Panning Trump’s ‘peace plan’
“What madness is this?” —
Thomas Jefferson
Can this really be what young Jared Kushner has been doing all this time? Cobbling together a “Middle East Peace Plan” that has no input from the Palestinians? Is this the answer to several decades of war and mutual distrust between two Semitic neighbours? Jared’s father-inlaw is taking responsibility for the botched agreement, which is an agreement between Israel and the United States only, but I suspect that the self-congratulation will be short-lived.
I certainly hope that Jewish voters in the U.S. will look more deeply into this so-called peace plan before they start singing “Hava Nagila” in the streets. The agreement practically guarantees more recriminations, more feelings of alienation and anger on the Arab side. All the Israeli incursions into Palestinian territory are to be accepted as part of Israel? Muslim claims to religious sites in Jerusalem are to be rejected? Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Organization and Islamic Jihad are expected to concede all this, without a murmur?
It’s been one of the most obvious failings of U.S. President Donald Trump’s character that he lives in a dream world. His grasp of reality is feeble, and he tends to imagine that whatever he wants will automatically fall into place. So, for him, this peace accord must be the best, the greatest, the one that will go into the history books as the miraculous cure for Arabisraeli conflict, the accord that nobody on Earth could have achieved, except for the almighty Trump.
Of course, anybody else would have discussed peace proposals, not just with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but with Mahmoud Abbas, president of Palestine, and with Hamas, the PLO and Islamic Jihad. These groups will put aside their differences, and unite to confront this one-sided and deeply unjust “deal.”
But Trump can go on his oblivious way, believing that he has solved another of the world’s problems. As Thomas Gray wrote many years ago: “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.” He must have foreseen the appearance of Trump on the scene.
Ed Healy Marystown