U.S. president Donald Trump (R) and Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu hold a joint news conference at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 15, 2017. (photo: Carlos Barria/Reuters)
Trump
Plots to Keep Palestinians Stateless Forever
By Juan Cole, Informed
Comment
16 February 17
The
Trump-Netanyahu Show on Wednesday was par for the course in American and right
wing Israeli discourse about the Palestinians.
Nobody
brought up that the British colonialists conquered Palestine during World War I
and instead of preparing it for statehood, as they promised the League of
Nations they would do, they set the Palestinians up for destruction as a
people. These actions contrast with Iraq, e.g., which the British did bequeath
to the Iraqi nation.
No one
brought up that 60% of Palestinian families were kicked out of their homes in
1948 by militant European Jewish colonialists brought there by colonial
Britain, and that these families are still homeless and stateless whereas the
Israeli perpetrators have never paid a dime in reparations for the billions of
dollars worth of property they stole from the Palestinian people.
No one
brought up that Europeans who committed the Holocaust have not borne the cost
of that monstrous crime against humanity but rather the innocent Palestinians
have.
The
fact is that by about 1300 AD there were virtually no Jews in Palestine. And
yes, there was a Palestine– a recognized geographical concept, coins with
“Filistin” written on them, diaries of Palestinian travelers who said they missed
‘Palestine;’ and a distinctive Palestinian dialect of Arabic. The people who
lived there were almost all Christians and Muslims, 1300-1850. My recollection
is that the French found about 3,000 Jews there in 1799 when Bonaparte invaded,
when the general population must have been around 200,000.
No one
brought up that the Palestinians are the largest stateless group in the world,
lacking basic human rights and lacking rights of citizenship. Their private
property is daily and brazenly stolen from them by Jewish squatters coming over
into Palestine from Israel proper. This grand larceny on a cosmic scale is
secretly encouraged and sometimes even funded by the Israeli government.
Militant armed settlers have murdered dozens of Palestinians and routinely commit
sabotage against their olive orchards and crops.
Israeli
propaganda depicts Palestinians as violent, but Israelis killed nearly 7,000 Palestinians
2000-2014 whereas Palestinians in that period were responsible for about 1,000
Jewish deaths. Given what is being done to the Palestinians by the far right
wing squatters, they have reacted with amazing forbearance and peacefulness.
The
only resolution of the conflict is for Palestinians to attain the rights of
citizenship in a state and the right firmly to own property and to control
their land, air and water.
Israeli
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has pledged that the Palestinians will have
no such rights as along as he is prime minister.
So
what is Trump going to do about this human rights travesty?
Here is what he said:
TRUMP:
As far as settlements, I’d like to see you hold back on settlements for a
little bit. We’ll work something out but I would like to see a deal be made, I
think a deal will be made. I know that every president would like to — most of
them have not started till late because they never thought it was possible and
it was impossible because they didn’t do it but Bibi and I’ve known each other
a long time.
Smart
man, great negotiator, and I think we’re going to make a deal. It might be a
bigger and better deal than people in this room even understand. That’s a
possibility so let’s see what we do.
I predict
that Netanyahu will not in fact pause land theft by the Israeli squatters. I
also predict that Netanyahu will keep his campaign promise to keep the
Palestinians stateless and little better than prisoners in their own land. The
only deal to be had from Netanyahu is to screw the Palestinians over even
harder than ever before.
Then a
journalist posed a question:
QUESTION
Thank
you very much. Mr. President, in your vision for the new Middle East peace, are
you ready to give up of the notion of two-state solution that was adopted by
previous administration? And will you be willing to hear different ideas from
the prime ministers as some of his partners are asking him to do, for example,
annexation of parts of the West Bank and unrestricted settlement constructions?
. . . And Mr. Prime Minister, did you come here tonight to tell Mr. — the
president that you’re backing off the two-state solution? Thank you.
DONALD
TRUMP
So, I’m looking at two-state and one-state and I like the one that
both parties like. I’m very happy with the one that both parties like. I can
live with either one. I thought for a while the two-state looked like it may be
the easier of the two but honestly, if Bibi and if the Palestinians — if Israel
and the Palestinians are happy, I’m happy with the one they like the best.
We
know that Netanyahu, who has boasted about destroying the Oslo Peace accords
and has pledged no Palestinian state, does not actually want a two-state
solution.
But
Netanyahu does not want a one-state solution in the sense of having to give
Palestinians citizenship rights in Israel.
He
wants a continuation and expansion of the status quo, with the Palestinians
under the Israeli jackboot and helpless and stateless. So for Palestinians, a
‘no-state solution.’ I.e. he wants Apartheid. Just as the white nationalists of
South Africa took citizenship rights away from the Black African majority and
tried to consign them to artificial Bantustans, so Netanyahu wants to keep
Palestinians in Bantustans.
In
offering to relinquish a two-state solution, Trump shredded decades of American
policy. But since there isn’t going to be a two-state solution, it is just as
well. Realistically, there is no place to put a Palestinian state any more.
What
Trump was really offering was some polite fiction where the Palestinians could
be parceled out to Jordan, Egypt and Israel itself, even as they remain
stateless, and economic investments would seek to depoliticize them and improve
their per capita GDP.
The white nationalists in South Africa tried something
like that with their Black African population. It didn’t last.
In
other words, it would be Apartheid, but an attempt would be made to implicate
Egypt and Jordan in it. I predict failure in that regard.
Later
on, the Israeli prime minister said this:
NETANYAHU
“I
told you what are the conditions that I believe are necessary for an agreement.
It’s the recognition of the Jewish state and Israel’s — Israel’s security
control of the entire area. Otherwise, we’re just fantasizing. Otherwise, we’ll
get another failed state, another terrorist Islamist dictatorship that will not
work for peace, but work to destroy us, but also destroy any hope for a
peaceful future for our people.”
So
there you have it. Netanyahu insists on Israeli security control of neighboring
Palestine, insists that the Palestinians be kept stateless, and even goes so
far in typically racist fashion to allege that Palestinians are congenitally
incapable of erecting a state.
And
since Trump seems to believe whatever the last person he talked to alleged,
likely Netanyahu will win out.
The
only problem is that there is no scenario in which millions of Palestinians are
kept under martial law and deprived basic citizenship rights and go on being
stolen from– there is no scenario in which this story ends well.
Juan
Cole
C 2015 Reader Supported News
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class
has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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