Issues Under Fire: U.S. No Longer Considered An Honest Broker for Peace in the Middle East
Consider the following a follow-up to what was posted and shared yesterday. Despite worldwide warnings, the Trump administration is standing firm in its defense of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. With international condemnation now flooding in from every corner the world, the United States is being called out as a dishonest broker for peace in the region.
As a result, the U.S. has been placed on notice by the Palestinian people that its presence at the bargaining table will no longer be acceptable. If the Palestinians make good on their threat to exclude the U.S. from taking part in future negotiations, the biggest loser moving forward will be the Israeli government. Make no mistake about it, this is huge. This is a game changer, because the harm done may be irreparable.
Observers familiar with this issue view these latest developments as a severe, self-inflicted crisis that'll have long-term consequences and they'll all be bad. If the United States finds itself sidelined and isolated from the peace process, that resulting vacuum of leadership could lead Palestinians to reconsider a powerful non-violent option. But in the wake of changing U.S. policy, Palestinian spokespeople are now advancing the idea of a one-state solution and simply fighting for equal rights. If done so like Dr. Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi, they'll gain and maintain international attention and support. The very two things that could be detrimental to Israelis satisfied with the status quo.
If Palestinians and Israeli Arabs opt for this non-violent approach to achieve equality as citizens in the only "Democracy in the Middle East", anyone denying these basic rights will have a difficult time defending their position. But it gets worse. To deny equal rights to all of its citizens would expose a two or more tier system of citizenship. This by definition is not Democracy and it won't be accepted as such by the international community.
Thus, the charge of Israel being an apartheid-like state could begin to garner traction, thereby leaving itself open to international sanctions. And since the United States no longer has the credibility to lead and influence international issues as it has in the past, safeguarding its only ally in the Middle East could prove difficult at best. If all else fails, Israel could choose the nuclear option and just ethnically clean the nation by forcing all non-Jews out. But we all know how that'll be viewed by a world watching closely. The horrible optics will be impossible for the Israeli government to recover from.
Bottom line: Whatever the Trump administration may have intended to accomplish with this radical shift in U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the immediate result, as well as the long-term outlook, appears to have missed its mark miserably. But, this should have been expected from a leader so ill-informed, ill-prepared and intellectually ill-equipped to engage in international affairs on behalf on this country. Podcast below.
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