June 17, 2019 • 13
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The U.S. is now formally
supporting Israel’s efforts at economic pacification, writes Jonathan Cook.
The White House’s prolonged
financial bullying of the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinians’
government-in-waiting, has reached the point where there are now credible
warnings that it is close to collapse. The crisis has offered critics further
proof of the administration’s seemingly chaotic, often self-sabotaging approach
to foreign policy matters.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials
charged with resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have demonstrated ever
more blatant bias, such as the recent claims by David Friedman, the ambassador
to Israel, that Israel is“on
the side of God” and should have the “right
to retain” much of the West Bank.
Critics view the Trump
administration’s approach as a dangerous departure from the traditional U.S.
role of “honest broker.”
Such analyses, however common,
are deeply misguided. Far from lacking a strategy, the White House has a
precise and clear one for imposing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict – President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century.” Even without
publication so far of a formal document, the plan’s contours are coming ever
more sharply
into relief, as its implementation becomes observable on the ground.
Repeated delays in announcing
the plan are simply an indication that Trump’s team needs more time to engineer
a suitable political environment for the plan to be brought out of the shadows.
Further, the Trump
administration’s vision of the future for Israelis and Palestinians – however
extreme and one-sided – has wide, bipartisan support in Washington. There’s
nothing especially “Trumpian” about the administration’s emerging “peace
process.”
Choking Off Aid
Paradoxically, that was
evident last week, when leading members of the U.S. Congress from both sides of
the aisle introduced a bill to boost the ailing Palestinian economy by $50m.
The hope is to create a
“Partnership Fund for Peace” that will offer a financial fillip to Israelis and
Palestinians seeking to resolve the conflict – or, at least, that is what is
being claimed.
This sudden concern for the
health of the Palestinian economy is a dramatic and confusing U-turn. Congress
has been an active and enthusiastic partner with the White House in choking off
aid to the PA for more than a year.
Mohammad Shtayyeh, the
Palestinian prime minister, told The New York Times last week that
the PA was on the brink of implosion. “We are in a collapsing situation,” he told the
newspaper.
The PA’s crisis comes as no
surprise. Congress helped initiate it by passing the Taylor Force Act in March
2018. It requires the
U.S. to halt funding to the PA until it stops paying stipends to some 35,000
families of Palestinians jailed, killed or maimed by Israel.
Brink of Collapse
Previous U.S. administrations
might well have signed a waiver to prevent such legislation from going into
effect – just as presidents until Trump blocked a congressional law passed in
1995 demanding that the U.S. move its embassy to Jerusalem.
But the Trump White House is
not interested in diplomatic face-saving or reining in the pro-Israel zealotry
of U.S. legislators. It fervently and explicitly shares the biases that have
long been inherent in the U.S. political system.
In line with the Taylor Force
Act, the White House has cut off vital funds for Palestinians, including to
UNRWA, the United Nations’ refugee agency for Palestinians, and to hospitals in
Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.
The decision by Congress to
throttle the PA has had further repercussions, leaving Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu exposed domestically.
Not daring to be seen as less
anti-PA than U.S. legislators, Netanyahu implemented his
own version of the Taylor Force Act earlier this year.
Since February, he has
withheld a portion of the taxes Israel collects on behalf of the PA, the vast
bulk of its income, equal to the stipends transferred to the Palestinian
families of prisoners and casualties of Israeli violence – or those who Israel
and the U.S. simplemindedly refer to as “terrorists.”
That, in turn, has left
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, in an impossible position. He dare
not be seen accepting an Israeli diktat that legitimizes withholding
Palestinian money, or one that defines as “terrorists” those who have
sacrificed the most for the Palestinian cause. So he has refused the
entire monthly tax transfer until the full amount is reinstated.
Now, just as these various
blows against the PA finally threaten to topple it, the U.S. Congress suddenly
prepares to step in and bail out the Palestinian economy with $50m. What on
earth is going on?
‘Money for Quiet’
The small print is telling.
The PA, the Palestinians’ fledgling government, is not eligible for any of the
U.S. Congress’s promised largesse.
If the legislation passes, the
money will be handed to
“Palestinian entrepreneurs and companies,” as well as non-governmental
organizations, willing to work with the U.S. and Israel on “people-to-people
peace-building” programs and “reconciliation between Israelis and
Palestinians.”
In other words, the
legislation is actually designed as another strike against the Palestinians’
existing leadership. The PA is being bypassed yet again, as the U.S. and Israel
try to bolster an alternative economic, rather than political, leadership.
This move by U.S.
representatives is not occurring in a vacuum. Since the effective collapse of
the Oslo accords nearly two decades ago, Washington has sought to downgrade a
national conflict that needs a political solution into a humanitarian crisis
that needs an economic one.
It is a variation on
Netanyahu’s long-standing goal to smash the Palestinian national struggle and
replace it with “economic
peace.”
Where once the goal of
peacemaking was “land in exchange for peace” – that is, a Palestinian state in
return for an end to hostilities – now the aim is “money in exchange for
quiet.” The U.S. is now formally supporting Israel’s efforts at economic
pacification.
Outrage at New Elections
The Trump administration has
devised a two-stage process for neutralizing Palestinians.
Firstly, Trump’s son-in-law,
Jared Kushner, has been tasked with winning over Arab states, particularly
those in the oil-rich Gulf, to stump up money for pacifying Palestinians and
their neighbors.
This is the aim of an
investment conference due to be held in Bahrain later this month – the lynchpin
of the “deal of the century,” not simply a prelude to it.
That was why Trump himself was
so visibly outraged at
the delay caused by Netanyahu’s decision to dissolve the Israeli parliament
last month, a reflection of his political weakness as he faces imminent corruption
trials. The new elections in Israel, Trump grumbled,
were “ridiculous” and “messed up.”
The intention of the Bahrain conference
is to use tens of billions of dollars raised by Washington to buy off
opposition to the Trump deal, chiefly from Egypt and Jordan, which are critical to
the pacification program’s success.
Any refusal by the
Palestinians to surrender, either in Gaza or the West Bank, could have major
repercussions for these neighboring states.
Alternative Leaders
Secondly, Friedman is at the
center of efforts to identify recipients for the Gulf-funded handouts. He has
been seeking to forge a new alliance between the settlers, with whom he is
closely aligned, and Palestinians who may be willing to help in the
pacification project. Late last year, he attended a
meeting of Palestinian and Israeli business leaders in the West Bank city of
Ariel.
Afterwards he tweeted that
the business community was “ready, willing and able to advance joint
opportunity & peaceful coexistence. People want peace and we are ready to
help! Is the Palestinian leadership listening?”
At the invitation of the Judea
and Samaria Chamber of Commerce, I met in Ariel with Palestinian & Israeli
business leaders ready, willing & able to advance joint opportunity &
peaceful coexistence. People want peace & we are ready to help! Is the
Palestinian leadership listening?
Friedman has made no bones
about where his – and supposedly God’s – priorities lie, throwing his weight
behind the growing clamor in Israel to annex much of the territory that was
once seen as integral to creating a Palestinian state. With that as the
administration’s lode star, the task is now to find a Palestinian leadership
prepared to stand by as the finishing touches are put on a Greater Israel
ordained by God.
Concerns in Washington about
the PA’s unwillingness to comply were voiced last week by Kushner, though he
dressed them up as doubts about the Palestinians’ ability to govern themselves.
He said of the PA: “The hope is that they, over time, will become capable of
governing.” He added that
the real test of the administration’s plan would be whether Palestinian areas
became “investable.”
Kushner, second from left, in
2017, with other members of the Trump administration, arriving as honored guest
of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, 2017, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (White House/
Shealah Craighead)
“When I speak to Palestinian
people, what they want is they want the opportunity to live a better life. They
want the opportunity to pay their mortgage,” he said.
Washington is therefore
looking to influential families in the West Bank that could potentially be
recruited with bribes to serve as an alternative, compliant leadership. In
February it was reported that
around 200 businesspeople, Israeli mayors and heads of Palestinian communities
met in Jerusalem “to advance business partnerships between Israeli and
Palestinian entrepreneurs”.
Corrupt Tribal Fiefdoms
It has been natural for the
Trump administration to look to a business elite – one that, it hopes, will be
prepared to forgo a national solution if the economic environment is
liberalized enough to allow for new regional and global investment
opportunities.
These individuals belong to
extended families that dominate the West Bank’s major cities. Such powerful
families may be prepared to assist in the elimination of the PA, in return for
a corrupt patronage system allowing them to take control of their respective
cities.
Palestinian analysts, like
Samir Awad, a politics professor at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah, have
told me that the Israeli and U.S. vision of Palestinian “autonomy” may amount
to little more than a system of tribal fiefdoms, reminiscent of Afghanistan.
There are already a few
Palestinian partners emerging, such as Hebron businessman Ashraf Jabari, who is
reportedly planning
to attend the Bahrain conference.
He and other business leaders
have been quietly developing
ties with counterparts in the settler movement, such as Avi Zimmerman.
Together, they have set up a joint chamber of commerce covering the West Bank.
It is precisely such
initiatives that are being promoted by Friedman and would be eligible for
grants from the $50m fund the U.S. Congress is currently legislating.
Ultimately, these Palestinian
business “partners” could form an elite to serve as an ostensible national
address for the international community in its dealings with the Palestinian
people.
Sword Over PA
The PA doesn’t have to be
discarded for the Trump plan to progress. But alternative national and local
leaderships need to be cultivated by Washington to serve both as a sword
hanging over the PA’s head, to encourage it to capitulate, and as an
alternative ruling class, should the PA fail to submit to the “deal of the
century.”
In short, Washington is
playing a game of chicken with Abbas and the PA. It is determined that the
Palestinians will blink first.
Deeply implicated in
Washington’s vision, even if largely out of sight, are the Arab states, whose
role is to strong-arm whatever Palestinian leadership is required for the
Greater Israel “deal of the century” to be implemented.
The burden of managing the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict will shift once again. When Israel occupied the
Palestinian territories in 1967, it became directly responsible for the welfare
of Palestinians living there.
Since the mid-1990s, when the
Palestinian leadership was allowed to return under the Oslo accords, the PA has
had to shoulder the task of keeping the territories quiet on Israel’s behalf.
Now, after the PA has refused to sign off on Israel’s ambitions to take for
itself East Jerusalem and much of the West Bank, the PA is increasingly seen as
having outlived its usefulness.
Instead, Palestinian
expectations may have to be managed via another route – through the key Arab
states of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan. Or, as
Palestinian analyst Hani al-Masri recently noted, the
Bahrain conference “foreshadows the beginning of abandoning the [Palestine
Liberation Organization] as the Palestinians’ representative, thereby opening
the door … for a new era of Arab patronage over the Palestinians to take hold.”
Years of Imperial Overreach
Under Trump, what has changed
most significantly in the U.S. approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is
the urgency of Washington’s efforts to set aside the Palestinian national
struggle once and for all.
Since the Six-Day War of 1967,
U.S. administrations – with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter’s – had only
a marginal interest in forcing a settlement on Israelis and Palestinians. Aside
from lip service to peace, they were mostly content to leave the two sides to
engage in an asymmetrical struggle that always favored Israel. This was sold as
“conflict management.”
But after 15 years of U.S.
imperial overreach in the Middle East – and faced with major foreign policy
setbacks in Iraq and Syria, and Israel’s related failures in Lebanon –
Washington desperately needs to consolidate its position against rivals and
potential rivals in this oil-rich region.
Russia, China, Turkey, Iran,
and even Europe, are jostling in different ways for a more assertive role in
the Middle East. As it tries to counter these influences, the U.S. wishes to
bring together its main allies in the region: Israel and the key Arab states,
led by Saudi Arabia.
Although secret ties between
the two sides have been growing for some time, unresolved tensions remain over
Israel’s demand that it be allowed to maintain regional superiority in military
and intelligence matters. That has been obvious in current power battles
playing out in Washington.
The Trump administration last
month declared extraordinary measures to bypass Congress so that it could sell
more than $8 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan. In
retaliation, Congressional leaders close to Israel vowed they would block the
arms sales.
Splinter in Region’s Windpipe
In the White House’s view,
little further progress can be made until the Palestinian splinter stuck deep
in the Middle East’s windpipe is removed.
Most Arab leaders care nothing
for the Palestinian cause, and have come to bitterly resent the way the Palestinians’
enduring struggle for statehood has complicated their
own dealings in the region, especially with Iran and Israel.
They would
enthusiastically embrace a
full partnership with the U.S. and Israel in the region, if only they could
afford to be seen doing so.
But the Palestinians’ struggle
against Israel – and its powerful symbolism in a region that has experienced so
much malign Western interference – continues to serve as a brake on
Washington’s efforts to forge tighter and more explicit alliances with the Arab
states.
Serious Case of Hubris
As such, the Trump
administration has concluded that “conflict management” is no longer in U.S.
interests. It needs to isolate and dispose of the Palestinian splinter. Once
that encumbrance is out of the way, the White House believes it can get on with
forging a coalition with Israel and most of the Arab states to reassert its
dominance over the Middle East.
All of this will likely prove
far harder to achieve than the Trump administration imagines, as U.S. Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo intimated last
week in private.
But it would be wrong
nonetheless to assume that the strategy behind Trump’s “deal of the century,”
however unrealistic, is not clear-sighted in both its aims and methods.
It would be similarly
misguided to believe that the administration’s policy is a maverick one. It is
operating within the ideological constraints of the Washington foreign policy
elite, even if Trump’s “peace plan” lies at the outer margins of the
establishment consensus.
The Trump administration
enjoys bipartisan backing from Congress both for its Jerusalem embassy move and
for economic measures that threaten to crush the PA, a government-in-waiting
that has already made enormous compromises in agreeing to statehood on a tiny
fraction of its people’s historic homeland.
No doubt the Trump White House
is suffering from a serious case of hubris in trying to eliminate the
Palestinian cause for good. But that hubris, however dangerous, we should
remember, is shared by much of the U.S. political establishment.
