Gifts of Trump to Israel. List for 2018. Part 1
Over the past two years, the Trump administration has launched an all-out diplomatic assault on the Palestinians, while preparing a new initiative to resolve the Middle East conflict. It has claimed its plan is different from any other. Indeed, the Palestinians have not seen the actual plan, but they have a pretty good feeling about what it will involve. They have watched closely as the Trump administration has spat out one policy after the other with the clear intention of humiliating and subduing them Over the past year and a half, US President Donald Trump administration has been giving Benjamin Netanyahu’s government one political « gift » after the other.
In December 2017, his administration recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv in May 2018. In January 2018, it has frozen all assistance to UNRWA, the UN agency tasked with supporting millions of Palestinian living as refugees, and in June that year, it quit the UN Human Rights Council after accusing it of having a bias against Israel on account of its policies in occupied Palestine.
In September, the Trump administration closed the representative office of the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Washington. Meanwhile, it gave Netanyahu freehand to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which the State Department stopped calling « occupied » in official documents and instead designated as « Israeli-controlled ».Then, just before this year’s Israeli elections, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation recognising Israel’s annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights, which had been previously declared « null and void » by the Reagan administration and the UN Security Council.
Perhaps most alarmingly, his administration pushed certain Arab countries towards normalisation of relations with Israel without any Israeli concessions being made.
It is high time for a new generation of Palestinian leaders to fundamentally reshape the reality on the ground by reversing or overcoming past and present US and Israeli policies.
Adapted from: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/logic-humiliation-palestinians-190423123902553.html
Distributed by PAJU (Palestinian and Jewish Unity)
