The NY Times and Washington Post have been duly helpful in pimping for Bibi Netanyahu’s upcoming summit with Pres. Trump. They’ve published several articles advancing ideas for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. There is a minor problem with all of them: they completely omit Palestinians.
Peter Baker published two pieces both of which are filled with delusional thinking and wish-fulfillment. In the first, he advances the notion that Bibi and Trump, with the help of Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies can somehow impose a peace deal on the Palestinians:
President Trump and his advisers, venturing for the first time into the fraught world of Middle East peacemaking, are developing a strategy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would enlist Arab nations like Saudi Arabia and Egypt to break years of deadlock.
The emerging approach mirrors the thinking of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who will visit the United States next week, and would build on his de facto alignment with Sunni Muslim countries in trying to counter the rise of Shiite-led Iran.
As further proof of a mutual set of delusions at play, Baker says that Trump has back-pedaled on two former ironclad notion of his: that the U.S. embassy must be moved to Jerusalem and that the settlements aren’t obstacles to peace. Thus, Trump recently actually faintly criticized settlements and has refused to set a date for moving the embassy. These are concessions Trump has made to these friendly Arab states who supposedly are whispering in his ear that they can bring peace if only he can tidy up Israeli policy and make it more presentable.
In these articles, Baker doesn’t quote a single Arab or Palestinian source supporting the credibility of this notion. But he does manage to quote WINEP’s Robert Satloff (the Aipac affiliated think-tank), Dennis Ross, and the ZOA’s Mort Klein. Baker does list a series of Sunni Arab leaders Trump has consulted with in the past weeks. Yet he doesn’t interview a single one of them to test their reaction to this purported theory.
It’s no accident that these ideas were cooked up during a dinner Trump held with Sheldon Adelson and his foreign police team, including Rex Tillerson and Nikki Haley. Jared Kushner, his new Israel-Palestinian dealmaker was also there.
In a related development, convicted felon Elliot Abrams is about to be named Tillerson’s top deputy at the State Department. Abrams personally connived with Mahmoud Abbas to overthrow Hamas after it won the 2006 PA legislative election. The uprising, launched by the PA, was an abject failure and besides leading to revenge killings in both Gaza and the West Bank, drove a permanent wedge between Hamas and Fatah that remains unbridged. With Abrams running our Mideast policy, peace is guaranteed…perhaps in a century or so.
It is true that Israel’s far-right government has found common cause with the most authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, among them Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. There is one mutual interest that joins them: Iran. They both hate Iran. However, there is absolutely no indication that any of these Sunni states either have leverage over the Palestinian Authority or that they desire to forge a peace deal on Israel’s behalf.
I understand that in Trump-world, there is little difference between reality and fantasy. But sober-minded NY Times journalists are paid to understand the distinction. There isn’t a scintilla of skepticism in Baker’s account, which does a real disservice to serious Mideast journalism.
In a separate, but related development, Haley scuttled the nomination of former PA prime minister, Salam Fayyad, to be the UN’s peace negotiator for Libya. She nixed Fayyad as a favor to Israel. Don’t ask why Israel should have a veto over a portfolio involving Libya. It will only give you a headache to ponder the matter too closely.
Sheldon Adelson and Niki Haley dined with Trump on Thursday night. My guess: Sheldon might have vetoed Salam Fayad [sic] for the UN job.
— Martin Indyk (@Martin_Indyk) February 11, 2017
Apparently, no one in Trump-land bothered to consider how Palestinians would look upon their former leader being axed by Haley. In this tweet, Martin Indyk suggested that Fayyad’s fate was sealed at the Adelson-Trump dinner. And that his nomination was killed as a special favor to Sheldon.
Keep in mind that this isn’t Marwan Barghouti or a Hamas or Islamic Jihad leader. This is the mildest, most milquetoast Palestinian leader imaginable. A guy who many believe is an Israeli stooge, he was so amenable to Israel’s interests while in power. A guy who was beloved of Tom Friedman, who coined the short-lived term “Fayyadism” in his honor. If the Trump-Bibi-Adelson nexus can’t stomach Fayyad as a Palestinian leader, why would they harbor the illusion they can work out a peace deal with the Palestinians?
Bibi’s New ‘State-Minus:’ Two-State Lite
To all those Israel apologists who’ve been professing Bibi’s adherence to the two-state solution, you can all retire in shame. Netanyahu has officially ditched two-states. He’s now going with a new marketing campaign which he dubs “state-minus.” It’s not a Palestinian state. It’s something less than that. More along the lines of a South African Bantustan, but minus the disparaging reference.
State-minus means precisely…nothing, as this Washington Post article makes clear:
[When] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu huddled behind closed doors with his security cabinet, ministers on his hard right pressed Netanyahu to publicly proclaim the “two-state solution” dead.
The Israeli leader refused but told his raucous cabinet not to worry. Netanyahu said he did not support a full Palestinian state, but “a state-minus,” according to Israeli reports on the meeting.
In the days since, Israelis, Palestinians and American diplomats have been struggling to define what Netanyahu might have meant by “a state-minus.”
…The Washington Post asked a half-dozen experts…what Netanyahu meant by a “state-minus.”
They answered that it could mean almost anything.
It could signal support for a small nation close to what the Palestinians seek: a demilitarized state that surrenders some sovereignty to allow for Israeli security, especially in the Jordan Valley, with a slice of East Jerusalem — maybe a village on the other side of today’s separation barrier — as its capital.
Or, from the Palestinian perspective, it could mean something far worse: abandoning Gaza to Egypt and allowing a few isolated pockets of stunted but self-governing cantons, with a flag and a postage stamp and a seat at the United Nations.
This is the deal Bibi thinks he can sell to Egypt and Saudi Arabia and which he expects they’ll sell to the Palestinians. How in hell anyone can expect these Sunni toadies to promote “state-minus” as an acceptable choice to the Palestinians is anybody’s guess.
This is the bill of goods Bibi is selling to a gullible Donald Trump and his Orthodox, pro-settler son-in-law, Jared Kushner. If the consequences of failure weren’t so dire, the entire episode would be a bad joke. But given the continuing, festering anger on the Palestinian side over insults like this–it will only lead to more dead on both sides.
It’s all a cruel charade, a fool’s errand. But there is one very small benefit: only fools and liberal Zionists can continue to argue that the two-state solution is anything more than a dead letter. There is only one viable option remaining and with idiots like Adelson running our Mideast policy, this will become more obvious as the Trump administration continues to fumble in the dark on its way to finding a light switch and a coherent regional approach.
The Palestinians will be bit players in any peace deal, because they have nothing to bring to the table.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel are the major players.
Saudi Arabia will bankroll the Palestinian State, and Egypt will give the Palestinians a great deal of land in the Northern Sinai. The Northern Sinai, with it’s ongoing ISIS inspired rebellion, is a thorn in Egypt’s side and Egypt would be only to happy to get rid of it. Saudi Arabia would gain some much needed prestige for the achievement of handing to the Palestinians, their desideratum.
@Seamus Ignoramus: Sorry, just couldn’t help myself.
It’s presumptuous idiocy like yours that gets so many of the Israeli & U.S. foreign policy elites into so much trouble. Palestinians ARE major players in the one & only way in which that is important: determining their own National fate. They will not permit jackasses like you to dimiss it or bargain it away on their own behalf. Much as you would wish it otherwise.
Saudi Arabia & Egypt are bit players & increasingly irrelevant in the Arab world. Palestine doesn’t need Saudi 30 pieces of silver to betray the Palestinian cause.
The northern Sinai has a local native Bedouin insurgency fueled by the brutality & corruption of the central state. It will never get rid of the insurgency because it will continue as long as the corrupt military junta continues–the very one you seem to admire.
Saudis will never have ‘prestige’ for anything, except cruelty & corruption. Once the oil is gone or the world switches to renewables, they’re toast, & rightly so.
“The Palestinians will be bit players in any peace deal, because they have nothing to bring to the table.”
It is this kind of attitude that will destroy any standing an respect that Israel still has.
Richard, Bibi (and even the Zionist left (e.g. Avoda)) position on state-minus isn’t entirely new. They all advocate a demilitarized Palestinian state (with no heavy weapons, limited to light infantry) for the past 30+ years.
See for instance here –
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/08/20/reviews/000820.20shlaim.html
“The Beilin-Abu Mazen plan envisaged an independent but demilitarized Palestinian state covering 90 to 95 percent of the West Bank and Gaza with a capital in Abu Dis, just outside the municipal boundary of Jerusalem as defined by Israel.”
What is somewhat new is Bibi (internally at least) calling this a “State minus”. Up until now, the bargaining position has been to call this less than a state a full-fledged state in name, while imposing all these limits.
But obviously – a state which cannot defend itself (as it has no heavy weapons and is not alowed to have them, etc.) – is a bit less than a state (though there are some examples of small modern protectorate states such as this).
@ lepxii: I’ve never said that Likud & Labor are much different. But to call Labor “left” of any sort is ridiculous & an insult to the word. Potentially Meretz is the “Zionist left.” But not Labor. So don’t ever use the term “left in connection with Labor.
Further, because Labor & Likud both agree that Palestinians should be offered a mess of porridge in place of their actual inheritance that means what, precisely?? That I should realize that this is all the Palestinians will or should ever get? That because a Palestinian toadie & washed up Labor hack who stopped being relevant a decade ago agreed on a peace deal, that this is what will or should happen in the end? You can forget that.
As for the various plans Israeli parties would support: Bibi essentially wants to retain all major settlement blocs AND the Jordan Valley. This was never envisioned in any Labor plan.
The eventual Palestinian state will either have an army or a security force functioning as one; and if it won’t then it will need international forces acting to prevent Israel from encroaching on Palestinian territory. It must have one or the other. Anything less would never fly, nor should it.
Trump has reportedly nixed the idea of Elliott Abrams being Tillerson’s top deputy at the State Department.
Abrams having abetted genocide in Central America during the Reagan administration was apparently not a problem, but his having been critical of Trump during the election was a deal-breaker!
CNN – http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/10/politics/elliott-abrams-trump-state-department-tillerson/
@ dickerson3870: This may be the only example of Elliott Abrams actually telling the truth & being penalized for it. Though I’m torn about the outcome: having Trump nominate to a senior position someone who is a convicted felon is pretty delicious.
Former Assistant Secretary of State Abrams is not a convicted felon. He plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts. That makes him a convicted criminal,not a felon.
https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/summpros.htm
@ Seamus: Perhaps I should’ve said someone who deserves to be a convicted felon & who belongs in a federal prison, rather than a plush State Dept office. But “convicted criminal” is good enough for me.
“Reagan Administration officials in previous testimony to Congress have not included Mr. Abrams among those who knew about the diversion of profits from the Iran arms sales to help the contras and there is no evidence that he was aware of the transfer of funds until it was publicly disclosed in November 1986.”
“Mr. Abrams… has insisted that he never knowingly misled Congress. But in court, Mr. Abrams admitted that he had unlawfully kept information from two Congressional committees in the fall of 1986 when he testified about his knowledge of the secret contra supply network and about his role in soliciting a $10 milllion contribution for the contras from the Sultan of Brunei ”
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/08/us/elliott-abrams-admits-his-guilt-on-2-counts-in-contra-cover-up.html?pagewanted=all
“A state minus” simply refers to autonomy, which was the deal the Likud was talking about (but never wanted to do anything about) since Begin signed the Kemp-David accord. And let not forget that this was the agrrement sponsored by the USA. Of course, thngs gradually with the Likud starting to be opened to it only when Sharon became prime minister.
and BTW, I can think of more than one people/nation that have autonomy and not an independent state even though they would have wanted one, Catalonia for example.
@Amico: No, the U.S. does not support “autonomy.” It has supported full statehood at least since 1993, if not earlier. Autonomy is a non starter.
Catalonia is a ludicrous example since Catalonians are citizens of Spain who seek autonomy or independence from it. Palestinians are “citizens” of a bantustan called the PA. They are seeking autonomy from no one. They seek full statehood either through their own Palestinian state or through a unitary state.
I said the USA supported autonomy at the time. Those days, the view of the USA were similar to those of Bibi today. My point is that its nothing new.
How is Catalonia a “ludicrous” example? Both want independence from the state the currently run their lives.
@Amico: I don’t believe the U.S. ever supported autonomy. If it did, a 30 yr old policy is irrelevant to today. Israel’s policies are also impossibly out of date & irrelevant today, which is precisely the problem.
Palestinians have no state. Catalonians do. Palestinians have no citizenship. Catalonians do. Palestinians were expelled from Israel. Catalonians never were expelled from Spain.
No further comments for you in this thread.