Donald Trump assured the world that the only thing needed for peace in the Middle East was his ability to broker a deal and his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s ability to manage it. He did it not only as political schtick throughout the campaign but even as government policy during the early days of his presidency.
His assurances were patently absurd of course: Saudi Arabia showed just how when it reacted to Trump’s historic visit there in May by leading the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain in a blockade and embargo of Qatar. Israel did the same when it reacted to Kushner’s “peacemaking mission” there last month by imposing even greater, Apartheid-like restrictions on Palestinians.
Saudi Arabia seemed determined to have its blockade and embargo of Qatar ape the futility of America’s 50-year embargo of Cuba. And, if it were up to the clueless Trump – who openly endorsed this Saudi-led “act of war,” that would’ve been the case.
Except that, in what is becoming routine, his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, is ignoring Trump’s clueless rhetoric. Specifically, Tillerson is leading efforts to end this blockade and embargo. What’s more, other Western powers, including the UK and France, are supporting those efforts.
Not to mention that regional powers, notably Iran and Turkey, are showing that they are even more willing and able to help Qatar than the former Soviet Union was to help Cuba.
Unsurprisingly, reports are that members of the Saudi-led group are now seeking a face-saving way to retreat. It speaks volumes that no less a paper than the Washington Post ridiculed this blockade and embargo in its July 18 edition as “a royal mess.”
But I already commented too much on this all too predictable mess in “Blockading Qatar: Trump Makes Messy Middle East Even Messier,” July 13, 2017.
Meanwhile, Israel’s restrictions are merely reinforcing its perennial mistreatment of Palestinians, namely as squatters on their own land. The latest ones require Muslims to pass through metal detectors to enter their own Al Aqsa Mosque. This has created the untenable spectacle of thousands of Muslims kneeling in the streets to pray.
It speaks volumes that no less a person than former US President Jimmy Carter decried this mistreatment in his 2006 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
Truth be told, though, even President Obama was too politically attuned to Israeli crocodile tears about security to hear Palestinian cries for freedom.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continually played the religious card to get Obama to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict only through the prism of the Holocaust. I continually denounced him for doing so, including most recently in “Netanyahu’s a Putz for Branding Obama a Judas Over UN Resolution,” December 29, 2016, which includes this excerpt.
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Netanyahu seems hell-bent on emulating South Africa’s Apartheid leaders by turning Israel into a pariah state. …
[He] is clearly playing the religious card by complaining about Obama and the UN ganging up on Israel throughout the peace process. But this is as factually and morally bankrupt as Trump playing the media card by complaining about Hillary and the media ganging up on him throughout the election process.
Frankly, even in Trump’s ‘post-fact, post-truth’ world, there’s no denying that Netanyahu and his settlement policy have been the greatest obstacles to peace. Worse still, by expanding and fortifying this apartheid policy, Israel is rendering specious its clarion boast about being the only democracy in the Middle East. Indeed, with all due respect to Reagan, peace through strength to Netanyahu amounts to might makes right.
And it does not bode well that Trump seems determined to parrot everything Netanyahu says and support everything he does. This would make a mockery of the role US presidents have traditionally played as honest broker in the Sisyphean Mideast peace process.
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The point (re Trump’s assurance) is that anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knew that, with all parties aping his reckless bravado, peace would become even more elusive during his presidency. Sure enough, the Palestinian Authority has now responded to Israel’s new restrictions in kind:
President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, who had cut short a trip to China to handle the spiraling crisis over the metal detectors, announced late Friday that he was freezing contacts with Israel at all levels until it canceled the new measures around the Jerusalem holy site. …
The metal detectors were introduced after a brazen attack on the morning of July 14, when three armed Arab citizens of Israel emerged from Al Aqsa Mosque and fatally shot two Israeli Druze police officers who were guarding an entrance to the compound. …
After the attack, in a rare move, Israel temporarily closed the contested and volatile holy site — which is revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary — and emptied it of all workers while the police conducted searches.
(New York Times, July 21, 2017)
Frankly, the only thing that is noteworthy about these imploding developments is that Trump is the first president since the founding of Israel nearly 70 years ago who, evidently, couldn’t care less.
You’d think that, at the very least, he would be tweeting feckless admonitions for all parties to appreciate and respect his peacemaking assurances – no matter how patently inadequate. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a single tweet about the Qatar crisis or this Al Aqsa one in the puerile sh*t storm that is his Twitter feed.
(His guilty conscience keeps him tweeting about Russia, trying in vain to deflect attention away from the alleged collusion that helped him pull off the biggest presidential-election fraud in the history of the United States.)
Some might say he’s fiddling while the Middle East implodes. But, with all due respect to Nero, Neville Chamberlain seems the more appropriate inspiration. Because here’s the Chamberlainian re-assurance Trump provided a few weeks ago – just as that “royal mess” was getting even messier:
Spoke yesterday with the King of Saudi Arabia about peace in the Middle-East. Interesting things are happening!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017
Idiot.
For his part, Kushner is probably too busy trying to stay out of jail to be concerned about what is happening in the Middle East. He, of course, is now the prime suspect in the unraveling of the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russians to help “The Donald” defeat Hillary.
In fact, the Senate Intelligence Committee summoned Kushner for a closed-door interview on Capitol Hill today. Staff attorneys will grill him to explain the growing tally of his lies (of omission and commission) about the role he played.
Alas, peace in the Middle East be damned … again.
Related commentaries:
Blockading Qatar…
Netanyahu’s a putz…
Netanyahu blames Palestinians…
Special prosecutor Russia…