Today, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the UN Security Council, discussing the failure of US leadership and laying out his proposal for a way forward.
Last week, in anticipation of Abbas’ UNSC address, FMEP was proud to host a conversation between the PLO Ambassador to the United States, Husam Zomlot, and FMEP non-resident fellow Peter Beinart. In this far-ranging conversation, Ambassador Zomlot lays out, with directness and candor, his views on the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, self-determination for both Jews and Palestinians, Hamas, elections, the future of security cooperation with Israel, the future of Jews (as distinct from settlers) in a future Palestinian state, Trump’s policy shift on Jerusalem, the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, and the status of the PLO mission in the United States.
Special thanks to the Arab American Institute (@AAIUSA) for they partnership
Video Timestamps [Questions: Peter Beinart. Answers: Amb. Husam Zomlot]
[00:36] Question on what the Palestinians see as the ideal solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
[02:29] Question on Palestinian recognition of Jewish self-determination.
[06:05] Question on the Palestinian Authority’s continued defense of the two-state solution despite the failure of the Oslo agreement.
[08:48] Question on whether the Palestinian national movement should strategically shift to a civil rights struggle under the premise of a one-state solution.
[13:27] Question on Hamas.
[16:03] Question on why the Palestinian Authority has not held national elections since 2006.
[19:12] Question on why the Palestinian Authority does not challenge Hamas to hold elections in Gaza and also hold elections in the West Ban (without Gaza or East Jerusalem voters).
[20:50] Question on how Hamas has moved closer to the national camp.
[22:12] Question on whether the Palestinian Authority should be disbanded.
[24:40] Comments on ending the Palestinian Authority’s security cooperation with Israel.
[25:40] Question on whether Israeli settlers (as opposed to Jews) will be allowed to live in a (future) Palestinian state.
[27:20] Comments the U.S. proclamation declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel.
[29:08] Comments on the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and question on Yasser Arafat’s statement denying that there was a Jewish temple in Jerusalem.
[32:00] Question on the status of the Palestinians’ diplomatic presence in the U.S.
Preeminent Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard asks difficult questions about the role human rights lawyers play in challenging Israel’s occupation in his new book, “The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine & the Legal Battle for Human Rights.” In an in-depth discussion hosted by FMEP President Lara Friedman, Sfard reflects on many of the book’s most profound questions, including Sfard’s personal reflections on the challenges facing lawyers who want to end the occupation and bring justice to Palestinians in the interim. The event was hosted by the Foundation for Middle East Peace, the New Israel Fund, and the American University George Washington School of Law.
Watch a full recording of the event online here.
“If I was in charge of going to court to prove that the state of Israel’s true intention with its settlement enterprise is to grab as much land in the West Bank as possible – it would be one of the easiest cases I have ever litigated.” – Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard.
In the second episode of the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s podcast, “Occupied Thoughts: Israel, Palestine & Peace,” Peter Beinart and Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard discuss how Israel is abusing the international laws that govern belligerent occupations with its conduct in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Beinart & Sfard discuss what they see as the “crisis of Zionism” and the podcast ends with Sfard explaining why he believes that the occupation will end.
Michael Sfard’s new book, “The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine, and the Legal Battle for Human Rights” is available for purchase on Amazon.
Peter Beinart is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is also Associate Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York, a Contributor to The Atlantic and National Journal, a Senior Columnist at The Forward, and a CNN Political Commentator. You can follow Peter on Twitter @PeterBeinart.
Michael Sfard is one of Israel’s leading human rights lawyers. A former conscientious objector, he received the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award and an Open Society Fellowship. His writing on human rights has appeared in The New York Times, Haaretz, The Independent, and Foreign Policy. He lives in Tel Aviv. @sfardm
The recent Pew Poll reporting a decline in Democratic support for Israel sparked much hand wringing, debate and critical analysis. Some dissected the poll’s weaknesses. Others examined the partisan issues in play. Still others focused, correctly, on American progressives’ substantive objections to the policies of the Israeli government and the values they embody.
But too many are still unwilling to talk about the key related factor causing the estrangement of Democrats, and American progressives in general, from Israel: the gradual redefinition of “pro-Israel” to mean support for extremist, anti-democratic policies not just in Israel, but in the United States as well.
This trend, which pre-dates President Trump, sees the growing use of “pro-Israel” advocacy as a weapon to undermine fundamental American values and rights protected in our own Constitution, and bafflingly, sees such efforts supported and defended by leaders who otherwise claim the mantle of champions of progressive values.
The clearest example of this trend is ongoing and energetic efforts to quash free speech in America, in the name of defending Israel. These efforts have come in the form of bipartisan legislation at the federal and state level, designed to curb and even criminalize criticism and activism targeting Israel and its policies, or to define such speech as “anti-Semitism.”
Such legislation has already been adopted in more than 20 states (in 3 states by Executive Order). The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Center for Constitutional Rights, and National Coalition Against Censorship, and others have challenged such efforts as unconstitutional (the ACLU has cases pending against the laws, so far, in Kansas and Arizona; in the Kansas case, a federal judge this week sided with the ACLU in issuing a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the law).
Yet AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, and most Jewish community organizations remain fully on-board in supporting and promoting such legislation, along with many progressive politicians.
Indeed, despite the court challenges and opposition from free speech watchdogs, the legislative campaign shows no signs of abating. Since January 1, new anti-free speech legislation has been introduced already in at least 6 states.
Moreover, recent weeks saw the opening of a new front in this battle, one that puts these illiberal forms of defending Israel directly at odds with broadly defined human rights values
On January 11, 2018, the New Orleans City Council adopted a resolution calling for a review the city’s investments and contracts. The goal of this review was to bring the city in line with its values, laid out in the resolution: New Orleans “has social and ethical obligations to take steps to avoid contracting with or investing in corporations whose practices consistently violate human rights, civil rights or labor rights, or corporations whose practices egregiously contract efforts to create a prosperous, educated, healthy and equitable society.”
It was no secret that activists concerned with Palestinian rights, including those advocating for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, supported or even drafted the New Orleans resolution. And because of that, and despite the fact that the resolution in no way singled out or even mentioned Israel, the resolution was swiftly denounced as a “stealth” attack on Israel. Groups like the Anti-Defamation League pressured the Council to rescind it, and prominent New Orleans Rabbi Ed Cohn alleged that the resolution “cleverly masqueraded as a high-minded civic statement designed to prevent human rights abuses…It sounded so good. It took no time, however, to see the deception.”
This reaction highlights a painful truth: any call for the defense of human rights, if applied universally, will today inevitably raise questions about Israel, and especially the policies associated with Israel’s 50-year long occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the settlement enterprise that they support. The only way to insulate Israel from such questions is to either kill such calls outright, or to explicitly exempt Israel from the same rules and standards that apply to the rest of the world.
American defenders of Israel have often condemned critics, and especially BDS advocates, for unfairly singling out Israel for special scrutiny or holding it to a higher standard than other countries. Ironically, many of these same defenders of Israel condemned the New Orleans resolution for doing precisely the opposite. They are arguing, in effect, that when talking about human rights, it is unfair to subject Israel to the same scrutiny as the rest of the world; they are suggesting that failing to hold Israel to a different, lower standard than the rest of the world when it comes to human rights is a new form of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic behavior.
On January 25th, the New Orleans City Council gave in to pressure and rescinded its human rights resolution. In so doing, it acquiesced to a definition of “pro-Israel” that demands the sacrifice of respect for universal values, the rejection of global standards of human rights, and the delegitimization of international law.
With U.S. values and rights hanging in the balance, self-described progressive politicians and groups like the ADL are betraying their own values and principles when they embrace illiberalism-in-defense-of-Israel, leaving them standing with the likes of Christians United for Israel, the Zionist Organization of America, the Republican Jewish Coalition, and hardline Israelis, and standing against the ACLU, MoveOn.org, and CREDO, not to mention J Street, Americans for Peace Now, IfNotNow and, of course, Jewish Voice for Peace. In so doing, they are contributing to the diminution of support for Israel among Americans who are repulsed by the notion that support for Israel demands the sacrifice of the values and rights that are at the core of what it means to be a progressive.
Read the article on The Forward‘s website.
IN MEMORIUM
LANDRUM BOLLING, 1913-2018
Landrum Bolling, whose work for Middle East peace was well recognized throughout the world, died peacefully in his sleep at home in Arlington, Virginia on January 17. He was 104.
Bolling, born in Tennessee, lived an extraordinary life as a journalist, professor, non-profit executive, and passionate advocate of peace in the Middle East. A Quaker, he was well- known, as President of Earlham College, the prestigious Quaker school, and during the forty years of citizen-diplomacy for peace between Israel and Palestine.
As a friend and advisor to the late Merle Thorpe, Jr., founder of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Bolling served on the FMEP Board for many decades, and helped shape its mission of peace and justice for both Israelis and Palestinians.
Bolling’s vibrant personality, wisdom, and enthusiasm, and his message of hope and reconciliation touched many, and he had wide contacts with world leaders. President Jimmy Carter chose Bolling as a trusted citizen envoy for early back-channel contacts with Yasser Arafat, and he was close to both Arab and Israeli leaders, and statesmen throughout the world.
Bolling recognized before most Americans, that the Palestinians’ attachment to the Holy Land as their homeland, was as passionate and profound as Israel’s, and he was an early champion of a two-state solution. In his later years, he warned that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, unless reversed, would corrupt Israel and destroy hopes for peace and justice for both peoples. He spoke out for stronger and more effective American diplomacy.
In his diverse other roles, Bolling was a war correspondent in Yugoslavia in World War II. He taught at Beloit and Brown before his presidency of Earlham. He was CEO of the Eli Lilly Foundation, and during the Balkans war, he directed reconciliation efforts in Sarajevo for Mercy Corps and later became its Director at Large. He also served as Director of theTantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem and as Senior Research Fellow at the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.
Bolling published many books and papers, and won 24 honorary degrees. He produced and appeared in an acclaimed DVD, Searching for Peace in the Middle East, and another with Jimmy Carter, former Secretary of State Jim Baker, and former NSC Advisors Scowcroft and Brzezinski.
ver the weekend, in a decision redolent of the repressive policies of the old Soviet Union, the Israeli government blacklisted 20 international organizations, officially barring entry to these groups’ officials and activists expressly for their peaceful opposition to the Israeli government’s policies.
It would be bad enough – for all who cherish progressive democratic values like free speech – if Israel were merely a sovereign government blocking access to its sovereign territory by people it doesn’t like, as the blacklist’s defenders are arguing in unison. But this blacklist is something far more sinister. As an occupying power, Israel is using this blacklist as a powerful weapon in its increasingly muscular arsenal of repressive occupation policies – this one designed to further control and isolate the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.
Read the rest of the article at The Forward.
On January 7, 2018 the Israeli government issued a list of 20 organizations whose leaders, staff, and visible activists will be denied entry into Israel due to these organization’s support for peaceful activism protesting Israeli government policies. A number FMEP grantees and supported organizations have spoken out against this anti-democratic policy and its (first) set of targets – their statements are below..
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- Excerpts from columnists writing for +972 Magazine:
- Natasha Roth: “But the formality of this step — banning outright leaders and key members of a Jewish organization — is yet further concrete evidence of what has been clear for some time: that even as the Israeli government makes crystal-clear its commitment to having as few non-Jews as possible within its borders, it is also becoming increasingly blatant about possessing criteria for the types of Jews it considers kosher.”
- Mairav Zonszein: “The Israeli government is sending a clear message that being Jewish will not protect you from being denied entry into the Jewish State, which prelims to be a safe haven for Jews.”
- Americans for Peace Now: “Israel yesterday published a list of 20 organizations the activists of which will be prevented from entering the country in accordance with Israel’s 2017 Entry Law. Just as we condemn the Entry Law, Americans for Peace Now opposes this blacklist…” Read more…
- Breaking the Silence Executive Director Avner Gvaryahu: “The anti-democratic norms of the occupation are bleeding into Israel proper, and the latest “black-list” is an example of this dangerous process. In Israel of 2018 you cannot criticize government policy in the occupied territories without being demonized and scrutinized. If you like the list, then you support the process that Bibi is leading. It’s as simple as that. According to Netanyahu only apartheid sympathizers are patriots and exposes of truth are labeled as traitors. No matter who you are, you can and should oppose the occupation and as long as it’s nonviolent its legit in my book.” [clipped]
- Churches for Middle East Peace: “Boycott, divestment, and sanctions are expressions of free speech and forms of nonviolent protest. Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) is concerned to hear that 20 organizations, including five from the United States, will be prevented from entering Israel due to their support of economic measures against the state of Israel.”
- If Not Now: “The American Jewish establishment has fueled the fear of BDS while mostly staying silent abt Israel’s deteriorating democracy, the rampant detention of Palestinian children, & the nightmare of the Occupation. BDS is not the problem, the Occupation is.”
- Jewish Voice for Peace Executive Director Rebecca Vilkomerson: “Israel’s decision to specifically ban JVP leaders from entry is disconcerting but not surprising, given the consistent erosion of democratic norms as well as increasing fear of the BDS movement in Israel. JVP members are now joining Palestinians, Muslims from around the world, people of color and other activists who are often barred from entry. Our JVP members have no doubt about the justice of fighting for equality and freedom for all people in Israel/Palestine, and the legitimacy of BDS to bring that closer. We will not be bullied by these attempts to punish us for a principled political stance that increasing numbers of Jews and all people worldwide support. As someone with considerable family in Israel, this policy will be a personal hardship. But I also believe it is an indicator of the BDS movement’s growing strength and hope that it will bring the day closer when all people in Israel/Palestine will live together in equality and freedom.”
- J Street: “With the announcement that members of twenty organizations will be banned from entering Israel because of their support for the BDS Movement, the Netanyahu government has struck another significant blow to the foundations of Israeli democracy…” Read more…
- New Israel Fund: “Our position hasn’t wavered: We don’t support the global BDS movement and we don’t agree with the organizations blacklisted by the Israeli government on many issues. But we don’t have to agree with them to know that banning the from visiting Israeli is just wrong. We know that it’s profoundly anti-democraticto discrimnate against those who advocate for nonviolent strategies just because the government doesn’t agree with their views. Banning political opposition is the policy of autocracies, not democracies. The Netanyahu government’s Entry Law, which is a travel ban that uses blacklists and litmus tests to bar visitors from entering Israel based on their beliefs, flies in the face of the democratic principles enshrined in Israel’s declaration of independence.”
Last month, President Donald Trump granted a cherished wish of American and Israeli hardliners, taking Jerusalem—an issue that the Oslo Agreement stipulated would be resolved only in permanent status negotiations—“off the table.” Now, only weeks later, American and Israeli hardliners are again trembling with anticipation at the possibility that Trump will fulfill another long-held desire: destroying or crippling the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN agency that supports Palestine refugees across the Middle East.
Many are now arguing, correctly, that undermining UNRWA will threaten an already fragile status quo in the West Bank and Gaza (not to mention Jordan and Lebanon), and thus would be bad for Israel and would have serious humanitarian implications for Palestinians. For these and other reasons, some suggest that the attack on Palestinian aid is a tactical “misstep” by the Trump Administration. These arguments miss the point: with this new approach to UNRWA, undermining the status quo is a feature, not a bug.
The Trump Administration has tied its attack on UNRWA to UN and Palestinian reactions to Trump’s Jerusalem policy shift. Taking to Twitter this week, Trump railed about Palestinian ingratitude for U.S. funding (which is a tiny fraction of what the U.S. provides Israel). U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said that funding would be suspended until the Palestinians “return to the negotiating table” – suggesting a new peace framework predicated on blackmailing the Palestinians into accepting Israeli and American diktats.
In reality, the threat to de-fund UNRWA has nothing to do with any of those things, except in an opportunistic sense. What it is really about is further shattering the terms of reference established by the Oslo Agreement and removing from the negotiating agenda another sensitive and explosive permanent status issue. In short, this attack is about taking Palestinian refugees, like Jerusalem, “off the table” – consistent with the view articulated by U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, writing in October 2016, when he referred to Palestinian “so-called ‘refugees.’”
The effort to erase Palestinian refugees by gutting UNRWA is nothing new. Dating to the late 1990s, reactionary voices in Israel and the United States (for examples, see the Gatestone Institute and Middle East Forum)—often joined by fellow travelers in Congress—have been making the case that the “solution” to the Palestinian refugee issue should be found not through negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, but through unilateral action by the United States to re-define Palestinian refugees out of existence.
As I observed previously, this approach won’t work. Palestinians’ self-identification as refugees is grounded in their own experiences, history, and narrative, not permission from UNRWA or anyone else. Dissolving UNRWA or compelling the UN to re-define millions of Palestinians to no longer technically qualify as refugees won’t change that self-definition an iota. Moreover, like Trump’s Jerusalem move, doing so not only won’t make reaching a peace agreement easier in the future, it will make it harder, dictating new terms of reference that are wholly disconnected from the actual issues at the heart of the conflict and that actively obstruct any chance for a resolution.
What of the argument, made sincerely by some and patently insincerely by others, that for the sake of both Palestinian refugees and peace, it would be better to dissolve UNRWA and treat Palestinian refugees like refugees from any other conflict, under the authority of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR)?
Answering this question is a matter of reviewing the options available to UNHCR to resolve the plight of refugees, as helpfully laid out in detail by former UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness in a 2011 interview. Briefly, UNHCR’s preferred option is returning refugees to their home countries. This option is, of course, wholly off the table for Palestinians, because Israel won’t permit it. UNHCR’s second option is settling refugees where they are currently located. This option, too, is off the table for Palestinians, as key host countries like Jordan and Lebanon have political and demographic considerations of their own which powerfully mitigate against formally or permanently absorbing Palestinian refugees. It’s also worth remembering that the West Bank and Gaza, where many Palestinian refugees are located, have been under Israeli occupation for 50 years, and absent a two-state agreement there is no avenue for turning these refugees, or any residents of the West Bank and Gaza, into citizens. UNHCR’s third option is voluntary resettlement of refugees in third countries. This option, too, is not a solution, as Palestinian refugees cannot be forced to re-settle.
What about the argument that UNRWA perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem by conferring refugee status on descendants of those who lost homes in 1948 and 1967? The resounding answer can be found in today’s news, which reports that 50,000 Rohingya babies are expected to be born in refugee camps this year. All of these babies will have refugee status under UNHCR.
One final note: the political agenda inherent in the efforts to undermine UNRWA is highlighted by the case of another set of self-identified Middle East refugees: Jews who fled or were kicked out of Arab countries during the 20th century, mainly in connection with the birth of the state of Israel. Many of these individuals and their descendants—despite being citizens of Israel (which is, in the words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “the nation-state of one people, the Jewish people, and no other”), the U.S. or various other countries—today still identify as refugees. Like Palestinians who lost homes in what is today Israel, these Jews don’t rely on the UN to give them permission to do so, or to authorize their claims of dispossession (which, like Palestinian claims, are well-documented) or to approve their right to demand recognition and compensation.
While anti-peace hardliners in the U.S and Israel have constantly attacked Palestinian refugees—as is happening again today—many, including in Congress, have embraced the cause of Jews from Arab lands. Ironically, this embrace has for the most part had nothing to do with bringing justice to Jews from Arab lands; rather, like the attacks on UNRWA, it has been about exploiting them as a tool to—you guessed it—take Palestinian refugees off the table.
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This post was originally published January 5, 2018, on the Huffington Post.
The video is striking — no pun intended. A 16 year-old Palestinian girl in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh grapples with Israeli soldiers in full combat gear and armed to the teeth. Despite the fact that she swats and kicks at them, the soldiers, likely hardly older than their tormentor, show admirable restraint, doing nothing to escalate the situation from a scuffle into something much worse. Days later, more video emerged, this time of the IDF raiding Nabi Saleh in the middle of the night to pull this same teenager, Ahed Tamimi, from her bed and arrest her. Since then, her mother and a female cousin have also been arrested.
In Israel, and among defenders of Israel, two questions dominate the debate: How could any Palestinian have been permitted to abuse and humiliate the IDF in this manner? And what can Israel do to ensure that it doesn’t happen again?
Israel’s Minister of Education, Naftali Bennett and Defense Minister Avigdor Leiberman, both of whom support pardoning an Israeli soldier who was caught on video killing a Palestinian who no longer posed any threat, have ideas. Bennett called for Ahed and those who joined her in the attack to be jailed for the rest of their lives. Leiberman threatened ominously: “Everyone involved, not only the girl but also her parents and those around them, will not escape from what they deserve.” Knesset member Oren Hazan, from the Likud party, suggested that the soldiers’ failure to react with force was a mistake: “Restraint is a failed and dangerous policy. Next time it must end differently.” Knesset member Bezalel Smotrich, of the Jewish Home party, called on the IDF Chief of Staff “to order that every encounter or friction between the enemy and our troops end with a painful and decisive outcome.”
All of these reactions gloss over the key question: How did Israeli soldiers come to be grappling with this Palestinian teenager in the first place? Were they minding their own business, taking care of the security of Israel or Israelis, when Ahed and her relatives suddenly turned up to “provoke” them? Or rather, since the action in the video takes place in the front yard of Ahed’s house, were the soldiers in Nabi Saleh at the Tamimi residence to arrest someone, hunt for weapons or foil a planned attack against Israel?
Originally published in Huffington Post
Back in February 2016, a New York bankruptcy lawyer named David Friedman published an opinion piece in a far right wing Israeli outlet, entitled “End the two-state narrative.” Friedman postulated that the two-state narrative is “an illusion that serves the worst intentions of both the United States and the Palestinian Arabs. It has never been a solution, only a narrative. But even the narrative itself now needs to end.” He argued that Palestinians don’t want peace, but use the two-state process as “a masterful game of extortion played out on the world stage.” He averred that “Fostering a Palestinian middle class is the solution of the 21st century and it has nothing to do with two states.”
Thirteen months after he wrote that article, Friedman was confirmed as the new United States ambassador to Israel – the first ambassador nominated by President Trump. He headed to Israel with a status unlike any ambassador who preceded him. Representing a president known to rely on advice from a handful of advisors who, over the course of years, had proven their loyalty, Friedman arrived vested with Trump’s personal trust, confidence and authority. More than that, as the primary voice of the Trump campaign on Israel-Palestine, Friedman had already laid out, with great candor, his ideas and intentions for how U.S. policy needed to change, with the tacit approval of Trump, who had previously demonstrated little interest in or knowledge of the issues.
Today, 10 months into the Trump Administration’s tenure in office and six months after David Friedman took up his post as U.S. ambassador to Israel, things are going exactly as one should have expected, if one had taken seriously both Friedman’s special role and his extensive record of policy statements made over the course of the 2016 campaign and in the years preceding it. Consistent with Friedman’s views, the Oslo agreement and the peace process it inaugurated have been eliminated as touchstones of US foreign policy. American commitment to a two-state solution has been replaced by a vague promise to support whatever the parties agree on. Fealty to core U.S. positions, like respecting the volatility and sensitivity of Jerusalem by leaving its formal status untouched until there is a peace agreement, is gone. And without any fanfare, U.S. policy has shifted 180 degrees on settlements, both at the symbolic level – starting with Ambassador Friedman’s attendance at a wedding in a West Bank settlement in May 2017 and inviting settler leaders to the Embassy’s July 4th party – and at the concrete policy level, with the U.S. remaining virtually silent as the Netanyahu opens the settlement floodgates in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
As for the Palestinians, back in August 2016, Friedman told an Israeli reporter:
“I personally think putting the Israeli leadership on a common level with Abbas is a mistake. In one case you have a sovereign nation that is democratic, and in the other case you have a leader who is hanging on by a thread, who does not have an actual mandate and who funds stipends to pay to families of terrorists while they are in jail. These are difference [sic] types of governments — if you even want to call the Palestinian leadership a government.”
True to this view, today the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington has been reduced to beggar status, its existence no longer a reflection of the Palestinians’ position as a people with international legitimacy, but rather explicitly conditioned on whether the Palestinians play ball with whatever “peace initiative” the Trump Administration proposes. In this context, the United States’ commitment to negotiations as the sole means to resolve the conflict appears to have disappeared, replaced by an strategy of coercing the Palestinians back to talks that will be based on terms divorced from previous agreement and imposed on them by Trump and Netanyahu. Should that fail, the region is abuzz with gossip of plans, cooked up by the United States and Saudi Arabia, for a peace process that bypasses the Palestinians. And in parallel, Congress is moving ahead with legislationthat will, in effect, label the Palestinian Authority a body that supports terror.
This is the reality under the Trump Administration, and it should surprise nobody. Anticipating the direction this Administration would take on Israel-Palestine was not a matter of reading tea leaves, or straining to hear dog whistles. Perhaps more than with any policy issue during the Trump campaign, the plans for Israel-Palestine were explicitly laid out for all to see by Friedman and his fellow travelers, before, during, and after the campaign. Expecting anything different could only have been the result of wishful thinking; believing things were not already going very much in this direction, well before Trump’s Jerusalem decree, could only be the result of selective hearing and seeing.
What will replace the Oslo paradigm – which was no doubt deeply flawed – remains to be seen, but the outlines are already becoming clear. Trump believes, or is being led by people close to him to believe, that he can “Make America’s Middle East Peace Efforts Great Again” through his favored strategy: elevating far right-wing ideologues and sycophants over competent professionals; blowing up all the policies that came before him; and adopting new policies that all rational experts and historians warn won’t work and will likely backfire. It is impossible to predict where this will all lead, but historically speaking, injecting chaos into a volatile foreign policy arena does not tend to produce good outcomes. The last time the United States tried this approach in the Middle East was with the invasion of Iraq — the United States, and the world, are still reckoning with the far-reaching and devastating unintended consequences it unleashed.