in 2015 by Adam Szubin who was then replaced in 2017 by Sigal Pearl Mandelker, a former and possibly current Israeli. All of the heads of OTFI have therefore been Jewish and Zionist. All work closely with the fake Zionist regime of Israel, all travel to Occupied Palestine frequently on “official business” and they all are in close liaison with the Jewish groups most often described as part of the Israel Lobby. And the result has been that many of the victims of OTFI have been generally enemies of Israel, as defined by Israel and America’s Jewish lobbyists. In the United States, action by OTFI has meant that Islamic charities have been shut down and individuals exercising their right to free speech through criticism of the Jewish state have been imprisoned. If the Israel Anti-Boycott Act succeeds in making its way through congress the OTFI model will presumably become the law of the land when it comes to curtailing free speech whenever Israel is involved.

The OTFI story is outrageous, but it is far from unique. There is a history of American Jews closely attached to the fabricated regime in Tel Aviv being promoted by powerful and cash rich domestic lobbies to act on behalf of the Jewish state. To be sure, Zionists are vastly overrepresented in all government agencies that have anything at all to do with West Asia and one can reasonably argue that the Republican and Democratic Parties are in the pockets of Jewish billionaires named Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban.

Neoconservatives, most of whom are Jewish, infiltrated the Pentagon under the Reagan Administration and they and their heirs in government and media were major players in the catastrophic war with Iraq, which, one of the architects of that war, Philip Zelikow, described in 2004 as being all about Israel. The same people are now in the forefront of urging war with Iran.

American policy towards West Asia is largely being managed by a small circle of Orthodox Jews working for presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner. One of them, David Friedman, is currently U.S. Ambassador to Israel. Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer who has no diplomatic or foreign policy credentials, is a Zionist Jew who is also a supporter of the illegal settlements on the West Bank and a harsh critic of other Jews who in any way disagree with the Zionist regime. He has contributed money to settlement construction, which would be illegal if OTFI were doing its job, and has consistently defended the settlers while condemning the Palestinians in speeches in Israel. He endlessly and ignorantly repeats Zionist regime's talking points and has tried to change the wording of State Department communications, seeking to delete the word “occupied” when describing Israel’s control of the West Bank. His humanity does not extend beyond his Jewishness, defending the Israeli shooting thousands of unarmed Gazan protesters and the bombing of schools, hospitals and cultural centers. How he represents the US and its citizens who are not dual nationals must be considered a mystery.

Friedman’s top adviser is Rabbi Aryeh Lightstone, who is described by the Embassy as an expert in “Jewish education and pro-Israel advocacy.” Once upon a time, in an apparently more enlightened mood, Lightstone described Donald Trump as posing “an existential danger both to the Republican Party and to the U.S.” and even accused him of pandering to Jewish audiences. Apparently when opportunity knocked he changed his mind about his new boss. Pre-government in 2014, Lightstone founded and headed Silent City, a Jewish advocacy group supported by extreme right-wing money that opposed the Iran nuclear agreement and also worked to combat the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. He is reportedly still connected financially with anti BDS groups, which might be construed as a conflict of interest. As the Senior Adviser to Friedman he is paid in excess of $200,000 plus free housing, additional cash benefits to include a 25% cost of living allowance and a 10% hardship differential, medical insurance and eligibility for a pension.

So, what’s in it all for Joe and Jill American Citizens? Not much. And for Israel? Anything, it wants, apparently. Sink a U.S. warship? Okay. Tap the U.S. Treasury? Sure, just wait a minute and we’ll draft some legislation that will give you even more money. Create a treasury department agency run exclusively by Jews that operates secretly to punish critics of the Zionist regime? No brainer. Meanwhile a bunch of dudes at the Pentagon are dreaming of new wars for Israel and the White House sends an ignorant ambassador and top aide overseas to represent the interests of the foreign government where they are posted. Which just happens to be Israel. Will it ever end?

By Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., who is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.