President Trump’s envoy for the Middle East peace process is looking to make a quick trip back to Israel next week, with an eye toward “moving fast” on trying to start the peace process with the Palestinians while everyone is still more or less on board.
Exactly what that’s going to look like is anyone’s guess, as President Trump’s visit to Israel involved a lot of broad statements about the concept of peace, but no details. The Trump Administration is said to be trying to put together a “common set of principles” from which everyone can negotiate.
That’s a lot more complicated than it sounds, with a lot of the very basic questions surrounding what a two-state solution would look like at all, and whether Israel’s far-right coalition government will even survive the negotiations, with multiple top figures openly averse to a peace deal.
The Trump Administration is looking to resolve that by courting top Labor figure Isaac Herzog from the opposition to try to get him to back the peace process. That might be doable, but it still isn’t clear how a coalition government could be maintained, even if a separate majority is behind the peace process.
Palestine doesn’t want peace- Palestine wants independence. Israel doesn’t want peace, either- Israel wants Palestine.
No, Palestine wants peace, with justice. Regardless of that process, they have been living with a state of war and imprisonment all along. Israel’s government wants to preserve this status quo, Israel’s people want some kind of real peace. Defining peace is the tricky part, and the Donald is unqualified.
In any given conflict, it’s likely that the regular people on both sides would prefer peace, and that those people on both sides would he willing to make reasonable concessions to get it. It’s the “leaders” on both sides who benefit from continued conflict. And in the case of the Arab-Israel conflict, the goal of the “peace process” is to get the US to keep writing checks for more “peace process.” Not for peace, just for the continuing pretense that peace is coming.
Every study I am aware of is in conflict with your first sentence. Large groups of regular people roughly divide into one-half hawkish and one-half dovish with various shades in both camps of course. It is not only these nasty “leaders”. It is their flock too. It is not too difficult to discover that division on the internet. Just scan the comments on all articles dealing with Iran. Or Assad. Or Assange. Or our police. Or Israel. Or North Korea.
Of course “regular” people on both sides want peace but the majority of the “regular” people on the Israeli side are racist/supremacist that believe that G-d gave them the title to all of the Palestine land and nothing short of that is acceptable. And Trump’s envoy, Kushner, who funds the illegal West Bank settlements, is hardly a neutral party. Netanyahu had a 95+% approval rating from the Israeli “regular” people when he was slaughtering women and children by the hundreds in Gaza and it dramatically declined only when he stopped the slaughter of defenseless women and children.
This is not an Arab-Israeli conflict. It is a conflict between European colonialist and the indigenous population. This conflict doesn’t need to continue to keep the U.S. writing the checks, the Israeli lobby in the U.S. has a strangle hold on Congress and the White House ensuring billions will continue to flow to Israel.
No point in pretending Trump cares at all about anyone but Trump and Israel.
‘Moving Fast’ just means two things: it sounds happening, and it fits a short attention span. Trump is probably thinking if he can get the Saudis to throw some money at the problem it’ll be solved soon. So I guess it’ll be a shortlived initiative but you never know who will try to piggyback on the initiative to accomplish something else.
I suspect that every president wants some nasty international issue settled to remove it from the “must worry about” list of the nation. Such breakthroughs do not happen often. Thus far the most successful presidential big breakthroughs were Nixon’s opening to China, Carter’s Camp David accord, and Obama’s 5+1 agreement with Iran. All three were prepared and negotiated by seasoned diplomats backed by professional presidents. Trump does not have such diplomats in his team (yet) and he is an amateur.
This says that the idea of peace requires replacing the Israeli government, at least on this one issue. This is probably true, and deserves special notice.
“looking to resolve that by courting top Labor figure Isaac Herzog from the opposition to try to get him to back the peace process. That might be doable, but it still isn’t clear how a coalition government could be maintained, even if a separate majority is behind the peace process.”