Jonathan Cook – The Unz Review July 1, 2019
Donald Trump’s supposed “deal of the century”, offering the Palestinians economic bribes in return for political submission, is the endgame of western peace-making, the real goal of which has been failure, not success.
For decades, peace plans have made impossible demands of the Palestinians, forcing them to reject the terms on offer and thereby create a pretext for Israel to seize more of their homeland.
The more they have compromised, the further the diplomatic horizon has moved away – to the point now that the Trump administration expects them to forfeit any hope of statehood or a right to self-determination.
Even Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and architect of the peace plan, cannot really believe the Palestinians will be bought off with their share of the $50 billion inducement he hoped to raise in Bahrain last week.
That was why the Palestinian leadership stayed away.
But Israel’s image managers long ago coined a slogan to obscure a policy of incremental dispossession, masquerading as a peace process: “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
It is worth examining what those landmark “missed opportunities” consisted of.
The first was the United Nations’ Partition Plan of late 1947. In Israel’s telling, it was Palestinian intransigence over dividing the land into separate Jewish and Arab states that triggered war, leading to the creation of a Jewish state on the ruins of most of the Palestinians’ homeland.
But the real story is rather different.
The recently formed UN was effectively under the thumb of the imperial powers of Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. All three wanted a Jewish state as a dependent ally in the Arab-dominated Middle East.
Fuelled by the dying embers of western colonialism, the Partition Plan offered the largest slice of the Palestinian homeland to a minority population of European Jews, whose recent immigration had been effectively sponsored by the British empire.
As native peoples elsewhere were being offered independence, Palestinians were required to hand over 56 per cent of their land to these new arrivals. There was no chance such terms would be accepted.
However, as Israeli scholars have noted, the Zionist leadership had no intention of abiding by the UN plan either. David Ben Gurion, Israel’s founding father, called the Jewish state proposed by the UN “tiny”. He warned that it could never accommodate the millions of Jewish immigrants he needed to attract if his new state was not rapidly to become a second Arab state because of higher Palestinian birth rates.
Ben Gurion wanted the Palestinians to reject the plan, so that he could use war as a chance to seize 78 per cent of Palestine and drive out most of the native population.
For decades, Israel was happy to entrench and, after 1967, expand its hold on historic Palestine.
In fact, it was Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat who made the biggest, unreciprocated concessions to peace. In 1988, he recognised Israel and, later, in the 1993 Olso accords, he accepted the principle of partition on even more dismal terms than the UN’s – a state on 22 per cent of historic Palestine.
Even so, the Oslo process stood no serious chance of success after Israel refused to make promised withdrawals from the occupied territories. Finally, in 2000 President Bill Clinton called together Arafat and Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak to a peace summit at Camp David.
Arafat knew Israel was unwilling to make any meaningful compromises and had to be bullied and cajoled into attending. Clinton promised the Palestinian leader he would not be blamed if the talks failed.
Israel ensured they did. According to his own advisers, Barak “blew up” the negotiations, insisting that Israel hold on to occupied East Jerusalem, including the Al Aqsa mosque, and large areas of the West Bank. Washington blamed Arafat anyway, and refashioned Israel’s intransigence as a “generous offer”.
A short time later, in 2002, Saudi Arabia’s Peace Initiative offered Israel normal relations with the Arab world in return for a minimal Palestinian state. Israel and western leaders hurriedly shunted it into the annals of forgotten history.
After Arafat’s death, secret talks through 2008-09 – revealed in the Palestine Papers leak – showed the Palestinians making unprecedented concessions. They included allowing Israel to annex large tracts of East Jerusalem, the Palestinians’ expected capital.
Negotiator Saeb Erekat was recorded saying he had agreed to “the biggest [Jerusalem] in Jewish history” as well as to only a “symbolic number of [Palestinian] refugees’ return [and a] demilitarised state … What more can I give?”
It was a good question. Tzipi Livni, Israel’s negotiator, responded, “I really appreciate it” when she saw how much the Palestinians were conceding. But still her delegation walked away.
Trump’s own doomed plan follows in the footsteps of such “peace-making”.
In a New York Times commentary last week Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, candidly encapsulated the thrust of this decades-long diplomatic approach. He called on the Palestinians to “surrender”, adding: “Surrender is the recognition that in a contest, staying the course will prove costlier than submission.”
The peace process was always leading to this moment. Trump has simply cut through the evasions and equivocations of the past to reveal where the West’s priorities truly lie.
It is hard to believe that Trump or Kushner ever believed the Palestinians would accept a promise of “money for quiet” in place of a state based on “land for peace”.
Once more, the West is trying to foist on the Palestinians an inequitable peace deal. The one certainty is that they will reject it – it is the only issue on which the Fatah and Hamas leaderships are united – again ensuring the Palestinians can be painted as the obstacle to progress.
The Palestinians may have refused this time to stumble into the trap, but they will find themselves the fall guys, whatever happens.
When Trump’s plan crashes, as it will, Washington will have the chance to exploit a supposed Palestinian rejection as justification for approving annexation by Israel of yet more occupied territory.
The Palestinans will be left with a shattered homeland. No self-determination, no viable state, no independent economy, just a series of aid-dependent ghettos. And decades of western diplomacy will finally have arrived at its preordained destination.
A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.
most americans are sick of israel pushing them into wars for them
i do believe the USA will attack iran, as they dont have the guts to say no
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/07/03/600019/US-poll-military-conflict-Iran-Harvard-CAPS-Harris
Evil Always Betrays Itself With Financial Enticement
I am sure every sane person that is reading this, has found themselves once in their childhood poorly misunderstood or even worse, hurt by their parents through a misdeed or a miss care. And of course, a guilty parent feels the pain of their child, usually after a period of short and difficult introspection and once over their self-indulgence, then seeks to make amends to their child with some act of kindness, either or both with love or “just buy the kid a damn gift” (I say that with frustrated tenderness as any parent would clearly understand it as! 😉 ).
What has the opening paragraph of mine has got to do with Israel and the Palestinians? Well people only give gifts for two reasons, at least out side of major celebrations like birthdays; love and guilt.
So I ask you dear reader, do think that Israel, or its proxies for it is really the same thing, is offering this “gift” of fifty billion dollars, is in the same way that a parent would give a gift to a child, after some wrong doing? Do you think Israel is acting like a loving parent to the Palestinians?
Well it is clear there is no “love” loss between the Israelis and Palestinians. Thus that leaves only one other reason, GUILT.
I have not lived as long as some people, but I have lived longer than most. In this life, like many of you, who have lived tough and challenging lives, will no doubt have have learned that you NEVER EVER TAKE GUILT MONEY! NO MATTER HOW MUCH IT IS.
Ah dear reader, you may then may ask, but what if someone offered you so much money that never again that you would need never had need to want for anything? I ask you, THAT MEANS YOU, YES YOU WHO ARE READING THESE WORDS RIGHT NOW, what price to do you put on your soul? Ah! Your reply, “But you are a hypocrite Dorian! You don’t believe in God, thus there is no soul you should care about!”. That is true. But you take things too literally. For a soul, is not just that inanimate object that permeates your body, that acts like your compass to God’s directed Will. A soul, is also that intermingling (call it quantum mechanical if you like) between the psyche of your beliefs and that most punishing and potentially most destructive force of your inner self, ergo call it ego, call it super-ego, call it id, call it whatever you like, it is that “thing” that every sane person has that differentiates us between the higher lifeforms where noble and honorable rules of decorum and conduct range, which we like to think that makes us Human, and those lower lifeforms where perverted seduction reigns supreme clandestinely behind acts of treachery, graft and pretentiousness, like the Animal Kingdom uses stalking, craftiness and camouflage to stalk, trap and kill its prey.
And so we come to this point: The only difference between the Animal Kingdom and Israel, is that they haven’t started eating the Palestinians yet!
As a human being, reading this story by Johnathan Cook, I am seriously starting to think that Jews have more in common with the Animal Kingdom than they do with Humanity.
MESSAGE TO ISRAEL AND ISRAELIS, READ THIS, FOR YOU FUTURE IS AT STAKE:
(if anyone knows how to send the following to a Jew send it, for the words that follow, will stand the testament of time)
———start of message:
To All Israeli or Jew for it matters not anymore,
You can steal the Palestinians’ lands, you can steal their livelihoods, you can steal their futures and you can even kill them all.
It matters not how many years you hold onto Israel, for you all are aware, every time the Jew took the Middle East and called it Judea or Israel, the conclusion was always the same, you lost it. Judea you held for over 300 years, and yet the Jew lost it. Israel today is barely 70 years old, barely the length of a single lifespan, and already you are building walls, and stealing from and killing non-Jews.
You are protected from Annihilation by one and only one super power, the United States of America. But now think about this, and I say this to every single Jew in Israel and the rest of the world, what happens when the USA is no longer there to protect you?
The USA can only protect Israel so long as they have oil. Thus the high price you Jews sell your putrefied souls to be in league with the Saudis. But that is soon coming to an end. For soon, very soon, there will be no Saudi oil, and then how will you defend yourselves, surrounded by 1,500,000,000 Muslims.
The Jew can own every single square centimeter of land in the entire presently called Israel, it matters not. In fact, every single Palestinian could vanish from existence, like Thanos snapping his fingers, it matters not. For 1,500,000,000 Muslims will still remember.
Israel, do all you like, bury Palestinian homes, buy them off, build walls, build “the bomb”, it doesn’t matter what you do, your future is already written as like your history.
There is only one possible outcome to the Israeli problem: ISRAEL WILL REVERT TO THE MUSLIMS AND ALL JEWS, WILL NEVER SEE THE LAND THAT WAS ONCE AND WILL BE AGAIN CALLED PALESTINE, EVER AGAIN.
When that day comes, it will be the beginning of the end of your religion, Judaism. All that has been accomplished by Israel by these 70 years of existence, is it is perennial self destruction!
When that fateful day comes, God, or as you call Him, Yahweh, will not hear you, like He has never heard you, and it is why the Jew is never liked or respected and most time despised, all because the Jew is condemned to repeat the same mistake he has been making for thousands of years …. religious hypocrisy.
—-end of message, end of Israel.
Amen.
Great letter to Israel, Dorian!!!
@Voltman
Thank you, sir. And please remember:
VOTE FOR TRUMP! VOTE FOR THE PHARAOH! THROUGH TRUMP THE REST OF THE WORLD WINS!
Frankly, I am starting to seriously think there is something of Biblical proportions arising these days. Never before, have such self-interested forces like Russia, China, Iran, Turkey and others, all now starting to merge to into, yet admittedly strange for now, some form of coalition of mutual concerns, goals and ambitions.
Thanks to Yukon Jack pointing out the water issue in Saudi oil wells, I really do believe, if you are not too extremely old, that we are all going to witness, and sorrily I say, be a major part in the next oil crisis. Saudi oil, as exemplified by how the Americans are now recklessly looking to pirate a new oil resource (alla Venezuela and now Iran), is about to dry up, most likely at the back-end of the 2020’s.
The 2020’s are going to be all about the USA going from superpower, to no-power. If that does transpire, the 2030s will be about some several million Jews flooding out of Israel, before there is no more oil left for the ships to use, and thus trapping the remaining Jews with nothing between them and 1,500,000,000 Muslims. And once again, like all those thousands of years ago, those remaining Jews will be set forth upon another exodus, but this time no one in Europe, Asia, or Africa will welcome them, they will have to paddle their way to the USA.
Its going to be very interesting to watch the game of Jewish Chicken:
Israeli thinking (near the year 2030) to himself, “The oil is drying up, the Americans keep promising they will support us, but how? They have not enough oil for the naval ships or aviation fuel for their jets! The government is talking they can defend us. But how? There are 1,500,000,000 Muslims surrounding us! They can’t use “the bomb”, for that will destroy us too. Do I stay, do I go? No, no, no! We must leave, before the rush, before the oil runs out! Wife! Wife! Take the kids, we are leaving, just take the bank books, forget about the house, its worthless…we are heading to the United States while we can! Ayln! Ayln! Hurry! Hurry! We must leave before the exodus starts!”
Yes Voltman, we are now entering, what sages in the past, would refer to as a new Biblical moment, another chapter is soon to be written, something that hasn’t happened for several thousand years, and it will most likely be the last and closing chapter of the Torah, with the last page reading, “The End”.
The 2020s are going to be historical Voltman! The end of the US super power over the world, the beginning of the end of Israel, and the fleeting start of a new Super-Economy between Europe, Asia, and yes too Africa!
The 2020-30s will make the last 2,000 years of history, look utterly boring! You heard it here first Voltman, this site is after all, for truth seekers!
Dorian, the US has vast oil reserves particularly in Alaska: Prudhoe Bay and Gull Island for example. They are so greedy that they want to control all the oil.
What will anybody be able to do if we’re afflicted with the effects of 5G microwaves? I’m assuming that the more aware dissidents will be their prime targets.
@Voltman
I will only highlight some of the points on the oil issue. I will give links to more detailed discussions. There is much to understand and learn on this oil issue. So brevity will be utilized, and thus it means greater research and study is required beyond what I now write, by all interested. That was my disclaimer, and now onward to this very interesting and brewing problem. The 5G issue I will write more on later.
As you are aware Voltman, and most likely many whom else are reading these public words, there is much activity recently around oil producing countries like Venezuela and Iran. That is, the attempted pirating by the USA for these country’s liquid gold. It is true, as Yukon Jack has pointed out, that Saudi oil wells are going dry, well, actually “wet water”. Meaning more and more water is coming up in the wells than oil, thus the up coming fluid is wetter with water than oil; hence it is becoming more fluid, ie less viscous and less black!
It is also true the Arctic Oil And Gas Situation has large potentials for oil and gas. But emphasis is that the recovery of gas in Arctic zones is much more viable than for oil, for the obvious physical reasons because of the viscosity issues of oil at cold temperatures make it very hard and costlier to recover, as opposed to a natural gas.
From that last link you will see the major economic dilemma facing the USA. For you see, the lions-share of the natural gas resources are in Russian hands. While US territories have really only about 30% of the Arctic oil resources, and much less in regards to gas. That may sound a lot, but in reality it isn’t. Did you hear about the asteroid that was virtually made out of solid gold? NASA plans on going to mine it! It will make every single person in the USA a billionaire! Do you understand the point I am making? It was very easy for me to write those words (as true as they are), and even easier for you, Voltman and everyone else, to read them, but not one of us actually believes in this story about NASA going to make every American a billionaire. Its the same thing with Alaska oil.
For you see Voltman, like the gold asteroid, drilling for Alaska oil has its own set of major problems. As that last link illustrates, Alaskan oil regions average, read this carefully now, FOUR HUNDRED OIL SPILLS A YEAR! That is, at least 1 new oil spill every single day of the year. What do you think will happen if the US with that record goes after just a measly 30% of the Arctic oil resources and at the same time destroys, all of Alaska, British Columbia, and Eastern Seaboard of Russia. Alaska and British Columbia alone, together will result some at least 3 to 4 million people have to leave their coastal cities. This is why many Natives of Alaska fight tooth and nail, to keep big oil either out, or highly chained.
But let us say that Big Oil goes BIG IN ALASKA. As I had mentioned earlier it costs more to drill out that oil in Alaska. Right now the oil that is being drilled for in Alaska, is the easy, and cheap to get oil. And even that is expensive on the world stage.
But the real bonanza is deep water oil. However, do you remember Deepwater Horizon, and the disaster that was? Alaska oil in its deep waters, potentially make it look like a whole new Saudi Arabia refilled with oil. But…
As an example read about just one small current reality for one group of people in Alaska, The Cost of Drilling: Oil in Alaska. As you can see from that story, the US government understands full well, that going all out high on the hog, drilling in Alaska, is not going to work. Imagine, Deepwater Disasters spewing out oil that engulfs the entire coast line from the western seaboard of Alaska, Canada, and the entire western coast of the USA, including California! The economic cost of this man-made disaster is one thing, but what about the millions of displaced souls, that will never be able to live or work on the West Coast Of The Americas! And for what? If successful to drill this oil out, it is estimated that gasoline could still cost as much as $10 to $12 a gallon, at least! Meaning, you will have to pay around $150 to fill your tank with gas, for a small car! For say an Expedition, with about 30 gallons of gas in a tank, that’s over $300 a fill!
That’s why Venezuela and Iran, are targets.
In essence, Alaskan oil will never be recovered, at least not the deep water oil. The economic cost will be too prohibitive. But that’s were it gets interesting!
Recently, Russia just countered the US move with some very powerful ships now in the Caribbean and sticking around Venezuela. Venezuela is now off the table, as far as the US goes. That’s, Check.
Iran, under some serious moves by US pirates, tried to illicit a war with Iran, but failed. Russia offered S-400s, Iran replied, “No thanks, we’re cool.” Result, Iran shoots down for the first time a US Global-Hawk, something never ever done before. That’s, Check again.
The US is being slowly maneuvered into stalemate. And I have to admit its beautiful to watch! I have no idea whether the Russians and co. are actually doing all this via a plan, or is it just out of serendipity. But which ever it is, the US could not be helping the Russians more than they presently are, all thanks to Pharaoh Trump. The man is the most stupidest leader since King Umberto II of Italy, when Italy was created in 1861. Believe me, Umberto II really was a moron of the highest order. Trump is slowly maneuvering the US, slowly but surely into a death grip stalemate.
And you know what Voltman? This I say seriously too. We can write about this here, week after week, and nobody will take us seriously, until of course when it is all over. You know why? I said one time earlier in another post, that the Whitehouse follows this maxim of mine, “In a room full of morons, everyone is a genius.” Well yes it is true with a room filled of experts and the President of the USA; they are all geniuses by their own designs, but the delusion here is so sweetly sublime that it graces all common-sense!
Remember, Voltman, and everyone else, “Economic collapses are not created by the masses, they are created by the geniuses that think they know better, until of course, when those same said geniuses become finally aware, always too late, how wrong, stupid, and really selfish they were.”
In short, never run a country by listening to geniuses; economic or otherwise!
“Genius only lasts until someone else has to pay for it!”
You don’t believe me, everyone? Just ask the millions of people now living in tents in the USA!
@Voltman: RE: 5G Is Not What They Say It Is
For a broad discussion on 5G and its overall affects read here. But let me give the real evil in this technology here.
You have already, I am sure, been using 3G, and 4G. Well understand that this, 5G IS NOT an extension of these.
First a simple primer. There are two frequencies you must understand with any of these #G’s technologies. These two frequencies are the side-band and the carrier frequencies.
For purposes of simplicity, lets call the side-band frequency instead the Signal or Message Frequency, that is SF or MF, and the carrier frequency as is, thus from now as CF.
So what goes on in these networks is this, you have a message, it can be either typed in at your keyboard or spoken into a microphone. These messages are then electronically converted into your bytes that the your computer understands. These bytes are your message. This message, or signal, is then sent to a communication device to be turned into an electronic signal, that signal being your message to be sent through the air with an antenna using a modulated frequency of electromagnetic radiation. So what does that mean, modulated?
Well look at (a) and (b). (a) is our carrier frequency CF, and (b) is a our message or signal frequency SF. In this case our SF is very simple but it can be more complicated, depending what you type or speak! What is important is when you add these two, that is the carrier frequency and signal (or message) frequency together, you get (c).
[BTW: “Volt”man, I am assuming there are others reading this that need things spelled out.]
So why do we use these two frequencies? Because the carrier frequency, which always has the higher frequency, has a lot of “nice” properties, for example, if using 4Ghz as a carrier frequency, you can send it through stormy weather better, because if you use the old 2.4Ghz (Ghz means Gigahertz everyone!) it will be absorbed by water. That’s why microwave ovens are around 2.4Ghz, so it vibrates water molecules in your food to warm it up.
And so it was! The old standards for WIFI, used 2.4Ghz and 4Ghz for CF, that is carrier frequencies. What about the signal, or message frequency? Well remember that chart earlier, the signal was added to the CF resulting it to modulate (change). That change or modulation is the signal on the CF frequency. Of course the SF or MF is of lower frequency, so by analyzing the CF, and watching how it changes, we can read the lower signal or message frequency, and thus get back the message. So for example, for 2.4Ghz carrier frequency, the message frequency or signal frequency, is very little, like 0.1ghz, thus the carrier frequency is modulated with by adding a 0.1ghz frequency onto of its 2.4ghz (that is, 2.39 to 2.41ghz), and you get that exaggerated (c) graph.
Ok that is for the learning. Now for the EVIL!
5G IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT IS.
Remember what I said. That 2.4 or 4Ghz are the carrier frequencies, and that the message frequencies are just changing the carrier frequencies by a little bit, like 2.39 to 2.41, and 3.9 to 4.1 (this is not exactly right, but it is good enough for the argument, especially what you are going to read now.)
So for 2.4 and 4ghz, are these frequencies dangerous? Nope, not really. Why not, you ask? Because 2.4Ghz, has an associated wavelength of about 12.5cm, and 4Ghz about 7.5 cm (you use the speed of light=wavelength x frequency). So what? Well do you have limbs, like your arms, that 12cm in diameter (ok so some of you may be bulked up, no need to brag about it)? You see, if the wavelength is longer than the dimension of your body, you don’t have much to worry about. But what if the wavelength was the length of your human cell, then it could interfere with it! But 12cm or 7cm is still quite small, so you shouldn’t put anything like a cell phone near your head, which is more than 12cm! That’s why you shouldn’t put your cell phone near your ear!
[Dorian Disclosure: As a physicist this is why I don’t use cell phones. That’s right. I don’t use a cell phone at all. And like right now as I am typing these words for you to read I use a cabled network, I never use wireless. NO WIFI, yeah, life can be tough!]
So what is wrong with 5G!
Unlike 2.4Ghz or 4Ghz cell phone networks, where the carrier frequency is 2.4 or 4Ghz, and the MF or SF is a fraction of 2.4 or 4Ghz, 5G IS THE SIGNAL FREQUENCY! AND IF 5G IS THE SIGNAL FREQUENCY…..THEN WHAT THE F*** IS THE CARRIER FREQUENCY!
The carrier frequency, IS ANYTHING FROM 30GHz to UP TO 90GHz.
And what kind of wavelength does that result in, for 5GHz Signal Frequency and 30GHz (carrier frequency likely being rolled out for now), the wavelength is 1cm! READ THAT AGAIN FOLKS, ONE CENTIMETER! Do you have anything that is precious on your body that is around 1cm or longer!
For example:
– do you talk into the cell phone with it in front of your mouth, not by your ear? Your nose is at risk
– do you hold your phone? your fingers are at risk
– do you put your phone in your pocket? think what is 1cm or more away, its at risk (sorry guys!). Hmm, I just had a thought, I wonder if this is why sperm counts are going down all around the world!
And it gets worse. 5GHz can use up to 90Ghz carrier frequency. What wavelength is that? THREE MILLIMETERS! Depending on the area of your body, skin can be anywhere from 0.5mm to 5mm (soles of feet) thick, that means skin cancer comes into play now, along with anything else in internal organs of your bodies.
So will I be using 5G? WHAT DO YOU THINK! I DON’T EVEN USE ANY CELLPHONE NOW! AND IF YOU EVER COME NEAR ME WITH THAT 5G CANCER MACHINE I WILL *()&*&**(())(((*(^*&*)())(*(((()(&&*&%%^&$&**(()()(_)(*())()) YOU!!!!!!
CAPISCE!
I hope that answers your question Voltman.