Even Christine Lagarde of the IMF questioned the effectiveness of Jared Kushner’s proposal for $50 billion investment in Palestinian prosperity, saying without a political solution to the Palestinian issue, investments will not succeed. Her skepticism was widely shared.
Mustafa Barghouti talks with Mondoweiss about the Trump administration’s Bahrain economic summit and “deal of the century.” “Everything they’ve done, and everything they’ve declared, shows they are trying to kill the two-state solution and the rights of Palestinians to have a state of their own,” Barghouti says. “They advocate sustaining occupation and apartheid.”
On Tuesday Palestinians in the Gaza Strip cursed at Arab officials and burned placards of President Donald Trump in protest of the administration’s “Peace to Prosperity” summit in Bahrain to discuss economic aspects of the long-awaited “deal of the century.” Yasmin Abu Arafa, a civil rights activist, told Mondoweiss: “After long years of struggle and fighting, a new Oslo seems to be imposed upon us by the U.S. But this will not happen again as in 1993.”
Aya Al Ghazzawi says that the Trump administration Bahrain conference is another step in the continual dehumanization of the Palestinian people. “It says that the blood of the Palestinian martyrs and the people’s long suffering can be bargained upon,” Al Ghazzawi writes, “That money can make up to Palestinians for the ongoing ethnic cleansing which began in 1948. That the incremental genocide inflicted by Israel on Palestinians can be forgotten for crumbs of bread and a trivial sum of money.”
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees raised $110 million at a pledging meet in New York on Tuesday, but warned that it still needs more cash and may have to cut food handouts to some 1 million Gaza residents over the summer, and might not be able to open schools. The UNRWA event was held on the same day as the administration of US President Donald Trump launched its long-awaited and controversial plan for peace between Israelis and Palestinians in Bahrain.
The US ambassador to Israel recently argued that Israel has the right to annex much of the West Bank. Jonathan Cook writes that Israeli officials have been preparing for this moment for more than half a century, since the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza were seized back in 1967.
Jared Kushner unveiled over the weekend the first part of his widely criticized “deal of the century”, drawing ire from Palestinian leaders and sparking protests in cities across Gaza and the West Bank.
At the end of June the Trump administration will unveil an economic package to bolster its peace plan for the Israelis and Palestinians at a conference in Bahrain. Nur Arafeh writes, “The economic workshop in Bahrain is thus another U.S. attempt to manage the political situation, rather than resolve it, and pacify Palestinians by offering them economic incentives to distract them from political issues.”
On Wednesday, six members of Congress introduced a bipartisan bill to create a $50 million annual fund to “facilitate and finance joint economic ventures and people-to-people exchanges between Palestinians, Israelis, and Americans.” While the bill could be seen by well-intentioned members of Congress as a last-ditch attempt to revive the moribund prospects for a two-state resolution, Josh Ruebner says it should more accurately be seen as consistent with the Trump administration’s “deal of the century,” which appears in all likelihood to preclude the possibility of Palestinian statehood.
In classical racist literature and discourse, black/brown natives are portrayed as lazy groups who cannot run their own affairs; they belong to backward entities that are in conflict/clash with other modern entities. Haider Eid says this is the best way to understand Jared Kushner’s recent remarks about Palestinians.