A Trump opportunity in Palestine

When Barack Obama first sat down in the Oval Office in January 2008, Israel was still busy blitzing the Gaza Ghetto leaving at least 1,400 Palestinians dead while the international community looked on, wrung its hands and cried crocodile tears. When Trump settles back in the same seat this January, Israel will be involved in another act of aggression which, though far less bloody, is designed to have even greater consequences for the benighted Palestinians. The Israeli parliament is currently set to stop the demolition of “unauthorized” Zionist settlements on the Occupied West Bank. The bill, which has been approved by ministers, has a retroactive element. Thus, according to some analysts, it is possible that all the past settlements that even Israeli governments considered illegal and which were removed along with their fanatical occupants, could overnight become “legal”. For Zionist bigots intent on throwing every last Palestinian out of the Occupied Territories, to say nothing of the 20 percent of Israel citizens who are also Arabs, this will be a green light for more savage repression of local communities and the theft of remaining land and water resources. It is also important to consider why successive Israeli governments have even bothered to brand some settlements as illegal, when under international law, every single one of them should not be there. For years Israel has quietly pursued a policy of what premier Benjamin Netanyahu has articulated as “facts on the ground”. Thus East Jerusalem has been ringed with developments that have effectively cut off the city from the Palestinian country to the east. Likewise the West Bank settlements have been chosen for their strategic and defensive qualities - their ability to sabotage any chance of an effective Palestinian economy and their capacity to control and dragoon the movement of every non-Zionist trapped in the Occupied Territories. Thus whenever some heavily-armed Zionist hotheads have rushed off and claimed a piece of Palestinian land and begun to build their own little settlement, the government of the day has declared their action “illegal” purely because it does not fit into the carefully calculated plan. There has also, of course, been the bonus that by seeming to act against these “illegal” settlers, Israel was suggesting that all the other criminal seizures of Palestinian territory were somehow actually legal. It must be wondered if the new US president will appreciate the core amorality behind this legislation and also recognize the racist and Islamophobic elements in a sister bill. This latter is designed to limit the Muslim call to prayer. By demanding that the Adhan not be sent out at the proper volume, parliament is clearly taking a final step before banning the call altogether. Trump and his aides are busy explaining away many of the more objectionable pronouncements of his campaign. His call to ban Muslims from visiting the US has to sit near the top of the pile to be fixed. In seeking to establish his own relations with the Arab world, the new president does not need a political set piece like Obama’s Cairo speech. Even though the signs are that his relationship with Israel is going to be every bit as warm, if not warmer than Obama’s, Trump could earn himself much political credit in the region if he condemns these two pieces of Israeli legislation.