By Finian Cunningham
November 21, 2019 "Information
Clearing House" - US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week
announced yet another radical shift in
Washington’s policy towards the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by way of saying
that the United States “was accepting realities
on the ground”.
What the mendacious and cynical Pompeo omits
to add is that the Trump administration has been
dramatically fueling the change in “realities” –
specifically the expansion of illegal Israeli
settlements on Palestinian territory and the
demolition of Palestinian homes.
This week the top US diplomat
declared that Washington would no longer
adopt the international consensus position,
backed by several UN resolutions, that Israeli
settlement-building and occupation of
Palestinian territory was a violation of
international law. Washington is henceforth
recognizing Israeli settlements as legitimate.
The move overturns more than four decades of
official US policy which adhered to the
UN-backed position of condemning Israeli
occupation in the Palestinian West Bank and in
East Jerusalem as illegal and a violation of the
Geneva Convention.
Since the 1967 Six War, successive Israeli
governments have overseen a relentless process
of annexing Palestinian territory. Over that
period, Palestinian lands have diminished and
become increasingly fragmented with little
contiguity that would be normal for a future
state. There are estimated to be around 200
Israeli new-build settlements of towns and
villages with a population of 600,000 Jewish
settlers who have usurped Palestinian land and
properties. The UN has repeatedly condemned the
annexation and occupation as illegal, to no
avail.
The latest move by the Trump administration
is a flagrant repudiation of UN resolutions and
international law. It follows previous
declarations by President Trump recognizing
Israeli claims to Jerusalem as its capital, as
well as Israel’s annexation of Syrian territory
in the Golan Heights.
“Calling the establishment of civilian
settlements inconsistent with international law
has not advanced the cause of peace,” said
Pompeo on Monday. “The hard truth is that there
will never be a judicial resolution to the
conflict, and arguments about who is right and
who is wrong as a matter of international law
will not bring peace.”
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That is an astounding dereliction of
international law by the American
government. The “hard truth” that Pompeo
ignores is that US administrations have
constantly undermined “judicial
resolution of the conflict” because they
have, to varying degrees, over the
decades pandered to Israeli criminal
occupation of Palestinian lands.
What the Trump administration is doing is not
entirely unprecedented. Successive American
presidents have merely paid lip service to a
supposed peace process between Israelis and
Palestinians, declaring their support for a
“two-state solution” and presenting Washington
as some kind of “honest broker”. The reality is
that Washington has consistently undermined
Palestinian national rights by its systematic
bias towards Israel, indulging the latter’s
criminal policies of occupation and military
aggression towards Palestinian population.
However, Trump and his coterie of Middle East
aides have taken the American bias and
complicity with Israel to naked levels. Part of
that is no doubt payback for the
multi-million-dollar funding of Trump’s 2016
election campaign by Jewish-American billionaire
and arch-Zionist Sheldon Adelson.
Israeli peace groups have
recorded a surge in Israeli expansion of
settlements across the West Bank and East
Jerusalem over the past three years of the Trump
administration. Demolition of Palestinian homes
by Israeli bulldozers are at a record high.
There is an imperative business reason for
this. President Donald Trump has personally
invested in Israeli settlements, as have his
ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and the
White House’s special envoy to the region, Jared
Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.
One of those settlements is at Beit El which
is described as “one of the most aggressive” in
terms of expansionist scope. It overlooks the
Palestinian city of Ramallah in the West Bank
which is supposed to be the administrative seat
of the Palestinian Authority.
Trump, Friedman and the Kushner family
have in the past
funneled millions of dollars into Beit El
and other Israeli settlements. In return,
Israeli financial companies have made huge
investments in Jared Kushner’s family
real-estate business back in the US. For
example, Menora Mivtachim, a pension and
insurance firm, invested $30 million in
apartments in Maryland owned by the Kushner
family.
Jared Kushner officially stepped away from
his family’s property conglomerate when he was
appointed by his father-in-law as special envoy
on the Middle East “peace process”. But few
would believe his future wealth will not benefit
from investments in and from Israel. He is still
a beneficiary of trusts that have holdings in
Kushner properties,
notes Haaretz newspaper.
It seems incredible given this blatant
conflict of interest that Kushner has been
tasked with producing a “peace plan” for the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which Trump had
previously boasted about as being the “deal of
the century”. That plan has since wilted to
non-existence. The media don’t even talk about
its expected publication, so far off the radar
is it.
The latest move by the Trump administration
to effectively reward and accelerate further
Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory has
American self-interest and profit written all
over it. It mirrors Trump’s
declaration in March this year recognizing
the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, where
there is irrefutable
evidence that Trump and the Zionist clique
in the White House have major business interests
in oil exploration and production in that
contested region.
Russia warned this week that Washington’s
policy is inflaming further conflict amid an
intensification of air strikes by Israel on Gaza
where more than 30 people have been killed over
the past week, including one Palestinian
family of three adults and five children.
The bloodshed makes Pompeo’s announcement all
the more repulsive.
The Arab League and the European Union have
also condemned the unilateral rejection of
international law by the US. Jordan, Egypt and
other Arab states said the United States has
forfeited its right to act as a peace broker in
the region.
The “reality on the ground” – to use a
talking point favored by Israeli leader Benjamin
Netanyahu and now Mike Pompeo – is that the US
is an accomplice in Israel’s illegal occupation
and war crimes. Even more heinous, the US policy
is being driven by Trump’s family business
profits.
Finian Cunningham
has written extensively on international
affairs, with articles published in several
languages. He is a Master’s graduate in
Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a
scientific editor for the Royal Society of
Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a
career in newspaper journalism. He is also a
musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he
worked as an editor and writer in major news
media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish
Times and Independent.
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