US President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) discussed the escalating tensions between Iran and the United States in a phone call on Friday.
The call came a day after Iran downed a US unmanned military drone, prompting fears of a major open confrontation between Washington and Tehran.
Iran said the Global Hawk drone was shot down as it flew over its territorial waters, but Washington said the drone was in international airspace. I tend to believe that the drone crossed the border.
Trump confirmed on Friday that he had cancelled a military attack against Iran following the downing of the drone, saying the retaliatory attacks would not have been a proportionate response.
Thursday's escalation followed suspected attacks on several tanker ships near the Strait of Hormuz, controled by Iran, blamed by Washington for the suspected attacks - an accusation Tehran vehemently denies.
During Friday's call, Trump and MBS also discussed "Saudi Arabia's critical role in ensuring stability in the Middle East and in the global oil market", the White House said in a brief statement. When the Truth is that MBS has been spreading instability since he took power.
Oil prices have surged as much as 10 percent over the past week amid regional tensions that have been rising between the US and Iran since Washington unilaterally withdrew last year from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal.
The US has since embarked upon a diplomatic and economic campaign to ramp up pressure on Iran to force it to renegotiate the agreement.
Part of its campaign has included the re-imposition of US sanctions on exports of Iranian crude oil, which has sent the Iranian economy into a nosedive. The US has largely relied on Saudi Arabia to make up the declined global oil outputs following the economic penalties on Iran.
The US has also increased its military presence in the Middle East, deploying a carrier strike force, bomber task force and Patriot missile battery and using threats from Iran as justification for the actions.
On Monday, the Trump administration announced it would be sending an additional 1,000 troops to the Middle East, citing increased threats from Iran.
There was no word from the White House on whether during Friday's phone call, Trump raised with MBS the October 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, because he most probably doesn't care at all, despite the 100-page report by the UN special in which rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Agnes Callamard, earlier this week accused Saudi Arabia of a "deliberate, premeditated execution" and said the crown prince should be investigated for it.
BBC: The Strait of Hormuz
To understand today’s crises in Iraq, Syria, and Iran, one must grasp their shared Lebanese connection. This assertion may seem odd. After all, what’s the big deal about Lebanon? That little country hasn’t had top headlines since Israel deigned to bomb and invade it in 2006. Yet, to a large extent, the roots of the bloody tangle now enmeshing the Middle East lie in Lebanon: or to be more precise, in the Lebanon policy of Israel.
Rewind to the era before the "War on Terror". In 1995, Yitzhak Rabin - responsible for the growth of Jewish colonies in the West Bank and the Oslo Accords that deprived the Palestinians os during whose mandate , sold by the mainstream media as Israel’s “dovish” Prime Minister, was assassinated by a right-wing zealot. This precipitated an early election in which Rabin’s Labor Party was defeated by the ultra-hawkish Likud, lifting hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu to his first Premiership in 1996.
That year, an elite study group produced a foreign policy document for the incipient administration titled, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” The membership of the Clean Break study group is highly significant, as it included American neoconservatives who would later hold high offices in the Bush Administration and play driving roles in its Middle East policy.
“A Clean Break” advised that the new Likud administration adopt a “shake it off” attitude toward the policy of the old Labor administration which, as the authors claimed, assumed national “exhaustion” and allowed national “retreat.” This was the “clean break” from the past that “A Clean Break” envisioned. Regarding Israel’s international policy, this meant: “…a clean break from the slogan, ‘comprehensive peace’ to a traditional concept of strategy based on balance of power.”
Pursuit of comprehensive peace with all of Israel’s neighbors was to be abandoned for selective peace with some neighbors (namely Jordan and Turkey) and implacable antagonism toward others (namely Iraq, Syria, and Iran). The weight of its strategic allies would tip the balance of power in favor of Israel, which could then use that leverage to topple the regimes of its strategic adversaries by using covertly managed “proxy forces” and “the principle of preemption.” Through such a “redrawing of the map of the Middle East,” Israel would “shape the regional environment,” and thus, “Israel will not only contain its foes; it will transcend them.”
“A Clean Break” was to Israel (and ultimately to the US) what Otto von Bismarck’s “Blood and Iron” speech was to Germany. As he set the German Empire on a warpath that would ultimately set Europe ablaze, Bismarck proclaimed: “Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided — that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849 — but by iron and blood.”
Before setting Israel and the US on a warpath that would ultimately set the Middle East ablaze, the Clean Break authors were basically saying: Not through peace accords will the great questions of the day be decided — that was the great mistake of 1978 (at Camp David) and 1993 (at Oslo) — but by “divide and conquer” and regime change. By wars both aggressive (“preemptive”) and “dirty” (covert and proxy).
“A Clean Break” slated Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as first up for regime change. This is highly significant, especially since several members of the Clean Break study group played decisive roles in steering and deceiving the United States into invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam seven years later.
The Clean Break study group’s leader, Richard Perle, led the call for Iraqi regime change beginning in the 90s from his perch at the Project for a New American Century and other neocon think tanks. And while serving as chairman of a high level Pentagon advisory committee, Perle helped coordinate the neoconservative takeover of foreign policy in the Bush administration and the final push for war in Iraq.
Another Clean Breaker, Douglas Feith, was a Perle protege and a key player in that neocon coup. After 9/11, as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Feith created two secret Pentagon offices tasked with cherry-picking, distorting, and repackaging CIA and Pentagon intelligence to help make the case for the Iraq War.
Feith’s “Office of Special Plans” manipulated intelligence to promote the falsehood that Saddam had a secret weapons of mass destruction program that posed an imminent chemical, biological, and even nuclear threat. This lie was the main justification used by the Bush administration for the Iraq War.
Feith’s “Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group” trawled through the CIA’s intelligence trash to stitch together far-fetched conspiracy theories linking Saddam Hussein’s Iraq with Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, among other bizarre pairings. Perle put the Group into contact with Ahmed Chalabi, a dodgy anti-Saddam Iraqi exile who would spin even more yarn of this sort.
Much of the Group’s grunt work was performed by David Wurmser, another Perle protege and the primary author of “A Clean Break.” Wurmser would go on to serve as an advisor to two key Iraq War proponents in the Bush administration: John Bolton at the State Department and Vice President Dick Cheney.
The foregone conclusions generated by these Clean Breaker-led projects faced angry but ineffectual resistance from the Intelligence Community, and are now widely considered scandalously discredited. But they succeeded in helping, perhaps decisively, to overcome both bureaucratic and public resistance to the march to war.
The Iraq War that followed put the Clean Break into action by grafting it onto America. The War accomplished the Clean Break objective of regime change in Iraq, thus beginning the “redrawing of the map of the Middle East.” And the attendant “Bush Doctrine” of preemptive war accomplished the Clean Break objective of “reestablishing the principle of preemption”.
But why did the Netanyahu/Bush Clean Breakers want to regime change Iraq in the first place? While reference is often made to “A Clean Break” as a prologue to the Iraq War, it is often forgotten that the document proposed regime change in Iraq primarily as a “means” of “weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria.” Overthrowing Saddam in Iraq was merely a stepping stone to “foiling” and ultimately overthrowing Bashar al-Assad in neighboring Syria. As Pat Buchanan put it: “In the Perle-Feith-Wurmser strategy, Israel’s enemy remains Syria, but the road to Damascus runs through Baghdad.”
Exactly how this was supposed to work is baffling. As the document admitted, although both were Baathist regimes, Assad and Saddam were far more enemies than allies. “A Clean Break” floated a convoluted pipe dream involving a restored Hashemite monarchy in Iraq (the same US-backed, pro-Israel dynasty that rules Jordan) using its sway over an Iraqi cleric to turn his co-religionists in Syria against Assad.
Instead, the neocons ended up settling for a different pipe(line) dream, sold to them by that con-man Chalabi, involving a pro-Israel, Chalabi-dominated Iraq building a pipeline from Mosul to Haifa. One only wonders why he didn’t sweeten the deal by including the Brooklyn Bridge in the sale.
As incoherent as it may have been, getting at Syria through Iraq is what the neocons wanted. And this is also highly significant for us today, because the US has now fully embraced the objective of regime change in Syria, even with Barack Obama inhabiting the White House instead of George W. Bush.
Washington is pursuing that objective by partnering with Turkey, Jordan, and the Gulf States in supporting the anti-Assad insurgency in Syria’s bloody civil war, and thereby majorly abetting the bin Ladenites (Syrian Al Qaeda and ISIS) leading that insurgency.
Obama has virtually become an honorary Clean Breaker by pursuing a Clean Break objective (“rolling back Syria”) using Clean Break strategy (“balance of power” alliances with select Muslim states) and Clean Break tactics (a covert and proxy “dirty war”). Of course the neocons are the loudest voices calling for the continuance and escalation of this policy.
And Israel is even involving itself directly bby providing medical assistance to Syrian insurgents, including Al Qaeda fighters.
Another target identified by “A Clean Break” was Iran. This is highly significant, since while the neocons were still riding high in the Bush administration’s saddle, they came within an inch of launching a US war on Iran over yet another manufactured and phony WMD crisis.
While the Obama administration seems on the verge of finalizing a nuclear/peace deal with the Iranian government in Tehran, the neocons and Netanyahu himself have pulled out all the stops to scupper it and put the US and Iran back on a collision course.
The neocons are also championing ongoing American support for Saudi Arabia’s brutal war in Yemen to restore that country’s US-backed former dictator. Simply because the “Houthi” rebels that overthrew him and took the capital city of Sanaa are Shiites, they are assumed to be a proxy of the Shiite Iranians, and so this is seen by neocons and Saudi theocons alike as a war against Iranian expansion.
Baghdad is a pit stop on the road to Damascus, and Sanaa is a pit stop on the road to Tehran. But, according to the Clean Breakers, Damascus and Tehran are themselves merely pit stops on the road to Beirut.
According to “A Clean Break,” Israel’s main beef with Assad is that: “Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil.” And its great grief with the Ayatollah is that Iran, like Syria, is one of the: “…principal agents of aggression in Lebanon…”
All regime change roads lead to Lebanon, it would seem. So this brings us back to our original question. What is the big deal about Lebanon?
The answer to this question goes back to Israel’s very beginnings. Its Zionist founding fathers established the bulk of Israel’s territory by dispossessing and ethnically cleansing three-quarters of a million Palestinian Arabs in 1948. Hundreds of thousands of these were driven (sometimes literally in trucks, sometimes force marched with gunshots fired over their heads) into Lebanon, where they were gathered in miserable refugee camps.
In Lebanon the Palestinians who had fled suffered an apartheid state almost as rigid as the one Israel imposed on those who stayed behind, because the dominant Maronite Christians there were so protective of their political and economic privileges in Lebanon’s confessional system.
In a 1967 war of aggression, Israel conquered the rest of formerly-British Palestine, annexing the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and placing the Palestinians there (many of whom fled there seeking refuge after their homes were taken by the Israelis in 1948) under a brutal, permanent military occupation characterized by continuing dispossession and punctuated by paroxysms of mass murder.
This compounding of their tragedy drove the Palestinians to despair and radicalization, and they subsequently lifted Yasser Arafat and his fedayeen (guerrilla) movement to the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), then headquartered in Jordan.
When the king of Jordan massacred and drove out the PLO, Arafat and the remaining members relocated to Lebanon. There they waged cross-border guerrilla warfare to try to drive Israel out of the occupied territories. The PLO drew heavily from the refugee camps in Lebanon for recruits.
This drew Israel deeply into Lebanese affairs. In 1976, Israel started militarily supporting the Maronite Christians, helping to fuel a sectarian civil war that had recently begun and would rage until 1990. That same year, Syrian forces entered Lebanon, partook in the war, and began a military occupation of the country.
In 1978, Israel invaded Lebanon to drive the PLO back and to recruit a proxy army called the “South Lebanon Army” (SLA).
In 1982 Israel launched a full scale war in Lebanon, fighting both Syria and the PLO. Osama bin Laden later claimed that it was seeing the wreckage of tall buildings in Beirut toppled by Israel’s “total war” tactics that inspired him to destroy American buildings like the Twin Towers.
In this war, Israel tried to install a group of Christian Fascists called the Phalange in power over Lebanon. This failed when the new Phalangist ruler was assassinated. As a reprisal, the Phalange perpetrated, with Israeli connivance, the massacre of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Palestinian refugees and Lebanese Shiites. (See Murray Rothbard’s moving contemporary coverage of the atrocity.)
Israel’s 1982 war succeeded in driving the PLO out of Lebanon, although not in destroying it. And of course hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees still linger in Lebanon’s camps, yearning for their right of return: a fact that cannot have escaped Israel’s notice.
The Lebanese Shiites were either ambivalent or welcoming toward being rid of the PLO. But Israel rapidly squandered whatever patience the Shiites had for it by brutally occupying southern Lebanon for years. This led to the creation of Hezbollah, a Shiite militia not particularly concerned with the plight of the Sunni Palestinian refugees, but staunchly dedicated to driving Israel and its proxies (the SLA) completely out of Lebanon.
Aided by Syria and Iran, though not nearly to the extent Israel would have us believe, Hezbollah became the chief defensive force directly frustrating Israel’s efforts to dominate and exploit its northern neighbor. In 1993 and again in 1996 (the year of “A Clean Break”), Israel launched still more major military operations in Lebanon, chiefly against Hezbollah, but also bombing Lebanon’s general population and infrastructure, trying to use terrorism to motivate the people and the central government to crack down on Hezbollah.
This is the context of “A Clean Break”: Israel’s obsession with crushing Hezbollah and dominating Lebanon, even if it means turning most of the Middle East upside down (regime changing Syria, Iran, and Iraq) to do it.
The USA 9/11 paved the way for realizing the Clean Break, using the United States as a gigantic proxy, thanks to the Israel Lobby’s massive influence in Congress and the neocons’ newly won dominance in the Bush Administration.
Much to their chagrin, however, its first phase (the Iraq War) did not turn out so well for the Clean Breakers. The blundering American grunts ended up installing the most vehemently pro-Iran Shiite faction in power in Baghdad, and now Iranian troops are even stationed and fighting inside Iraq. Oops. And as it turns out, Chalabi may have been an Iranian agent all along. (But don’t worry, Mr. Perle, I’m sure he’ll eventually come through with that pipeline.)
This disastrous outcome has given both Israel and Saudi Arabia nightmares about an emerging “Shia Crescent” arcing from Iran through Iraq into Syria. And now the new Shiite “star” in Yemen completes this menacing “Star and Crescent” picture. The fears of the Sunni Saudis are partially based on sectarianism. But what Israel sees in this picture is a huge potential regional support network for its nemesis Hezbollah.
Israel would have none of it. In 2006, it launched its second full scale war in Lebanon, only to be driven back once again by that damned Hezbollah. It was time to start thinking big and regional again. As mentioned above, the Bush war on Iran didn’t pan out. (This was largely because the CIA got its revenge on the neocons by releasing a report stating plainly that Iran was not anything close to a nuclear threat.) So instead the neocons and the Saudis drew the US into what Seymour Hersh called “the Redirection” in 2007, which involved clandestine “dirty war” support for Sunni jihadists to counter Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah.
Already in 2007, years before the Syrian Civil War, Clean Break scribe David Wurmser was back banging the same old drum. As The Daily Telegraph quoted him: “’We need to do everything possible to destabilise the Syrian regime and exploit every single moment they strategically overstep,’ said David Wurmser, who recently resigned after four years as Vice President Dick Cheney’s Middle East adviser. ‘That would include the willingness to escalate as far as we need to go to topple the regime if necessary.” He said that an end to Baathist rule in Damascus could trigger a domino effect that would then bring down the Teheran regime.’ (…)
A situation such as last year’s attack on Israel by Hezbollah, which was backed by Iran and Syria, could provide an opportunity for US intervention.
Although Mr Wurmser’s recommendations have not yet become US policy, his hard-line stances on regime change in Iran and Syria are understood to have formed the basis of policy documents approved by Mr Cheney, an uncompromising hawk who is deeply sceptical about the effectiveness of diplomatic pressure on Teheran.”
When the 2011 Arab Spring wave of popular uprisings spread to Syria, the Redirection was put into overdrive. The subsequent US-led dirty war discussed above had the added bonus of drawing Hezbollah into the bloody quagmire to try to save Assad, whose regime now finally seems on the verge of collapse.
The Clean Break is back, baby! Assad is going, Saddam is gone, and who knows: the Ayatollah may never get his nuclear deal anyway. But most importantly for “securing the realm,” Hezbollah is on the ropes.
And so what if the Clean Break was rather messy and broke so many bodies and buildings along the way? Maybe it’s like what the French say about omelets and eggs: you just can’t make a Clean Break without breaking a few million Arabs. And what about all those fanatics now running rampant throughout large swaths of the world thanks to the Clean Break wars, mass-executing Muslim “apostates” and Christian “infidels” and carrying out terrorist attacks on westerners? Again, the Clean Breakers must remind themselves, keep your eye on the omelet and forget the eggs.
Well, dear reader, you and I are the eggs. And if we don’t want to see our world broken any further by the imperial clique of murderers in Washington for the sake of the petty regional ambitions of a tiny clique of Zionists murderers in Tel Aviv, we must insist on European and American politics making a clean break from the neocons, and US and Europe foreign policy making a clean break from Israel.
Back to the USA x Iran tensions, for the sake of balance and peace, Iran would be wise to offer a muted response. It is an extremely dangerous territory; Trump did the right thing in taking a step back. It's quite clear that he's been misled by his advisers who, just like in Venezuela, have advised him to pursue a very aggressive policy that has actually cornered him, and now he has less and less good options at his disposal. It could be that this measure is sufficient to signal to the Iranians that the US is ready and willing and capable of hitting them very very hard and Trump may believe that that suffices for him to say that he has restored deterrence and saved face. The problem on the US side is they're not going to be able to get negotiations with Iran if the US is at the same timewaging economic warfare against Teheran.
Although there is a White House divison about the Iran issue, they've all agreed upon the tactic - maximum pressure and massive economic sanctions - but the end goal of Trump and the end goal of someone like National Security Adviser John Bolton and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and MBS, the Saudi crown prince, that have been advising them, have been dramatically different from the very beginning.
John Bolton wants a war with Iran, he's been advocating a war with Iran for more than 20 years. He thought that maximum pressure would lead to exactly the situation we're seeing right now - one in which we're on the brink of war. Whereas Trump was led to believe that actually maximum pressure is the best way of getting back to negotiations and getting a better deal than the one that Obama had secured.
If we take a look at what happened with North Korea, it was that other countries that had the capacity of talking to both sides stepped forward and helped defuse the situation, de-escalate, and facilitate some communication. That's exactly what's needed at this point to get all sides to walk back from the brink of war but, after that - in order for that to lead to an actually sustainable, positive situation - there needs to be diplomacy. And for diplomacy to take place, Trump has to walk away from this maximum pressure strategy and stick to the deal Obama made.
Broken promises and deals are common in Washington. That is why no one trusts the Americans. Iranians have little faith in the US, and Trump's decision to pull back from the reportedly planned attack is unlikely to improve relations without accompanying sanctions relief.
One of the things that Iranians remember is the downing of the Iranian airliner in 1988, where the Americans shot down an Iranian airliner in international waters with missiles and then the United States covered it up, lied about the Iranian plane's altitude and direction, and blamed the Iranians for aggressive action. And only years later did the truth come out. Back then the US and Western media mimicked what the US had to say so no one here trusts the American narrative and everyone expects the Iranian armed forces and the Iranian government to protect the country's sovereignty.
I don't think Trump is respected by anyone whether he orders a stand-down or not. You can ask families who lost family members due to lack of medicine, especially for cancer patients, what they feel about Trump and the US government. The Americans are the ones who are trying to strangle the Iranian people with what Trump calls 'brutal sanctions'. The Americans are constantly making threats. American forces have surrounded Iran and Teheran's response to the White House is the deterrent, the very fact that the Iranians were able to down the most advanced American drone using stealth technology with an Iranian-made surface-to-air missile is what is real deterrence.
One reason why Trump may have told warmongers to stand down is that he recognises that the Iranian response will be relentless and could be disproportionate. The Iranians could target any country that supports US armed forces in their strikes against them, such as the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia, which are aiding the United States in all bad deeds in the Middle East and have allowed the United States to carry out this attack.
Iran believes that this chapter of confrontation with the United States started from Washington when Trump decided to withdraw from the deal and they want to tell the Americans that: 'You made a mistake and you have to fix it'. They want to push more for the international community to act, to mediate, to push, to pressure the United States, to have a dialogue because this status quo is collapsing the economy and will have serious ramifications on the stability of the regime in Iran. The reason why they push this type of confrontation to the edge is because they want different parties, different countries to intervene.
It seems that Rouhani made the right call. Countries across the world appealed for de-escalation, with Russia accusing the US of deliberately stoking tensions with Iran and pushing the situation "to the brink of war".
It seems that Rouhani made the right call. Countries across the world appealed for de-escalation, with Russia accusing the US of deliberately stoking tensions with Iran and pushing the situation "to the brink of war".
It is sure that Israel, Saoudi Arabia, the Arab Emirates and the US want to weaken Iran to the point of starvation, as Israel has been doing with the Gaza Strip. However, any type of confrontation in the Gulf and all will pay the price. Any confrontation will affect the economy, will affect the stability, will affect the development the countries have made. Washington hesitates to attack Iran directly because some of his advisors are myope but not blind. They can see the price would be very big, too high. If they keep their say on the matter, as it appears, considering the new wave of sanctions, we are safe, for now. How long the Iranian people will be able to cope with the conséquences of the the sanctions?
PALESTINA
Washington proposes to create a $50bn global investment fund for the Palestinians and neighbouring Arab states, designed to be the economic engine of the long-awaited US "Middle East peace plan".
The plan was posted on the White House website on Saturday, two days before a US-led workshop in Bahrain where the economic portion of the so-called "deal of the century" is set to be discussed.
The Manama conference is taking place despite opposition from the Palestinians, who will not attend.
Palestinian Authority PresidentMahmoud Abbas on Saturday rejected the economic plan and the US peace effort, which is led by the Ugly American and Donald Trump son in law and senior adviser Jared Kushner.
"The economic situation should not be discussed before the political one," Abbas said on Saturday. "As long as there is no political solution, we do not deal with any economic solution."
Speaking to Reuters News Agency, the Ugly American said the economy first approach was "necessary" to break away from the political side, as it would be "less controversial". "Let's let people study it, give feedback. Let's try to finalise if we can all agree on what that could look like in the event of a peace agreement."
The problem is that fundamental political issues such as the occupation of Palestinian territories, the right of return for refugees and their descendants (of which roughly five million live in refugee camps in neighbouring Arab countries) and border sovereignty were not mentioned in the plan.
Instead, the economic scheme included 179 infrastructure and business projects, a billion-dollar investment to build up the Palestinians' tourism sector, and a five-billion-dollar transportation corridor to connect the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
More than half of the $50bn would be spent in the economically troubled Palestinian territories over 10 years while the rest would be split between Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan, according to the plan.
Some of the projects would take place in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, where investments could benefit Palestinians living in adjacent Gaza, a crowded and impoverished coastal enclave blockaded by Israel and Egypt for 12 years.
Let's be blunt, it is nothing but a 21st century version of the Oslo Accords that in the end dispossessed the Palestinian even more. Kushner promises that the 10-year plan "would create a million jobs in the West Bank and Gaza". The Oslo Accords would give the Palestinians a state in 5 years...
The Ugly American goes further: "It would take their unemployment rate from about 30 percent to the single digits," he said. "It would reduce their poverty rate by half, if it's implemented correctly."
As he should have expected, his comments drew the ire of Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization ('PLO) executive committee.
"First, lift the siege of Gaza, stop the Israeli theft of our land, resources and funds, give us our freedom of movement and control over our borders, airspace, territorial waters etc," she said in a post on Twitter. "Then, watch us build a vibrant prosperous economy as a free and sovereign people."
She is right. Kushner's plan is clearly an effort to buy Palestine for peanuts and give Palestinians nothing in exchange. The basic issue of Israeli military occupation, colonisation and apartheid is really the elephant in the room. The Trump administration and other US officials in charge of this so-called peace process actively support all the things that destroy the Palestinian economy, that plunge millions of Palestinians in poverty and prevent Palestinians from thriving. According to the World Bank, Israeli military restrictions on Palestinian businesses and agriculture reduce Palestinian economy by 35 percent. The matter of the fact is that Palestinians don’t need Jared Kushner’s charity. What they need and want is liberation.
Obviously, in Gaza, Hamas official Ismail Rudwan also rejected Kushner's proposals.
"We reject the 'deal of the century' and all its dimensions, the economic, the political and the security dimensions," Rudwan told Reuters. "The issue of our Palestinian people is a nationalistic issue, it is the issue of a people who are seeking to be free from occupation. Palestine isn't for sale, and it is not an issue for bargaining. Palestine is a sacred land and there is no option for the occupation, except to leave."
Of course they do. Every normal person does. When the document was released, we all noticed that the 40-page plan was void of any political context with the words "occupation", "freedom", "equality", "blockade" missing.
The absence of those words is actually quite glaring and it's very indicative of what they see is the issue. Washington and Tel Aviv have put together this optimal, pie-in-the-sky plan that any person who's involved in economic development would love to see. But it's not applicable to Palestine because they've taken away the political context.
At the heart of the plan is a proposed $50bn investment fund which would be split between Palestinians in the occupied territories (more than half of the total amount) and its neighbours Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan.
The fund is supposed to be used for 179 infrastructure and business projects, including building up the Palestinians' tourism sector.
However, it doesn't address the obstacles to Freedom of movement that Palestinians face, living Under the 12-year Israeli-Egyptian blockade on the Caza Strip, or Under occupation in the West Bank, surrounded by illegal Israelmi colonies, deeming it a non-starter.
For the fundamental questions remain:
Is Isreal ever going to allow for the movement of goods? No.
Is Israel going to allow this plan to be implemented? No.
Can there be economic development under occupation? No.
Can the Palestinians live Under apartheid for ever? No.
Can the Palestinians agree to the progressive expropriation and ethnic cleansing?
Occupation imposes a heavy cost" the report read citing Israeli "restrictions on the movement of people and goods; systematic erosion and destruction of the productive base; losses of land, water and other natural resources", as some of the impediments disrupting the territories' growth.
Palestinians haven't had full sovereign control over their economy due to a fragmented domestic market and separation from international markets, the blockade on Gaza, expansion of illegal Israel settlements, construction of the separation barrier on Palestinian territory and the isolation of East Jerusalem, the report stated.
Under international law, Israel as an occupier is obliged to foster economic development for Palestinians, whose territory it occupies.
Palestine's economy isn't faltering because of a lack of investments, but due to the occupation.
Since the Israeli occupation began in 1967, Israel has in fact sought to incorporate the occupied territories' economy into its own, while allowing for maximum expropriation of land.
What has been missing all of these years is pressure on Israel to actually let the Palestinians be free. They've recycled the same concepts, repackaged them but what they're not willing to do is take on Israel. "And that's the one issue that's going to set the us free - it's getting Israel off of our backs," say the palestinians every time, everywhere.
The Guardian: A Jerusalem hospital where Palestinian babies die alone
Israel is the only country in the world that systematically prosecutes children in military courts.
Palestinian child prisoners face physical, emotional and psychological abuse.
The Palestinian economy in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is subject to severe restrictions imposed by Israel’s occupying army, most notably the limiting of freedom of movement for people and goods and the theft of natural resources.
The Oslo Accords, signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1990s, govern economic relations between Palestinians and their Israeli occupiers, in particular the Protocol on Economic Relations (also known as the Paris Protocol). Under the Protocol, Israel collects tax revenue from Palestinians and is supposed to transfer it to the Palestinian Authority, giving Israel enormous economic leverage in its dealing with the PA, with Israel frequently withholding desperately needed revenues to apply political pressure.
Since 2007, Israel has imposed a draconian siege and naval blockade on Gaza that have been condemned as a form of collective punishment and illegal by the UN and human rights organizations, creating a deliberately man-made humanitarian catastrophe for the nearly 2 million Palestinians trapped in the tiny coastal enclave.
Quick Facts on the Palestinian Economy
Main industries: The Palestinian economy in the occupied territories is dominated by the service and manufacturing industries and the government sector (the Palestinian Authority).
Unemployment rate (2018): 30.8% overall in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, with 52% of Palestinians in Gaza without work, including more than 67% of young people, and 18-19% of Palestinians in the West Bank unemployed.
Number of Palestinians working inside Israel or in illegal Jewish settlements: Approximately 127,000, many of whom are exploited as cheap labor on construction sites by unscrupulous Israeli employers and subject to dangerous working conditions.
GDP (2018): $14.7 billion (USD). According to the World Bank, in recent years 70-80% of Gaza’s GDP has been comprised of donor aid and spending by the Palestinian Authority.
GDP per capita (2018): $3,058 (USD).
Economic growth (2018): According to the World Bank, Gaza’s economy actually shrank by 8% in 2018, while the West Bank only saw 2% growth. Overall, the Palestinian economy in the occupied territories grew by just 0.9% in 2018, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO).
Number of Palestinians living below the poverty line in Gaza: According to the ILO, between 2009 and 2017 the proportion of Palestinians in Gaza living below the poverty line rose from 38.3% to 53%.
Number of Palestinians in Gaza who are forced to rely on food aid to survive: More than one million.
Israeli Restrictions on the Palestinian Economy
Restrictions on the Movement of People and Goods
In the occupied West Bank, the movement of Palestinians and their goods is restricted by a network of hundreds of Israeli military checkpoints, walls, and illegal Jewish settlements. To enter Israel, occupied East Jerusalem, or travel to the outside world for work or any other purpose Palestinians require permits from the Israeli army, which are difficult for most to obtain. Historically, Jerusalem has been a central hub of economic activity for Palestinians in the West Bank so Israel’s restrictions on entry into the city have disrupted traditional patterns of economic life.
In Gaza, which remains under Israeli military occupation despite Israel’s withdrawal of settlers in 2005, Palestinians are trapped under siege, prevented from leaving to do business or study except in rare cases. Israel also severely limits imports and exports from Gaza, while the Israeli navy prevents Palestinian fisherman from travelling a certain distance (which changes) from shore to reach the best fishing grounds, often harassing and shooting at them in the process. Severe shortages of electricity and essentials such as clean water caused by the siege and repeated Israeli military assaults also hinder economic activity.
In both cases, the movement of manufactured goods and agricultural products to market is subject to the whims of Israel’s government and occupying army, which frequently impose costly delays without Reason.
Theft and Destruction of Natural resources
Since militarily occupying the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza in the 1967 War, Israel has systematically plundered the natural resources of Palestine in flagrant violation of international law, most notably water and land for illegal Jewish settlements.
The Israeli army and settlers have also destroyed countless acres of agricultural land, including ancient olive orchards, to build settlements, Israel’s West Bank wall, and to harass and intimidate Palestinian farmers and force them off their land.
Restrictions on Construction
Israel makes it nearly impossible for Palestinians to build homes or businesses in most of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem by requiring construction permits that are extremely difficult to obtain. When Palestinians do build without a permit Israeli authorities destroy the structures or force people to do it themselves or face a large fine and possible jail time.
In Gaza, construction is severely limited by Israel’s siege, which prevents the import of many basic construction materials. To compound matters, Israel’s military has devastated industry and the civilian infrastructure of Gaza during a series of devastating assaults since 2008, making the lack of building materials even more acute.
ONGs em prol dos Direitos Humanos dos palestinos e brasileiros conscientes do apartheid e da inadmissível limpeza étnica da Palestina não desistem de pedir para o Milton Nascimento cancelar seu show de Tel Aviv. CANCELA, Milton!
Palestian arts orgs and Brazilian civil society groups are also saying
VENEZUELA
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