When Donald Trump informed the world that the United States would now recognize Jerusalem – a city with entire sections each separately devoted to various Christian, Muslim and Jewish religious factions – as Israel’s official and unpartitioned capital, reactions from most of the rest of the world were extremely negative. To see exactly how different faiths have carved up this holy city, look at the map on my December 25th Marginalizing America – Bully Backfire blog.
Late last year, the United States was forced to use its United Nations Security Council veto (which it has not invoked for six years) to stop an otherwise unanimous Security Council vote condemning the naming of Jerusalem as capital of that Jewish state. The UN General Assembly, on the other hand, had no problem overwhelmingly voting against that recognition of such an intensely religious city as Israel capital.
While building a new embassy and moving from Tel Aviv (where all foreign embassies are currently located) will take some time, the die was cast. Soon, lonely America was joined in that political effort by conservative Guatemala. Those two nations (especially the US) were condemned for their recognition of Jerusalem by most of the rest of the world, and most definitely by virtually all of the major nations in Europe. Civil unrest in Israel predictably followed. Angry Palestinians. Violent disturbances. Deaths. Missiles launched from Hamas-held Gaza. Palestine quickly dis-invited US Vice-President Mike Pence from a scheduled visit and declared that the United States had effectively vacated any pretense of “neutrality” in the Israeli/Palestinian peace talks and would no longer be acceptable in any form of mediation role. Russia happily stepped in to replace the United States.
But that was just the beginning. Decades of global support, including UN resolutions and treaties well-supported by every American administration – Republican and Democratic – for a two state solution seemed to fall completely off the table. Even as Donald Trump suggested that the relevant parties (Israelis and Palestinians) could always put Jerusalem back on the negotiating table, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the US announcement at face value: the two state solution was dead, at least in the eyes of the Likud (conservative)-led coalition that controlled the Knesset (parliament).
Emboldened by Trump’s decision, the ruling Likud coalition began passing legislation that would make the two-state solution virtually impossible even if Israel later were to change its position on the matter. “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party for the first time has urged the annexation of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and the nation’s top legal officers pressed to extend Israeli law into occupied territory.
“In addition, the Israeli Parliament, after a late-night debate, voted early Tuesday [1/2/18] to enact stiff new obstacles to any potential land-for-peace deal involving Jerusalem, while abandoning at the last minute a measure that would have eased the way to rid the city of several overwhelmingly Palestinian neighborhoods.
“Coming on the heels of President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in defiance of decades-old United States policy and international consensus, the moves showed that the Israeli right senses a new opening to pursue its goal of a single state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean.
“‘We are telling the world that it doesn’t matter what the nations of the world say,’ Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan told more than 1,000 members of Likud’s central committee on Sunday [12/31/17]. ‘The time has come to express our biblical right to the land.’” New York Times, January 2nd. While there are still sufficient loopholes in both the US announcement and these new Israeli directives to get the peace talks back on line, the more settlements that are built, the closer the US gets to building an embassy in Jerusalem, the less likely a two state solution (hence peace) is possible. But there is virtually no trust among the Palestinian side for any American involvement as a mediator.
The messages both the United States (with Guatemala) and Israel are sending are exceptionally antithetical to solving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. As Palestinian leaders react appropriately negatively to all these changes, Trump’s threats to cut off any financial aid to Palestine, unless they follow his directive to deal with Israel through nearly impossible conditions for resolution though talks (on Israel’s terms), may well provoke an opposite reaction, forcing local Arab leaders to resort to violence and protests since the peace alternative appears to be falling away.
Local Arabs have been treated as second-class citizens following the Israeli occupation of Arab lands in the wars of 1967 and 1973. They face travel and work restrictions, frequent searches, and if a member of a family is found to have conducted terrorism against Israelis, the home(s) of his/her relatives were often bulldozed in retaliation. To be fair, over the years Palestinian extremists, notably Hamas in Gaza, have fomented various random horrific acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians, from suicide bombings, missiles launched from with Gaza to armed attacks against Israeli civilians and military personnel alike.
But the most offensive tactic deployed by the Israelis, one that has drawn almost universal condemnation, is the government-sanctioned building of those Jewish settlements (such as the one pictured above) – which survive as armed enclaves with access often by heavily armored/armed busses – within what was designated to be the future home of the Palestinian state: the West Bank. Once those settlements are officially designated as permanent parts of Israel, the West Bank can never serve as a Palestinian homeland. But that’s exactly what is happening and what would not have occurred had not Donald Trump decided that the US embassy would move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
For Israel, demographic trends are accelerating the local Arab population such that in the not-too-distant future, Arabs will eventually outnumber Jews. If the “one state solution” all that’s left on the table, Palestinians might accept equal rights, but that’s not what conservative Israelis would ever accept: “That outcome is unacceptable to the Israeli right wing, which is pressing to annex the land on the occupied West Bank where Jewish settlers have built communities while consigning Palestinians to the areas where they live now.
“Israeli proponents of these ideas freely acknowledge that the Palestinian areas would be considerably less than a state, at least to start: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has even called it a ‘state-minus.’ Eventually, they say, the Palestinians could achieve statehood in a confederation with Jordan or Egypt, as part of Israel, or perhaps even independently — but not soon.’ New York Times, January 5th. Stalemate. Frustration. Anger. Donald Trump still believes boy-diplomat Jared Kushner will solve this problem, even as the United States has been specifically excluded from this role by the Palestinian leadership.
These recent West Bank decisions represent the most conservative elements of Israeli politics and there are plenty of Israelis who disagree with these choices, fearing the long-term consequences of an escalating regional volatile schism. Increasingly well-armed (nuclearized?) regional Arab nations have been those standing in harshest condemnation of the move to Jerusalem.
Trump was catering to his evangelical base, who refuse to deal with regional political issues and, instead, view these choices strictly within the confines of their extremely fundamental religious doctrine; they are virulent supporters of Israel because they believe a powerful Israel must be strong enough to trigger the “war to end all wars,” Armageddon, the second coming of Christ to bring the “rapture” that, ironically, will kill all people (including all Jews) who do not adhere to evangelical precepts. That these political moves only serve to exacerbate local hostilities plays right into that evangelical scenario. For the rest of us, these slogan/dogmatically-driven decisions only make a dangerous planet earth a whole lot more perilous.
I’m Peter Dekom, and sometimes-passionate religious beliefs create decisions that truly should never have been made, with possibly extremely toxic ramifications for the rest of us.
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