What a Bozo: Trump's Middle East "Peace" Plan
by John Lawrence, January 30, 2020
Suppose you and your best friend got together and worked out a peace plan between you and your worst enemy without either of you ever consulting your worst enemy. Suppose your peace plan gives all the best parts to yourself and the worst parts to your worst enemy. That's a Peace Plan? Get real. Trump and Netanyahu are chumps and suckers. Total amateurs who don't know a peace plan from a hole in the ground. They should have saved their blowhard breath. Then they try to buy off the Palestinians with $50 billion. Chump change, really.
It's a total non-starter. But it's what you'd expect from a couple of greedy, insensitive bastards. Supposedly, Jared Kushner worked this all out. You've got a couple of New York real estate developers thinking they know how to create peace in the Middle East. Really? You have to start by treating both sides with respect and acknowledging the human dignity and equality of both sides. This was the furthest thing from their imaginations. This peace plan is all about Israel and not at all about Palestine. Here, Palestine, we're gonna shove this down your throat with a spoonful of sugar ($50 billion) to make the medicine go down. If you don't like it, lump it, because this is the best deal you're ever gonna get.
Needless to say, the total insensitivity of Trump and Netanyahu and the total lack of even trying to treat the Palestinians with respect dooms this ersatz peace plan before the words of self congratulations were even spoken by a pair of indicted and impeached hacks who are trying to capture the spotlight and somewhat salvage their ruined reputations. When will we ever get talented, diplomatic and sensitive men to lead both countries? Oh, I guess we'll have to elect women for that. These two men are taking the low road where you ask your enemy to make all the sacrifices in order to have peace. No sacrifices for Israel. All the sacrifices go on the heads of the Palestinians. Now I suppose that Trump in his inimitable bombastic way will claim he has created peace in the middle east, something his predecessors had utterly failed to do.
"It's stunning that Donald Trump doesn't know that this is insulting to Palestinians," tweeted James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute. A peace plan that's an insult to one of the parties. Now that's a contradiction in terms if I ever saw one. It's downright Orwellian. Recall that George Orwell in his novel, "1984" famously said “War is peace / freedom is slavery [and] ignorance is strength.” This perfectly fits Trump and Netanyahu and their followers. But then again it's the philosophy of the US government which believes it can create peace by keeping the world in a constant state of war, military threat or sanctions.
So Israel is proposing a land swap. They'll take the Jordan valley which is the breadbasket of Palestine while generously giving Palestine some of the useless desert that now belongs to Israel. Sort of a reminder of the homelands many Indians and South Africans were deported to - worthless, barren scarps of land. In return the favored people will keep the lush parts. Who are they trying to kid? Who are they trying to fool? We'll take the best for ourselves and give you the scraps from the table. How do they justify this? Because they're "better" than the Palestinians? Smarter? No doubt. What they forget is that Palestinians are human beings too and not about to take a back seat to Israel, thank you. They're not going to the back of the bus. Have Israelis not learned anything from the struggles of other peoples? Or of themselves? Think reciprocity.