Daily Times

When US President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the US embassy there, it further compounded the continuing Palestinian tragedy, starting with the creation of the state of Israel. It was like the Palestinians were paying the price of European guilt over their horrible treatment of the Jews over the centuries.

Even though the allied powers knew, during the WW-II, about the killings of Jews by Nazi Germany, they still weren’t willing to accept Jewish refugees escaping their countries. This led them to support the creation of Israel as a homeland for these unfortunate victims of history in the faraway land of Palestine that was already the home of people living there for centuries.

They weren’t outsiders, but the outsiders (the victorious allied powers and others) took it upon themselves to consign their (the Palestinians) fate to this new state of Israel, created in 1948. The result was that hundreds of thousands were expelled or forced to leave their homes and hearths to make way for the increasing number of new arrivals.

The new state of Israel had political, economic and military support and protection of powerful countries, particularly the United States, which encouraged Israel, through periodic military operations, to create new settlements with more and more Palestinians being forced out, and those still hanging on found themselves living in apartheid.

For countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, there is no better time than the present, with Trump as the US President, to change the strategic picture in the Middle East. To their delight, Trump has discarded the nuclear deal with Iran and is going out of the way to proclaim his pro-Israeli credentials

In this so-called only democracy in the Middle East, all its institutions were geared to uphold its essentially undemocratic character. A democracy swears by equal rights for all. But Israel’s Minister of Justice, Ayelet Shaked, has said, without any qualifications whatsoever, that “There is the place to maintain a Jewish majority [in Israel] even at the price of violation of [minority] rights.”

To put it even more bluntly: “Zionism should not — and I’m saying it will not — continue to bow its head to a system of individual rights interpreted in a universalist manner.” Here we have Israel’s justice minister propounding the foundation of its apartheid system.

If one were looking to Israel’s judiciary to uphold some basic human rights for a civilised society, it is, by and large, compromised in Israeli state’s grand project of expropriation of Palestinian land and expulsion of its people. Writing in the New York Review of Books, David Shulman says: “The High Court, like the various lower courts in Israel, is an integral part of the institutional fabric of the Israeli state; its justices are by no means immune to the contamination by hyper-nationalist ideology.”

“In practice,” Shulman writes, “they [courts] tend to accept, more or less without question, the often secret recommendations of the Israeli security forces; arguments that include a security aspect [which is about everything in Israel] regularly trump arguments based primarily on ethical principles.”

To add further to the Palestinian woes, important Arab states are keen to forge strategic ties with Israel to face, what they regard as, the Iranian threat. Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman (known as MBS), and his counterpart, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed (known as MBZ), are both working hard to cobble together a grand anti-Iran strategy; with the Trump administration having already scrapped the US nuclear deal with Iran.

In a long article in the New Yorker titled The Enemy of My Enemy, Adam Entous writes, “In meetings with American officials in Riyadh and Washington, MBS routinely remarked that ‘Israel never attacked us’, and ‘we share a common enemy’ [Iran]. He privately said that he was prepared to have a full relationship with Israel.”

Entous goes on: “Like MBZ [crown prince of Abu Dhabi], MBS, in conversations with the US officials and Jewish-American groups, expressed disdain for the Palestinian leadership. He, too, seemed eager for that conflict to be finished, even if it meant the Palestinians were dissatisfied with the terms.”

MBS also reportedly told American-Jewish organisations in New York in March that “In the last several decades, the Palestinian leadership has missed one opportunity after the other and rejected all the peace proposals it was given. It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining.”

In other words, the unresolved Palestinian issue is an obstacle of sorts in the way of a full-fledged strategic relationship between some of the Arab countries and Israel, with Iran as their common enemy.

For countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, there is no better time than the present, with Trump as the US President, to change the strategic picture in the Middle East. To their delight, Trump has discarded the nuclear deal with Iran and is going out of the way to proclaim his pro-Israeli credentials, even more so with Netanyahu as Israel’s prime minister. Indeed, in 2013, around the time of the Israeli elections, Trump reportedly recorded a video strongly endorsing Netanyahu’s candidature.

In the video, he reportedly said that “My name is Donald Trump and I’m a big fan of Israel. And, frankly, a strong prime minister is a strong Israel. And you truly have a great prime minister in Benjamin Netanyahu… So, vote for Benjamin. Terrific guy. Terrific leader. Great for Israel.” And on this, Trump is nothing but consistent after becoming President of the United States.

The writer is a senior journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia

Published in Daily Times, July 15^th 2018.