What an absolute joke ! Donald Trump, the president of the United States called a press conference and with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu standing at his side, announced their joint plan to solve the problem of finding a home for the displaced Palestinians now existing within the borders of the Israeli state.
Trump just happens to be only the third United States president ever facing impeachment for abuse of office and Netanyahu has been indicted for corruption and is fighting moves to make him face a judge and jury. His hold on office is under threat.
What is so ludicrous about this plan is the absolute lack of a single Arab joining their press conference to give it support. Two men who badly needed a distraction to take media attention away from their travails cobbled together a plan that gave the Israeli state what it wanted and melded the scraps left over into a disjointed framework they had the effrontery to describe as a Palestinian state.
To add insult to injury. The Palestinians stated wish to have their capital in East Jerusalem has been granted, but Jerusalem will be the Israeli capital and the small area allocated to Palestinian control will be the less salubrious neighbourhood with boundary limits.
The Arabs have had a raw deal from the west over a very long time. They fought with the victors in the first world war on the promise of an Arab state which was denied when the Middle East was carved up after the war by the victorious powers. Then the second world war delivered the Nazi Holocaust and many European nations faced the shame of how complicit their citizens had been during the occupation in sending Jews to the concentration camps. The survivors were unwanted in Europe and imposing a homeland in Palestine seemed an act of contrition which got universal support.
Israel has fought - and won - several wars against surrounding Arab armies and regards the Palestinians living within its borders as a " Fifth Column " that requires strict suppression. A peace deal has seemed close to agreement on several occasions but old enmities run deep and the Palestinians find themselves an oppressed people in what is now a Jewish state. It seems to be the hope of the Israelis that this oppression will eventually cause them to migrate out of Israel and find a new home in the surrounding Arab countries.
This Trump and Netanyahu peace plan is going nowhere. The Israeli war machine is fed and supplied by the United States and consequently it has an " edge " over surrounding armies. As long as that continues it will survive in the Middle East and be close to perpetual war with its neighbours. The only hope of a settlement rests on some change of world power in the future which is less supportive of Israel and demands the contested land be divided into two states.
While the world chess board holds its present power pattern real change in the Middle East is highly unlikely !
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