January 30, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - When the two old political fraudsters emerged at the White House this week with the most deranged, farcical tragi-comedy in Middle East history, it was difficult to know whether to laugh or cry.

The 80-page “peace” plan from the White House contained 56 references to “Vision” in its first 60 pages – and yes, with a capital V on each occasion to suggest, I guess, that this “deal of the century” was a supernatural revelation. It was not, though it might have been written by a super-Israeli.

It said goodbye to Palestinian refugees – the famous/infamous “right of return” and all who now rot in the camps of the Middle East; farewell to the old city of Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital; adieu to UNRWA, the UN relief agency. But it welcomed a permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the total annexation of almost every Jewish colony built there against all international law.

It’s a given, of course – and has been for days – that this nonsense might just cast some magic dust over the travails of the leaders of America and Israel. As the two rogues, Donald Trump under impeachment and Benjamin Netanyahu charged with corruption, grinned to the applause of their supporters in Washington, it became clear at once that this mendacious document – containing absurdity, burlesque and dreary banality in about equal measure – destroyed forever any hope of an independent Palestinian state of any kind. That’s not what it said, but you only had to glance at the verbiage – where Israel’s occupation, the longest in modern history, was described as a “security footprint” and where the Oslo accord was trashed as an agreement which produced “waves of terror and violence”.

Truly, all must read these 80 pages. And every reader should go through them twice, in case, first time round, they missed some extra egregious indignity inflicted upon the Palestinians.

The document wasn’t just a gift to Israel. It embodied every Israeli demand ever made to Washington (plus a few more) and effectively destroyed every effort made by the United Nations Security Council; every UN resolution on Israeli withdrawal; every effort of the EU and the Quartet on the Middle East to produce a just and fair resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli war.