On Feb 26, 2024, at 8:30 AM, Chas Freeman via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:--
NETANYAHU WANTS TRUMP
His Post War Gaza Plan Aims to Sink Biden
Clyde Prestowitz from Clyde’s Newsletter clydeprestowitz@substack.com
READ IN APP With his just announced plan for dealing with Gaza once military operations cease, Israeli Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu has formally declared war on President Biden and his campaign for re-election.
Far from moving toward the two -state solution being promulgated by Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Netanyahu is calling for an increased and time unlimited Israeli occupation not only of Gaza but also of the West Bank and all other areas of what otherwise would constitute an independent Palestinian state. In effect, Netanyahu is calling for the total conquest by Israel of the remains of Palestine - the exact opposite of what Biden and the rest of the world are suggesting.
By taking this position, Netanyahu is putting Biden between the devil and the deep blue sea. He knows that Biden is heavily dependent on not only the Jewish vote in the United States, but even more importantly, on Jewish money for his potential re-election. He knows also that Trump’s son-in-law is Jewish, and that Trump enjoys strong support from some of the richest Jewish-Americans. He further knows that evangelical Americans strongly believe in the notion that God promised the land that is now Israel/Palestine to the Jews and that the Israelis thus have every right to drive out the mostly Islamic Palestinians.
Netanyahu is betting that if he can just play tough for the next eight months or so, he may well have a much more supportive and compliant Trump administration with which to deal. Keep in mind also that Netanyahu has his own peculiar status with which to wrestle. Were he not Prime Minister there is reason to believe that he would be behind bars and certainly not a key leader of Israel. At the moment, hanging tough on Gaza and the Palestinians is close to the only thing keeping him in office.
Indeed, one might even ask if he is somehow secretly in cahoots with Hamas. Remember that it has been he who has supported the notion of keeping the Palestinians divided by enabling Hamas to govern Gaza while the Palestinian Authority (PA) governs the West Bank. One might even suggest that he, perhaps inadvertently, caused the Hamas October 7, 2023, attack that triggered the present genocidal conflict in Gaza. After all, it keeps him in office and very likely out of jail.
In fact, Netanyahu also owes a great deal to Biden as well. When Biden flew to Israel in the immediate wake of the Hamas October 7 attack, I actually thought the visit would be not only to comfort Netanyahu and Israel, but also to persuade them that an in-kind, vicious response would be counter-productive and very difficult for America to support. You, gentle reader, might rightly ask how anyone could be so naive. But I was.
In any case, it is clear that the rest of the world does not at all agree with the U.S. support of how Israel under Netanyahu has been responding. When close allies like Australia and the UK do not vote with the U.S. in the UN and other bodies, let alone the vast majority of other countries, it is obvious that far from leading the free world, the United States is collaborating with Israel in what increasingly is obviously a genocidal policy approach.
The more Biden goes along with Netanyahu on this, the more respect and leadership authority the United States will lose.
WHAT’S THE ALTERNATIVE
There are three alternatives. One is for Washington to support Netanyahu across the board and effectively support the complete Israelization of the former Palestine complete with possible expulsion of Arab Palestinians or, at the least, subordination of Arab Palestinians to Jewish rule in a region in which the population is roughly half Arab/Palestinian and half Jewish. This has, effectively, been U.S. policy for quite a long time, and, clearly, it has not worked and is not working.
The second alternative would be the creation of a unified state that would be roughly half Jewish and half Palestinian Arab by population. Such a state would be a democracy in which the rights and responsibilities of all would be the same under a rule of law. One might think of Belgium (roughly half Walloon speaking French and half Flemish speaking Dutch) or of Canada (French and English), Switzerland (French, German, Italian, Romanch), India (Hindi, English, Bengali, etc.), and Singapore (Mandarin, English, Tamil, Malay)
Having lived in Belgium for many years, I can say that appealing as this option may appear, it can be quite difficult to operate in reality. Were it not for the creation of the EU with Belgium as its capital, I am not sure that the Belgium of today would exist - so great is the enmity between the Flemish and the Walloons. Singapore may be a promising example in that its native languages are all official and strict ethnic equality is the rule of the day, but its working language is the foreign tongue of English. In this way, no ethnicity is favored. We must remember, however, that to date, Singapore has been ruled by only one political party while its press has been careful in how it treats political issues. In theory, maybe an Israel/Palestine could do something similar, but, given all the enmity of the past hundred and forty odd years, we should not kid ourselves that it would be truly possible in real life.
That leaves the third option of two independent states. At first glance, this seems to be and probably is the easier and most obvious solution. But be careful. A relatively rich, nuclear weapon holding, highly educated Israel interacting intimately with a relatively poor, militarily weak, and less educated Palestine is not necessarily the answer to prayer whether to God or Allah. Still, for the United States and the rest of the world, it is probably the only possible answer.
WHAT IS BIDEN’S SITUATION
President Biden has been a staunch supporter of Israel from the time of his entry into politics fifty -two years ago. This no doubt has had something to do both with his Christian view of the Israelis as the Biblical Chosen People as well as with the fact that he is one of the all- time biggest cumulative recipients of political donations from pro- Israel American organizations and citizens such as AIPAC (America Israel Political Action Committee). He will want more of that money in this election year, but if it appears that he is bowing to Netanyahu while also proving unable to provide more help for Ukraine, he will rightly be perceived as a weak, unprincipled President, a perception that could well result in his loss of the election in November. Given that Donald Trump and his Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have proven to be great pals to Netanyahu in the past, this is undoubtedly what Netanyahu is wishing for.
A new factor is also complicating Biden’s political life and strategy. Since its declaration of statehood in 1948, Israel has dealt with an America in which there are more Jews than in Israel and in which the Jewish population has wealth and influence far beyond what its number might suggest. Take just one organization that is highly influential in U.S. foreign policy. The Council on Foreign Relations is the central non-governmental American body that studies and advises on U.S. foreign policy. Three fourths of its directors are of Jewish ethnicity. They are directors because they are smart, highly educated and wealthy and run some of the most important business, academic, journalistic, financial, and political organizations in the country. From President Harry Truman’s May 15,1948 speech welcoming Israel’s declaration of independence until now, American policy on the Middle East has been strictly pro-Israel.
Another important factor in this regard has been the influence of the American, Protestant Evangelical community. It accounts for about 24 percent of the U.S. population and has always been strongly pro-Israel because of its belief that the modern gathering of Jews in Palestine is an indication of the approach of the Second Coming of Christ and the end of time as we know it.
Heretofore the combined political might of the American Jewish population and the evangelicals has assured that U.S. policy in the middle east would be strongly favorable to Israel. But new figures have arrived on the scene - immigrants to America from among the Palestinian and other middle Eastern Arab communities. They are now numerous enough in some American cities and states to have a potentially decisive impact on elections. Example A is the state of Michigan which Biden desperately needs to win if he is to hold the Presidency, but which he may well not hold if he is seen to be kowtowing to Netanyahu and Israel. Biden, essentially, already has the American Jewish vote, but that won’t necessarily win Michigan for him. Ironically, he needs the Palestinian vote to hold the state. Thus, obviously, he needs to prove himself to the American Palestinian/Arab community and he cannot do that by licking Netanyahu’s boots.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE
The White House might respond to Netanyahu by announcing that since the Israeli Prime Minister does not seem prepared to halt the genocide in Gaza over which he is presiding, the United States will no longer provide any weapons or military equipment to Israel. Nor will America provide further funding of any kind to Israel. It will also carefully monitor flows of Israeli origin funds to political activities of any kind in the United States. Word might also be passed to the Israelis that the United States will not veto any further proposals in the United Nations or elsewhere on genocide or other infractions by Israel of internationally agreed rules.
Secretary of State Blinken might be sent back to the Middle East to meet with the leaders of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, perhaps Turkey, and the Palestine Authority to discuss a realistic plan for rebuilding Gaza, integrating it into a new state of Palestine that would include Gaza, the West Bank, and parts of Jerusalem, and the means of financing the project. Of course, this new state will need money for rebuilding and security from inroads by Israel or by hard -line Israeli settlers who are sometimes well armed. A coalition force of U.S. and Arab nation soldiers might be necessary to defend the independence of the new Palestinian state.
I could go on at length, but the bottom line is that American policy regarding Israel and the Middle East and the UN must be made and must be seen to be being made by and for America and its allies rather than by and for Israel and its lobbyists.
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