In his remaining few weeks in the Oval Office, US President Barack Obama appeared decisive and stately: he lashed out on Russia for alleged hacking, issued various executive orders pertaining to the environment and broke an old American habit at the United Nations Security Council, causing a furor for refusing to veto the move by the Council condemning Israel.
Obama further refused to allow President-in-waiting, Donald Trump, access to the State Department, being fully aware that the Trump team aims to lay the groundwork for their new Israel policy, which includes moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
“The short answer is no,” State Department Spokesman, John Kibry told reporters regarding Trump’s request to gain access to the department. “You have one president at a time,” he said.
It may seem strange that this is the same president, who, not long ago, granted Israel the most generous aid package in US history. He is also the same president who supported every Israeli war, and backed Israel militarily and politically - totally and unconditionally.
It appears that American politics is governed by the theatrics of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In fact, this is not a syndrome that was spawned under the Obama presidency. It is the very strategy applied by Washington throughout the years in its dealings with the Middle East, specifically Palestine and Israel.
Odd as it may seem, Trump, although unwittingly, can change that. The man, driven by an obnoxious, self-obsessed view of the world, is likely to expose US foreign policy as it is, without the newspeak, the doublespeak and the propaganda. He is, for now, unabashedly pro-Israel. The only likely difference between him and his predecessors, is that his actions are likely to correspond with his words.
Meanwhile, Israel is dizzy with anticipation. Trump’s inauguration on January 20th will likely usher in Trump as Santa Claus bearing gifts. One present which he bears is the appointment of an extremist, David Friedman, as the next US Ambassador. Friedman’s top priority is to relocate the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It is clear that he and his boss strongly support the expansion of illegal colonies that have already sliced up the envisaged Palestinian state into former Apartheid South African style Bantustans.
Yet, Trump may be the coup de grace that Palestinians and, in fact, the entire Middle East need to liberate themselves from the weight of an overbearing, arrogant and futile American foreign policy that has extended for decades.
On one hand, and unmistakably, a Donald Trump presidency spells disaster for Palestinians in the short term. Trump makes no secret of his lack of impartiality and balance as he approaches the Middle East’s most protracted and delicate conflict.
According to his seemingly endless stream of tweets, Trump is counting the days to when he can show Israeli leaders how pro-Israel his administration will be. Shortly after the United States abstained from voting on UN Security Council Resolution 2334 that condemned Israel’s illegal settlements on December 23, Trump tweeted, “As to the U.N., things will be different after January 20th.”
Trump took to Twitter once more shortly after Secretary of State, John Kerry delivered a major policy speech on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, in which he chastised Israel for jeopardizing the two-state solution, calling Netanyahu’s current government the most rightwing in Israel’s history.
In his retort, Trump called on Israel to ‘stay strong’ until January 20th. Israeli leaders are gleeful with anticipation too, with the likes of Naftali Bennett, head of the extremist Jewish Home Party, stating, “we have a chance to reset the structure across the Middle East,” Bennett, who is also Israel’s Minister of Education told journalists last November, “we have to seize that opportunity and act on it.”
One of the impending opportunities presented by the Trump presidency is that “the era of the Palestinian state is over.” So how could this benefit Palestinians in any way? The answer is simple: clarity.
Since mid-level US officials agreed to meet with a Palestine Liberation Organization delegation in Tunisia in the late 1980s, the US has chosen a most bewildering path of peace-making.
Soon after the US hesitantly ‘engaged’ the PLO - once the latter had to jump through a thousand political hoops to receive the US nod of approval - the US was left alone to define what ‘peace’ between Israel and its Palestinian and Arab neighbors entailed.
The White House set the parameters of the ‘peace process’, corralled Arabs on many occasions to have them rubber-stamp whatever peace ‘vision’ the US found suitable, and divided the Arabs into ‘moderates’ and ‘radicals’, solely based on how a certain country would perceive the US dictates of ‘peace’ in the region.
Without any mandate, the US characterized itself as an ‘honest peace broker’, yet has done everything to jeopardize the accomplishment of the very parameters that it set to achieve a supposed peace. While it went as far as describing Israel’s illegal settlement construction as an ‘obstacle to peace’, Washington funded the settlements and the occupation army entrusted with ‘protecting’ those illegal entities; it called for ‘confidence building measures’ while, at the same time, bankrolling the Israeli military and justifying Israel’s wars in Gaza, and its excessive violence in the Occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.
For decades, the US has done precisely the opposite of what it publicly preached.
And throughout these years, the US has served as an enabler to Israel’s political and military belligerence, while pacifying the Palestinians and the Arabs with empty promises, with threats, with handouts and with mere words.
The so-called ‘moderate Palestinians’, the likes of Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority, were duly pacified, indeed, for they won the trappings of ‘power’, coupled with US political validation, while allowing Israel to conquer whatever remained of Palestine.
But that era is, indeed, over. While the US will continue to enable Israel’s intransigence, a Trump Presidency is likely to witness a complete departure from the Washingtonian doublespeak.
Bad will no longer be good, wrong is not right, and warmongering is not peacemaking. In fact, the projected Trump pugnacious foreign policy is likely to give all parties a stark choice regarding where they stand on peace, justice and human rights.
The Palestinians, too, will have to make a choice, face the decades-long reality with a united front, or side with those who intend to ‘reset’ the future of the Middle East based on a dark interpretation of biblical prophecies.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include “Searching Jenin”, “The Second Palestinian Intifada” and his latest “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story”.
Dr Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com.
