The appointment of an inexperienced 30 year old as the new US Middle East peace envoy speaks volumes about the Trump administration’s reckless approach to the peace process.
Avi Berkowitz, an assistant to Jared Kushner, a senior adviser and Trump’s son-in-law, takes over from Jason Greenblatt, formerly Trump’s real estate lawyer, who quit Friday. Berkowitz graduated from Harvard Law School in 2016 and has no previous foreign policy experience.
It’s not as if Kushner, considered one of the chief architects of the mysterious ‘deal of the century’, was any more qualified.
His background was in real estate, not foreign policy.
Indeed, Palestinians have long complained that the US was never serious about solving the Middle East issue and giving them their promised state.
The Trump administration, however, has been the most pro-Israeli to date. In fact, Kushner, Greenblatt, Berkowitz and the US ambassador to Israel David Friedman are all considered staunch Zionists.
But the appointment of Berkowitz seems to be one of the most ludicrous moves this administration has made towards the so-called peace process. His main duties as White House administrative assistant were “logistics, like getting coffee and coordinating meetings”.
Can leaders of stature with a wealth of experience and gravitas be expected to meet him? If Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was alive today he would probably scoff at the appointment and refuse to meet him.
This all, however, could be a moot point. The peace plan has yet to be revealed and is expected to be immensely biased in favour of the Israelis.
Details of the plan have been kept secret largely because they will be met with absolute anger and rejection by the Palestinians.
It’s unclear why the administration keeps holding back but what is evident from the two years under Trump is that the construction of illegal Jewish colonies on Palestinian land has skyrocketed.
Trump also carried out the unprecedented move of relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Occupied Jerusalem, effectively recognising Israel’s illegal occupation of Jerusalem.
A year later, the US recognised Israel’s occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights.
All of these moves are calculated and meant to lay the groundwork for annexing more Palestinian land by Israel.
What all of this points to is that the Middle East peace process has been reduced to a joke, and more of a sideshow to distract from Zionist ambitions to change the realities on the ground and ultimately annex all land it has occupied from the Arabs.
