Posts
While people are wringing their hands over Steve Bannon, it’s
useful to compare the Trump approach to the PLO with that of the Obama
administration.
Obama embraced the Palestinian cause and Iran. His old friend Rashid Khalidi recently worried that Jews were infesting the Trump administration. Note the anti-Semitic trope!
Thus far, the
Trump administration has shunned the PLO. It is seriously unhappy, as well
it should be. Perhaps, with any luck, the party is over.
Caroline Glick has the story:
The PLO
is disoriented, panicked and hysterical. Speaking to Newsweek this week, Saeb Erekat,
PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas’s chief conduit to Israel and the Americans, complained
that since President Donald Trump was sworn into office, no administration
official had spoken to them.
“I
don’t know any of them [Trump’s advisers]. We have sent them letters, written
messages. They don’t even bother to respond to us.”
The
Trump administration’s shunning of the PLO is a marked departure from the
policies of its predecessor. For former president Barack Obama, together with
Iran, the Palestinians were viewed as the key players in the Middle East. Abbas
was the first foreign leader Obama called after taking office.
Erekat’s
statement reveals something that is generally obscured. Despite its deep
support in Europe, the UN and the international Left, without US support, the
PLO is irrelevant.
All the
achievements the PLO racked up under Obama – topped off with the former
president’s facilitation of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 against Israel
– are suddenly irrelevant. Their impact dissipated the minute Trump took
office.
Israel,
in contrast, is more relevant than ever.
6 comments:
This is EXCELLENT.
The newsweek quote is from here:
http://www.newsweek.com/palestinian-negotiator-if-trumps-first-week-four-year-trend-god-help-us-all-550538
---
Upon entering office, he appointed his son-in-law Jared Kushner, an Orthodox Jewish-American with no previous diplomatic experience, to broker peace in the region. His family organization has donated thousands of dollars to the hardline Israel settlement of Beit El in the West Bank.
“I don’t know the guy. I don’t know any of them,” Erekat says of Kushner. “We have sent them letters, written messages, they don’t even bother to respond to us.”
While the Israeli far-right celebrated Trump’s victory, with some cabinet ministers calling even heralding it a sign leading toward the end of a Palestinian state, Palestinians have spoken of their fears of what might happen under the new administration.
Trump has appointed a far-right, pro-settler ambassador to Israel in David Friedman, the chair of a U.S. settlement organization, and accepted a settler delegation at his inauguration. He has pledged to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, potentially recognizing the city as Israel’s capital despite the Palestinians earmarking its eastern districts for any future state.
...
“It’s time for President Trump to stop these things and focus on what this region needs,” Erekat says. “What we need in this region is peace, what we need in this region is dialogue, what we need in this region is to bring Israelis and Palestinians back to the table.”
---
It does look like negotiations are over, at least the talking sort. This is the Netanyahu advancing for the annexation of the entire West Bank. So with no political power to defend their lawful rights, the PLO will likely use unlawful reactions, and trigger more unlawful reactions from the stronger Israel, until the obvious answer becomes apparent to all.
And of course this is probably very similar to how Trump will deal with the Dakota Access pipeline and the Native Americans trying to block it. They'll be removed as nonviolently as is possible to remove people who are willing to die for their cause.
Newsweek: Didn't it go bust and get sold for $1.00? Why should I believe what they write?
Sam L. @February 4, 2017 at 9:28 AM:
Because Evan Thomas knows everything. Just ask him.
Like the crack reporting Newsweek did on the Duke lacrosse case.
Being liberal means never having to say you're sorry.
Ares Olympus @February 4, 2017 at 4:25 AM:
Ares, your comments beg an important corralating question:
How did you feel about JFK appointing RFK as his attorney general?
Do you have an opinion on that?
Certainly RFK's ties to outside political actors and organizations were interesting for a serving AG. Most interesting. Yet fawning historians instruct us RFK was an important cabinet officer, given that he served as honest, reliable counsel -- always acting in JFK's interest. RFK wasn't going to feed JFK a bureaucratic load of bullshit. RFK's counsel may have saved the country from nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis, being skeptical of intelligence reports after the disastrous around the Bay of Pigs invasion.
RFK was JFK's brother... brotherhood being a MUCH closer relationship, in that it is a blood relationship. Jared Kushner is Trump's son-in-law.
What gives? Since you seem so concerned about Trump's phalanges on the nuclear button, would you not want him to receive reliable counsel? If no, were the Kennedys somehow exempt from your mystical theories about nepotism?
You need to get off all those Lefty websites. They're infecting your mind with further nonsense.
Post a Comment