TRUMP NEEDS TO GET REAL ON THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

The president-elect believes his son-in-law Jared Kushner can make peace between Israel and the Palestinians

BarkGrowlBite | November 25, 2016

The euphoria of his victory over Hillary Clinton must have left Donald Trump in a stoner-like dream world. He actually believes that because his son-in-law is Jewish, Jared Kushner can make peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Trump needs to get off his high and get real on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Trump met Tuesday with publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and journalists from the newsroom and opinion staff at The New York Times. During that meeting he said he was thinking about making his son-in-law a special envoy charged with brokering peace in the Middle East.

Here is an excerpt from the Times’ report on that meeting:

Mr. Trump said that Mr. Kushner, who is an observant Jew, “could be very helpful” in reconciling the longstanding dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

“I would love to be able to be the one that made peace with Israel and the Palestinians,” Mr. Trump said, adding that Mr. Kushner “would be very good at it” and that “he knows the region.”

“A lot of people tell me, really great people tell me, that it’s impossible — you can’t do it,” Mr. Trump added. “I disagree. I think you can make peace.”

“I have reason to believe I can do it,” he added.

Yeah, right. President Bill Clinton was sure he had made peace between the Israelis and Palestinians after the Oslo Agreement was reached only to see Yassa Arafat break the accord. President Obama made peace between Israel and the Palestinians one of his top priorities, sending Secretary of State John Kerry flopping from place to place in the Middle East in a fruitless effort at reaching an agreement between the two parties.

And now Trump thinks he can achieve a peace the Palestinians really don’t want. If Kushner gets appointed as a special envoy, the Israelis can expect him to lean over backwards for the Palestinians so as to avoid any appearance that he might be favoring Israel because he is Jewish.

If he gets off his stoner-like high, Trump will realize that, rather than peace, what the Palestinians really want is to obliterate the Jewish state. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly vowed – in Arabic – “there will be only one state from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea and that will be a Palestinian state.” Other PLO and Fatah leaders have made the same vow over and over again. Of course in English, Abbas and the other lying bastards say they favor a two-state solution.

Instead of wasting his time and the resources of the United States on pursuing a futile peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians – with or without Jared Kushner – Trump should look to other foreign affairs solutions.

During the campaign, Trump promised Jewish groups he would move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu, Trump promised that his administration would “finally accept the long-standing Congressional mandate to recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the State of Israel.” The Europeans and the U.S. have thus far refused to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel for fear of pissing off the oil-rich Arabs and the rest of the Muslim world.

The policy wonks at the State Department adamantly oppose moving the embassy to Jerusalem. President George W. Bush made the same promise but wilted under pressure from the State Department. And President Obama, in his attempt at a love affair with the Muslim world, never made any such promise.

I expect Trump to keep his promise about moving the embassy. It’s a promise he can easily keep. But will he keep it? I’m not holding my breath because, as usual, the State Department will insist that the embassy remains in Tel Aviv.

If Trump, like Obama before him, prioritizes an attempt to achieve that unachievable peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, he won’t be able to move the embassy while his Secretary of State or Jared Kushner are kept flopping around the Middle East in endless negotiations throughout his administration.