After United States President Donald Trump won the American presidential election in 2016, a joke doing the rounds was that the Statue of Liberty, originally designed by a French sculptor, was taking the first flight from New York to Paris.
The message was that America was changing. Given the recent development, it appears that Arabs must change too. Today, the US has put its bias and slant towards Israel on full public display.
There is a growing consensus that it is about time that Arabs, particularly Palestinians, seriously consider sidelining America as the arbitrator in the decades-long conflict with Israel.
Trump’s announcement on Wednesday, recognising occupied Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, has dropped the penny. His decision was not based on any diplomatic calculation but on a campaign promise.
To get the votes of Evangelicals and pro-Israel Americans during last year’s election, he promised to recognise something that clearly does not belong to him or even his country. It is astonishing to see the president of a country, known for its role as the leader of the free world, behaving in such an arbitrary fashion.
This means several things. Trump is not only openly flouting conventional US policy, but also tarnishing America’s global image. There is another facet to it, too. His decision may well be binding on the US administrations that will follow.
The latest announcement, which came in the year of the 100th anniversary of Balfour Declaration, is expected to further complicate an already messy situation in the Middle East.
It will further deteriorate the already-tarnished image of the US as an honest broker of peace, a peacekeeper and a super power. To many, it is a clear and ominous sign that America has lost its values and standards as a moral authority.
What is more, the decision will pave the way for Washington’s foes and rivals to challenge it in the strategically important Middle East. With people already frustrated with US policy, the saying, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” appears all the more relevant today. When the historic Madrid Peace Conference took place in 1991, and Arabs and Israelis met for the first time, face to face, to solve the conflict, they were not alone with just the Americans around the table. There were representatives from the international community. There were the Russians, the co-sponsors of the peace process with the Americans. There were the Europeans, and others, including representatives of Arab and Islamic countries.
So why do the Palestinians need to go ahead today only with and through the Americans? They don’t have to.
It is difficult to understand how and why the Palestinians keep their faith in just one country. Why is it not looking at other governments, such as those in Europe, Russia, and China? Why do the Palestinians not take lessons from their own history? Why don’t they remember the late Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon sending his troops to besiege the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, in his office (in the West Bank city of Ramallah), hours after the Arab summit in Beirut concluded in March 2002.
The person who called the White House that weekend was the former French president, Jacque Chirac. And recently when the American media leaked Trump’s “Deal of the century” details, the current French President, Emmanuel Macron, picked up the phone to tell his American counterpart that there were French interests too in the region.
Lack of neutrality
In 2004, the then US president, George W. Bush, dismissed Arafat as a negotiating partner. Why can’t the Palestinians — in 2017 — simply go ahead and dismiss the US administration as a neutral entity?
Washington always acts according to its interests, no matter what the issue is. This is what politics is; the science of interests and protecting them. It is about time the Palestinians put their interests first and proceed accordingly.
Should Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas take a firm position vis-a-vis the US, reflecting the anger of Palestinians, his popularity will skyrocket. He will receive enormous support from the Palestinains and preserve their dignity and integrity, instead of making them feel they are being taken for granted as if they live in the backyard of the US administration.
No one is asking the Palestinians to scrap its peace treaties with Israel. Instead, the Arabs must make clear to the Americans that there are other options.
Does international law and protocol say that it is compulsory to meet every American official visiting the Palestinian territories? Past US presidents have shunned Arab leaders more than once. Why not build stronger relations with other powerful nations, and even insist on their presence at the negotiation table?
Surely, the Palestinians can’t sit at one side of the table, where both Israel and the Americans are at the same side (now that the White House has made it clear that it supports Israel in words and actions).
Hours after Trump announced America’s recognition of occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, eight countries, including European powers and African nations, called for a special session of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the issue.
The US may be the most powerful country in the world, but it does not hold the world’s moral compass. The Arabs may finally get to do the right thing — answer their moral calling.
