Trump blunders in Middle East
Seldom have so few words caused so much misery to so many people and with so little benefit to anyone.
“Today, we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.”
And with that terse declaration on Wednesday, U.S. provocateur-in-chief Donald Trump torpedoed decades of American foreign policy, infuriated most of the Arab world, confounded his closest international allies and thrust the Middle East peace process into a deep freeze.
If Trump’s announcement was startling, no one should have been surprised that later in the week, a Palestinian protester was shot dead and dozens of others raging against the president were injured in clashes with Israeli soldiers.
Nor should it have come as a shock that the Islamic political and military movement known as Hamas called for another Palestinian uprising or “intefada,” like the one that led to thousands of deaths on both sides in the early 2000s.
Trump’s peremptory decision means America has defied the United Nations and abandoned an international agreement that Jerusalem’s status will be settled as part of a larger, two-state peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
This matters. While Israel considers Jerusalem its capital, the Palestinians want East Jerusalem as capital of the Palestinian state they hope to create.
Trump has ruled on a key matter that should be resolved only through negotiations in which the Palestinians play a central role.
If Trump were truly trying to restart Middle East peace talks — a claim he makes — there was no compelling reason for this week’s announcement.
While Israel applauded Trump, it already treats Jerusalem as its centre of government, which is what a capital is.
The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, is there. So are the nation’s Supreme Court, the prime minister’s official residence and other national institutions.
And despite recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Trump has not specified when the Americans will move their embassy there from Tel Aviv.
Sources within the Trump administration say it will take three or four years for the transition, and that means it probably won’t happen in this presidential term. So what was he thinking? Far from being tempted to follow Trump’s lead, many of America’s closest allies, including Britain, France and Germany, strongly rebuked him.
While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was more temperate, he wisely insisted Canada’s embassy is remaining in Tel Aviv.
If the peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians were stalled before this week, Trump has made their resumption improbable. This makes Israel less secure, too.
The only plausible explanation for his action is that, far from trying to advance the cause of global peace, Trump was trying to advance the cause of his Republican Party by appealing to conservative voters in Middle America before next November’s mid-term elections. All vintage, bull-in-the chinashop Trump.
The president could prove us wrong by showing his selfproclaimed skills as a deal-maker, offering something substantial to the Palestinians and getting the two sides talking together again.
That won’t happen. Because it’s not how this erratic, inept narcissist behaves.