After the Infamous Trump-Netanyahu “Peace Plan,” a Sober Look at Numbers

The Israeli peace organisation Btselem has compared the Donald Trump US plan to Swiss cheese. In their press statement,
they explain: “the cheese is being offered to the Israelis and
the holes to the Palestinians.”

Israel as a state goes back to 1948, while previous centuries or even millenia saw Jewish wandering throughout the world, millions settling down in communities, sometimes accepted, more often either shunned or suspected/accused of every crime or malfeasance under the sun. That they paid a terrible price under Nazi Germany for simply existing is a fact, save for Holocaust deniers–and those are legion. That equating the creation of a Jewish state is seen by many as a disproportionate compensation is also a fact. (My view is that there can never be enough compensation for a crime surpassing all others in the history of a world that has been ever creative in the field.)

Arabs (save for Jordanians and rare others) share with my fellow Iranians a deep hatred of Jews and nothing would make them happier than the destruction of Israel. They pride themselves on their brotherhood with the much put-upon, oppressed, crushed Palestinians but the feeling is caused by anti-Semitism rather than by virtuous empathy or Hegel’s “schöne Seele” (beautiful soul). Push them and they will say that the only problem with the Holocaust ( if it ever happened) is that the much admired Hitler didn’t do away with all Jews. But then, hating Jews has been a tradition forever–entire libraries are filled with books about the subject, with disquisitions on eras, events, legends, etc. Of the many strange facets of the human mind, this is one of the weirdest but one that yields no answers.

Certainly, ever since European Jews settled down in Israel, realising Theodor Herzl’s Zionist dream, cohabitation never proved easy between them and Arabs who had lived in the original Palestine almost since the beginning of time along with the original Sabras, the Jews who had never left. Clashes have been frequent, appalling stories occurred with the Palestinian population which legitimately felt wronged, deprived of basic rights, their land stolen and innumerable lives lost. As for Arab Israelis, they chafed under their second-rate citizenship. There were skirmishes, wars such as the 1967 one with Egypt, massacres took place, such as the abominable 1982 ones in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila near Beyrouth perpetrated by Lebanese phalanges while the Israeli military under Ariel Sharon looked the other way and even facilitated operations.

Yet, until relatively recent times, Israel had an active liberal press and progressive Jewish Israelis strongly voiced their dissent with the human violations of the government, though the hardliner Jews grew ever more rigidly religious and the army more often than not brutally crushed dissent. Meanwhile, the illegal settlements have increased in scope, making life ever more difficult or even impossible for Palestinians. Activists and sympathizers, despite good intentions, are not able to make headway as long as the people in power have no intention of looking for solutions. We remember Rachel Corrie, crushed by an Israeli armored bulldozer (photo below), or James Miller, the British filmmaker killed by Israeli soldiers, both in Gaza, both in 2003, but there have been and are others.

Today, there are 9 million Israelis, including some 2 million Arab Israelis. Settlements number 130 government-approved ones and 100 unofficial ones. East Jerusalem (that Palestinians still believe will some day become their capital, demonstrating that hope does indeed spring eternal) counts 300,000 Israeli citizens, both Arabs and Jews. In nearby Syria, the Golan Heights, a desert region hardly populated and illegally annexed by Israel in 1981, counts 20,000 settlers. While Gaza, separated from the West Bank by the width of Israel and a battleground for all in the area as well as for unhinged warriors remains an impossible proposition.

Settlements are generously encouraged and approved by Trump who would be hard put to find Israel or any country in the area or any country, period, on a map, has no idea what languages the people there speak, what gods they worship and the future or lack thereof they see for their children. Where other U.S. presidents more or less half-heartedly paid lip service to possible roadmaps, the present one, the “very stable genius” who swerves from one pathetic and destructive bright idea to the next helps his best buddy, the corrupt and dangerous Netanyahu, by bringing him total support in what often looks like a “final solution” regarding Palestinians. The “Peace Plan,” brainchild of the brilliant international policy expert Jared Kushner, calls for occupation of even more of the West Bank by Israeli settlers, in exchange offering Palestinians desert land on the Golan Heights. By some estimates, the Palestinians will end up losing 30% of  of the land they occupy now, generally in a most uneasy cohabitation with the ever more rabidly religious and Palestinian hating settlers. The appalling injustice makes even staunch supporters of the existence of Israel such as myself wonder how long this situation can keep deteriorating and not end in total disaster.
And the world looks on…

 

Also see: