The writer is a Senior Consultant at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Conflict, Cooperation and Security, University of Birmingham
The absurdity begins with Jared Kushner — Trump’s son-in-law and a Zionist fanatic — being the author of the proposal. He accomplished the feat by blatantly excluding one of the two parties to the conflict.
Kushner has warned the Palestinians that the proposal offers them the last chance to statehood and therefore they should shut up and “let go of past fairytales that quite frankly will never happen”.
But why won’t they, one may ask. After all, the fairytale of a Zionist state in the heart of a Muslim land did come true eventually, thanks to the “visionary” ancestors of our dear friends presently lamenting Brexit woes.
The ‘peace’ plan basically offers the Palestinians an absurd conditional route to carving out a state in a patchy territory within illegal Israeli settlements, and a capital not in East Jerusalem but rather on the eastern fringes. Furthermore, the security control of the eastern border with Jordan has been handed over to Israel on a silver platter.
Trump has of course already shown undying loyalty to Netanyahu and the Christian Evangelicals (read undying loyalty to himself) by shifting the US embassy to Jerusalem, massively slashing humanitarian aid to the long-suffering Palestinians, recognising Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and declaring illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank consistent with the international law. The Mideast Peace Plan is the icing on the cake.
The question is not whether the plan will reach fruition or miraculously pave the way for regional peace; it will not. The Arab League has rejected it and Palestine has announced suspension of all ties with Israel and the US.
The question instead is more fundamental. The proposal should be seen as a manifestation of how America’s military unilateralism since 9/11 has mutated into something more sinister.
The US is now forcing one-sided “peace” plans down the throats by oversimplifying complex problems — for this reason, among others, Pakistan should be wary of Trump’s mediation offers on Kashmir.
If racist individuals like Mr Trump — by dint of their country’s global power — are to become (dis)honest brokers in violation of UNSC resolutions, then the non-performing UN should pack its bags and spare us the farce.
As a bully siding with bullies, Trump not only supports Netanyahu but has also failed to openly denounce Narendra Modi’s ongoing brutal six-month long lockdown in Occupied Kashmir and his new anti-Muslim citizenship law in mainland India.
Israel’s insidious strategy of slow and steady ethnic cleansing has been adopted by the Indians in IOK over the last many years. The Modi Sarkar has also wholeheartedly embraced the Israeli strategy of forcing demographic changes in IOK as well as in mainland India.
Trump has avoided categorical condemnation of the abrogation of Article 370 and 25-A as well as the CAA and the NRC. Analysts argue that he is willing to validate Modi and Netanyahu’s illegal actions for electoral gains in 2020.
Analysts also tend to explain the EU Parliament’s latest spineless act to delay the anti-India vote in terms of economic interdependence. However, the full explanation does not end there.
Post-9/11 Islamophobia is a major part of the explanation. It is alive and well in Europe and America, and Modi’s Hindutva is adding fuel to the anti-Muslim fires in India.
The Indian Home Minister and BJP President, Amit Shah, has labeled Muslims as “termites”. Academic research shows discrimination and dehumanisation are the earlier stages of the process of genocide.
Despite their liberal, secular credentials, chauvinistic hatred lurks just beneath the surface in the western and Indian bastions of democracy. This is clearly reflected in Trump and Modi’s highhanded approach to longstanding complex and multilayered disputes.
Trump’s deal of the century is actually a ‘warning of the century’. By dehumanising the “other” and internalising a false sense of racial superiority, anti-Muslim leaders like Trump, Netanyahu and Modi can unleash unspeakable crimes against humanity.
By avoiding categorical condemnation of such leaders, advanced liberal democracies, as well as US allies in the Middle East, are in effect supporting systematic ethnic cleansing of Muslim communities in IOK and Palestine.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 4th, 2020.
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