Jared Kushner got a diplomatic coup today. But Israel remains committed to annexation of the West Bank, the Israeli press is reporting, notwithstanding the historic deal between the UAE and Israel to normalize relations.
The new complaint, filed on behalf of four Palestinians from the West Bank, names President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who was placed in charge of brokering the deal despite having no experience in foreign policy or the Middle East.
Trump administration divide over Israeli annexation, between Jared Kushner and David Friedman, will be resolved in “symbolic” acceptance of annexation, first step being Ma’ale Adumim and Gush Etzion bloc, predicts former Israeli ambassador Danny Ayalon.
Dennis Ross says Netanyahu is deluded about Joe Biden’s potential support for annexation. “[Netanyahu’s] view of the gains unfortunately is not very real. You only establish an international baseline if in fact everyone is prepared to adjust to it. Now maybe if Trump has a second term, there is more of an impulse to adjust to it. But if Trump doesn’t have a second term, no one else internationally of any meaning is going to recognize this new baseline. And if Joe Biden comes in and says, ‘I was opposed to it, I still believe in the two-state outcome, I want negotiations, I saw what Trump did was antithetical to achieving that, so we’re not recognizing that as a baseline…”
Israel is about to jeopardize its support in the Democratic Party by annexing parts of West Bank, but Netanyahu is going ahead evidently with Trump’s blessing. And a fire set by the Israeli military in Jordan Valley last week shows the plan to confiscate more Palestinian land, says journalist Alex Fishman of Ynet on call with Israel Policy Forum.
The American Jewish Committee is indicating that it will do nothing to criticize Israeli annexation. Its ceo, David Harris, won’t even call it annexation, but “extension of Israeli sovereign law.”
Ambassador David Friedman’s racist advice to Israeli — “you don’t have to live with [a] Palestinian state, you have to live with the Palestinian state when the Palestinians become Canadians,” is a perfect echo of Dov Weissglas saying Palestinians could have a state when they became Finns. And it reveals the bad faith in Trump’s deal of the century.
Two Palestinians have died of COVID-19 related causes, far fewer than the 222 Israelis who have died from the virus.
A Palestinian family victimized by illegal Israeli settlers is suing Benjamin Netanyahu and his American abettors, including Jared Kushner and Sheldon Adelson, in a D.C. federal court. The suit is the branchild of Martin McMahon and relies on legal precedent regarding South African apartheid’s dehumanization of a civilian population and the universality of war crime law stemming from the Eichmann case.
The Trump administration strategy is to bully Palestinian leadership into submission, from defunding UNRWA, which supplies care to millions of Palestinian refugees, to removing support for a major tertiary care hospital in East Jerusalem.