Lara Marlowe: Trump’s Middle East policy left to Jewish relatives and friends

President-elect sees ‘peace’ between Israel and the Palestinians as the ultimate deal

It is a sign of Donald Trump’s megalomania that he thinks he can succeed where his predecessors failed, in making peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

"I would love to be able to be the one that made peace with Israel and the Palestinians," the US president-elect told the New York Times on November 22nd. "I would love that, that would be such a great achievement. Because nobody's been able to do it."

Trump seems to think bringing peace to the Middle East is like scoring a coup in the property market. "That's the ultimate deal," he told the Wall Street Journal on November 11th. "As a deal maker, I'd like to do . . . the deal that can't be made."

The best clues to Trump's thinking are provided by two texts: an address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) on March 21st, 2016, and a position paper issued by his advisers, David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt, six days before the presidential election.

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The speech was written with the help of Trump's orthodox Jewish and staunchly pro-Israel son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Trump was applauded when he announced, "My daughter, Ivanka, is about to have a beautiful Jewish baby."

The speech includes a fierce attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran, a crowd-pleaser with Aipac, and a tirade about "the utter weakness and incompetence of the United Nations. the worst thing to ever happen to Israel".

The audience applauded Trump for promising to veto "any attempt by the UN to impose its will on the Jewish state". Since 1978, the US has vetoed 44 UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israel.

Israel's "incredible" and "generous" offers have been repeatedly rejected by Palestinians, Trump claimed. He concluded that he could make peace. "You see, I know about deal-making. That's what I do. I wrote The Art of the Deal." Following on his ugly portrayal of Palestinian "terrorists," peace sounded like a non sequitur.

Now there is speculation that Kushner may be given a position in the Trump administration. In his New York Times interview, Trump spoke of the 35-year-old real estate magnate with no experience of government or diplomacy in the same breath as an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

“I think [Kushner] would be very good at it,” Trump said. “I mean he knows it so well. He knows the region, knows the people, knows the players.”

Footsie with neo-Nazis

Trump's Jewish relatives and friendships sit uneasily with his hero status on the anti-Semitic "alt-right". On the eve of the election, the Washington Post opinion writer Dana Milbank chronicled Trump's "footsie with American neo-Nazis" in an article titled "Anti-Semitism Is No Longer an Undertone of Trump's Campaign. It's the Melody."

Trump told the New York Times that he "disavowed" the "alt-right"movement.

During the campaign, Trump said he would appoint property lawyers Friedman and Greenblatt, who, like Kushner, are orthodox Jews and staunch supporters of Israel, as White House Israel policy advisers. The Jerusalem Post reported that Friedman is "a leading candidate" to become Trump's ambassador to Israel. Their position paper was published by "Jewish Insider" and "Haaretz," on November 2nd.

"Approximately seven months ago, we were blessed to have been tapped by Donald J Trump to be his top advisors with respect to the State of Israel," Friedman and Greenblatt wrote in their position paper. "Each of these positions have been discussed with Mr Trump and the Trump campaign, and most have been stated, in one form or another, by Mr Trump."

The paper states clearly that, if elected, Trump would lift restrictions on the $38 billion in military assistance to Israel over the next decade. President Barack Obama had agreed to the aid on condition that Israel not request still more money.

It also says: “The US should view the effort to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) Israel as inherently anti-Semitic and take strong measures . . . to thwart” such actions.

The BDS campaign demands an end to the occupation of the West Bank and equality for Palestinians in Israel.

Israel's counter-campaign has succeeded in criminalising support for BDS in France and at least four US states. Pro-Palestinian groups who support BDS in Austria, Britain, France, Germany and Ireland have had their bank accounts closed.

Trump promised Aipac he would "move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem". The promise was repeated by Ivanka Trump in Israel in October, and by Friedman and Greenblatt last month.

There could hardly be a more inflammatory gesture than moving the embassy to Jerusalem, which is also holy to Muslims, and which Palestinians also regard as their capital.

Occupying power

Friedman and Greenblatt’s paper promises to maintain “defensible borders” for Israel – code words for the refusal to return to Israel’s 1967 borders, as required by UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338. They reiterate Trump’s rejection, in a tweet from the Republican convention in July, of “the false notion that Israel is an occupier”.

Some 700,000 Israelis live on land seized from Palestinians since the 1967 war. Sixty per cent of the West Bank is reserved for sole Israeli use. The 40 per cent accessible to Palestinians is segmented by 500 Israeli checkpoints. Trump would have us believe this does not constitute occupation.

When he was asked last April what he would do about the settlements, Trump turned to Greenblatt and said, “How do you feel about that, Jason, the settlements?” Greenblatt said they should stay.

Clearly, Trump is not going to ask Israel to give up the settlements, "the single, central, most fundamental reason for the breakdown of the peace process," in the words of Avi Shlaim, emeritus professor at St Antony's College Oxford.

Trump may, like earlier US presidents, attempt to impose Israel’s vision of a Palestinian state comprised of small, disconnected enclaves under Israeli hegemony. If the Palestinians refuse, they will be blamed, again.

We have seen this movie before. The “deal” that Donald Trump dreams of clinching will be as worthless as a diploma from Trump University.

Lara Marlowe is Paris Correspondent. Her essay, "We Are (Still) Living in Cages", appears in 'Israel, Islam & the West', the new issue of 'Irish Pages' (irishpages.org).