Trump’s “Deal of the Century” ends the two-state paradigm by endorsing Israel’s “Nationality Law” of 2018 and longstanding Zionist and biblical assertions about Jewish claims to the land and the absence of national rights of the indigenous population: the Palestinians.
President Donald Trump’s “Deal of the Century,” much like his presidency, is a morbid joke. Sadly, however, the punchline running centerstage in this theater of the absurd is set to come at the expense of the Palestinians.
James Zogby writes, “Welcome to the world ushered in by the “Deal of the Century.” It is a world not unlike the one that confronted Arabs in Balfour’s World War I era -– the injustices it will bring forth and the struggle for justice it will give birth to will continue.”
As Trump announces further travel bans, we must recognize the hierarchy of vulnerability: who gets into which fortress, who is left banging on the doors, who is trapped in an increasingly impoverished ghetto. Having papers is both an opportunity and a marker in a surveilled world.
The ‘NY Times’ Editorial Board should be ashamed of their cowardly full-page opinion on the Netanyahu/Trump annexation plan.
The State of Palestine that would be created under Trump’s “Plan” would be largely fictitious, with no control over its borders, its security and its population, with a completely fragmented and shrinking territory. This would violate international law, gives Palestinians no rights, and is reminiscent of the South African “Bantustan” project of the 1970s, Francois Dubuisson, professor of international law, writes.
The morning after President Donald Trump committed to recognizing Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank during the release of his much-awaited Middle East peace plan, Palestinians protested the deal that would annex the Jordan Valley, the breadbasket of the West Bank, by motoring trackers through an Israeli checkpoint.
Nour Joudah writes, “the debate, the conversation, the driving force for peace and justice in Israel-Palestine cannot be about salvaging a territory of fragmented Bantustans, pieced together with a highway and tunnel.”
Today’s front-page New York Times report on the Trump/Netanyahu annexation plan barely mentions Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, and includes only one quote from a Palestinian.
The U.S. mainstream media should be calling it the Mideast “peace plan,” in quotation marks, instead of accepting the Trump/Netanyahu description as truthful. But of course the New York Times quotes an Israel lobbyist high in its story.