The United States president’s bombshell, recognising occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and his go-ahead to move the American Embassy to the Holy City come as a bitter disappointment to Palestinians, Arabs, the Muslim world and to all those who have for long come to believe that the only viable political solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is a two-state solution, with Palestinians and Israelis living side-by-side, regardless of the stalled peace process owing to Israeli intransigence.
The sharp U-turn by US President Donald Trump signals a fundamental change in American foreign policy on the Palestinian-Israeli equation, no matter how the White House and the “Trumpeteers” are seeking to gloss over what they are doing to effectively give a carte blanche agreement to Israel. Although the Republican administration in America would try to deny it and embellish the fact that they are involved in any tooth-and-nail tactics, on the Palestinian side that is, surely what Trump said he would do is an American climb-down as a sponsor and a broker of the faltering peace process.
Think about it for a moment. Rather than walking the political tightrope, attempt at objectivity and “softly-softly” stances and attitudes, the recent announcement is not only a massive volte-face by Washington, but it also shows a cracked mirror on what America has come to represent.
We are finally seeing the pernicious tentacles of a world order that had become currency at the end of the Cold War. Those tentacles may have reared their heads differently for the last two decades or so in trying to push the peace process forward. But with the election of Trump as US President, it has become clear that these “pernicious tentacles” are now blossoming, with the US administration stamping hard on the international consensus built around the cause of peace.
The new American stance represents a new push against the peace process and of the many resolutions adopted by the United Nations against Israeli occupation and its atrocities in the West Bank, Gaza and occupied Jerusalem.
It is clear the American president is not tuned to the sensitivities of international politics or he is willingly seeking to ignore them. Trump is seeking to turn American foreign policy on its head, bludgeoning its sharp end right into the heart of Palestinian aspirations. This is all very different from the America we have got used to in the last 20 years or so, with its attempt to live up to its role as a broker of peace and bringing the warring parties together, in the same way as former US secretary of state Warren Christopher had tried in the 1990s under the Bill Clinton administration.
Since 1995, US presidents have consistently wavered with a law passed by the US Congress that year to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem. The American administrations from under Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama tried to go soft on that in the hope that with it, the peace process can be moved along regardless of all the pitfalls, stumbling blocks, dithering and foot-dragging.
The latest order, however, sets in motion the wheels to build new diplomatic quarters that are said to take at least three or four years. But this is a sad state of affairs aimed at further thumbing the nose at decency and widens the door for more extremism and violence, which America and the West have suffered from over the past several years.
These also appear as the tentacles of the “late-new” world order that was predicted long time ago but put on hold. Trump is making sure that the US will no longer follow the traditional “middle-of-the-road approach”, and instead become brash, obtrusive and downright careless, even as it denies Muslims from certain countries entry into America.
Washington’s latest right-wing shift to Israel is clearly adversarial politics and a challenge that does nobody any good. It only supports Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is all praises for this decision but doesn’t realise the kind of catastrophe that this may trigger all over the world.
But this could still be early days. Judging by the ‘Twitter diplomacy’ that Trump has time and again resorted to, he could perhaps still be persuaded to turn around.
But will he? For that to happen, the global popular, diplomatic heat has to be maintained.
Marwan Asmar is a commentator based in Amman. He has long worked in journalism and has a PhD in Political Science from Leeds University in the UK.
