Palestine - Carter Threatens Chaos For Obama, Trump and US Foreign Policy

[Published 30 November 2016]


Former US President Jimmy Carter has urged current President Barack Obama to:

1. betray another former President - George Bush,

2. destroy America’s reputation for integrity and trustworthiness and

3. thwart President-elect Donald Trump in attempting to resolve the 100 years old conflict between Arabs and Jews

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times Carter has proffered the following advice to Obama as his eight year term of office is ending:

“The simple but vital step this administration must take before its term expires on Jan. 20 is to grant American diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine, as 137 countries have already done, and help it achieve full United Nations membership.”

The following calamitous consequences for American foreign policy would ensue should Obama accept Carter’s irresponsible advice:

1. President Bush’s 2003 Roadmap and 13 years of American diplomacy would be trashed.

Endorsed by the United Nations, European Union and Russia and accepted by Israel (with 14 reservations) and the then Palestinian Authority (since disbanded on 3 January 2013) - the Roadmap provides for:

“A settlement, negotiated between the parties,” that “will result in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors”

2. Obama would break Bush’s following written commitment made to Israel on 14 April 2004:

“The United States remains committed to my vision and to its implementation as described in the roadmap. The United States will do its utmost to prevent any attempt by anyone to impose any other plan.”

Any such State would not be “democratic” - its current “President” now being in the 11th year of a four year term - whilst two separate claimants - the PLO and Hamas - engage in a bitter internecine struggle to become the recognised Government of the Palestinian Arabs despite elections not having been held to legitimise the authority of either since 2007.

3. Carter’s following call in May 2015 will remain unimplemented and a distant pipe dream:

“We hope that sometime we’ll see elections all over the Palestinian area and east Jerusalem and Gaza and also in the West Bank,”

4. Obama will break his pledge to Israel to require any such State to first recognise Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.

5. Obama would be recognising a State which has no legal basis for existence in international law since it fails to comply with the provisions of customary international law as expressed in the Montevideo Convention 1934.

6. Full United Nations membership under Article 4 of the UN Charter is only open to peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter.

7. No such State is “peace loving” nor would it ever accept the obligations contained in article 80 of the Charter preserving the rights vested in the Jewish people under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine

Ironically Carter hit upon the clue to finally resolving the conflict when addressing Jordan and Jordan’s late monarch King Hussein in another op-ed in Time Magazine on 11 October 1982:

“Hussein is personally courageous but an extremely timid man in political matters. That timidity derives almost inevitably from the inherent weakness of Jordan. As a nation it is a contrivance, arbitrarily devised by a few strokes of the pen”

Jordan - 78% of former Palestine - originally designated as part of the location for the Jewish National Home - still remains the key to resolving the Jewish-Arab conflict.

Obama should reject Carter’s latest disastrous advice and leave Trump to try and end the long-running conflict which has eluded all American Presidents.

Palestine - Trump Triumph Requires Direct Negotiations Between Jordan And Israel

[Published 24 November 2016]


President-elect Donald Trump has used his greatest media critic - the New York Times - to reiterate his determination to broker a deal to end the 100 years old Jewish-Arab conflict - suggesting his son-in law Jared Kushner might be just the person to advance Trump’s declared mission.

Trump’s legendary deal-making prowess sets him apart from all preceding American presidents — from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama - Democrats and Republicans - liberals and conservatives alike — who have tried to end this intractable conflict and earn themselves an honoured place in the annals of history.

Instead - their legacy of failure remains a silent reminder that Presidential power and prestige is of little value in moving Jews and Arabs to achieve a historic reconciliation.

Kushner possesses the firepower to advance Trump’s agenda following this ground-breaking message from Trump’s advisor Jason Greenblatt - co-chairman of the Trump campaign’s Israel Advisory Committee:

“It is certainly not Mr. Trump’s view that settlement activities should be condemned and that it is an obstacle for peace, because it is not an obstacle for peace.”

Trump’s position runs counter to the view expressed by the international community that Jews have no legal right to live in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) - an area comprising some 4% of the former territory of Palestine - a claim that remains untested in any court of law.

Such conclusion ignores the rights vested in the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Judea and Samaria under article 6 of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

To call the international community’s position “a travesty of justice” is an understatement.

The harm such flawed viewpoint has caused in prolonging this long-running conflict is inestimable.

Kushner will also be fortified by the following commitment made by President Bush to Israel in his letter dated 14 April 2004 - overwhelmingly endorsed at the time by the Congress by 502 votes to 12:

“In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”

Israel’s current negotiating partner - the Palestine Liberation Organisation - has consistently refused to accept the inevitability of any territorial subdivision of Judea and Samaria since the Bush-Congress pronouncement. There appears to be no chance of any change of heart by the PLO to please a Trump administration.

Trump will therefore need to find another Arab interlocutor to replace the PLO to negotiate with Israel on the allocation of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. Sovereignty there has remained unresolved since Brexit 1948 - the year Great Britain pulled out of Palestine and left the United Nations to deal with the consequences of the invasion of Western Palestine the very next day by the armies of six neighbouring Arab States.

Jordan was the last Arab State to occupy Judea and Samaria between 1948 and 1967.

Jordan and Israel - at peace since 1994 - both enjoy longstanding American financial and diplomatic support - which can be leveraged by a deal-driven Trump to induce Jordan joining Israel as its negotiating partner on the territorial carve up of Judea and Samaria.

Without this diplomatic breakthrough Trump’s dream of pulling off the deal of the century will remain just a dream.

Palestine - Brexit 1922 Key To Trump Resolving Arab-Jewish Conflict

[Published 16 November 2016]


President-elect Donald Trump has lost no time in stressing his desire to end the Arab-Jewish conflict which has seen many proposals in the last 100 years fall by the wayside as a result of unrelenting Arab rejection to any Jewish State in former Palestine.

The first such proposal came in 1922 when Great Britain went back on its promise made to the Jewish people in 1920 at both the San Remo Conference and the Treaty of Sevres - by restricting the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in only 22% of the territory of Palestine covered by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine (“Brexit 1922”).

The Jews reluctantly accepted this proposal but the Arabs were not prepared to accept self-determination in only 78% of Palestine - today called Jordan. They wanted the remaining 22% - today called Israel, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) Jerusalem and Gaza - and have maintained this position until today.

Proposals to end the conflict recommended by:

1. the 1937 Peel Commission,

2. the 1947 United Nations Partition Resolution,

3. the 1993 Oslo Accords,

4. the 2002 Bush Roadmap and

5. Israeli offers in 2000/1 and 2008

have been consigned to the dustbin of history.

For President-elect Trump - resolving this conflict becomes the ultimate deal maker’s challenge to accomplish.

Trump lost no time in making his intentions very clear - just three days after his stunning Presidential victory:

“As a deal maker, I’d like to do… the deal that can’t be made. And do it for humanity’s sake.”

To understand how Trump might pull off this deal one need look no further than the views of John Bolton - a controversial front runner with Rudy Giuliani to be Trump’s Secretary of State.

In an op-ed piece in the Washington Times on 16 April 2014 Bolton presciently wrote:

“Instead of pursuing the misguided notion of “two states,” U.S. policymakers should instead ask what other solutions are possible that would provide Palestinians with personal dignity and security, economic growth and the prospect of living under a responsible, responsive government.

Concededly, there is no perfect alternative, but the most attractive prospect is to attach the disparate Palestinian communities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to their neighboring contiguous Arab states, Jordan and Egypt, respectively. We might call this a “three-state solution.”

After the late 1940s collapse of the League of Nations’ Middle East mandates, Jordan successfully governed the West Bank until the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Today, Israel, Jordan and Palestinians should draw new West Bank boundaries embodying Security Council Resolution 242’s “land for peace” formula.

Jordan could, with relative ease, resume sovereignty over those portions of the West Bank not incorporated into Israel”

Jordan - part of the problem - must undoubtedly become part of the solution.

Bolton however conceded:

“Gaza is a harder problem, but incorporating it into Egypt is clearly a better solution than allowing it to remain the headquarters for Hamas and other terrorist groups.”

An easier solution could see Gaza connected to the West Bank by an overhead expressway or underground road containing adequate security safeguards.

Trump possesses the firepower to broker a successful deal by:

1. offering continued - and perhaps increased - funding to Egypt and Jordan and
2. providing guarantees to defend Egypt and Jordan’s territorial integrity against Islamic State and others who might seek to intimidate and undermine their sovereignty.

Trump can indeed drain the swamp of Arab hatred and rejectionism and succeed where so many others have failed.

Brexit 2016 was the precursor to Trump’s Presidential triumph.

Brexit 1922 can serve as the foundation for Trump to pull off the deal of the century.

Trump Must Confirm Bush-Congress Endorsed Commitments To Israel

[Published 10 November 2016]


Donald Trump’s stunning Presidential victory - coupled with the Republican Party retaining control of the Congress - presents Trump with the opportunity to restore America’s tarnished reputation and integrity by affirming he will honour the commitments made to Israel by President Bush in his letter dated 14 April 2004 - overwhelmingly endorsed by the then Congress by 502 votes to 12.

Those Bush-Congress commitments were seriously undermined by President Obama and his two Secretaries of State - Hillary Clinton and John Kerry - just one of many American disastrous policy failures in the Middle East during Obama’s term of office.

The Bush-Congress Commitments were crucial to:

1. Israel’s unilateral, unconditional and complete disengagement from Gaza in 2005 and

2.Israel’s agreement to resume negotiations with the Palestinian Authority as publicly declared by Israel’s then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the international conference called by President Bush in Annapolis in 2007.

“In the course of the negotiations, we will use previous agreements as a point of departure. U.N.Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map, and the letter of President Bush to the prime minister of Israel dated April 14, 2004.”

Israel has expressed concern that President Obama and current Secretary of State John Kerry might be planning to further undercut the following Bush Commitment at the United Nations or in the international arena during the period leading up to Trump and the new Congress being installed into power on 20 January 2017.

“... the United States remains committed to my vision and to its implementation as described in the roadmap. The United States will do its utmost to prevent any attempt by anyone to impose any other plan”

Obama and Kerry have not leapt to defend Israel’s refusal to take part in an international conference currently being planned by France in December - designed to depart from the clear negotiating guidelines laid down in the Bush Roadmap and Bush’s 2004 letter - as subsequently clarified at the Annapolis Conference.

Obama has remained mum on using America’s power of veto at the the UN Security Council to resist any efforts to depart from the terms of the Bush Roadmap or substitute some different negotiating process outside the Roadmap and the Bush-Congress endorsed commitments.

President-elect Trump made his views clearly known on America upholding commitments to its allies during the election campaign:

”... your friends need to know that you will stick by the agreements that you have with them. You’ve made that agreement, you have to stand by it and the world will be a better place.”

Senator Marco Rubio - who unsuccessfully challenged Trump for Republican Party Presidential nominee but who has now been reelected to the Senate for a further term by a large majority - pledged during that campaign:

“I will revive the common-sense understandings reached in the 2004 Bush-Sharon letter and build on them to help ensure Israel has defensible borders.

Israel, our great friend and the one true democracy in the Middle East has been snubbed and criticized by an administration that lacks moral clarity.”

Moral clarity demands that Trump immediately inform Obama that no action should be undertaken by Obama between now and January that would in any way depart from or undermine the commitments made by former President George Bush and the Congress to Israel in 2004.

Trump also needs to unequivocally state that his Administration intends to fully uphold those Bush-Congress commitments.

Draining the swamp and making America great again will be given a huge impetus if Trump makes these policy declarations without obfuscation or delay.

Obama's Islamic State Policy Uncorks Shiite Genie In Iraq

[Published 31 October 2016]


President Obama’s decision 14 days ago to approve Iraqi and Peshmerga forces undertaking the liberation of Mosul has well and truly blown up in his face with the news that the Iran funded Shiite Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) have now joined in the attack.

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter certainly did not anticipate this development when announcing Obama’s decision:

“The United States and the rest of the international coalition stand ready to support Iraqi Security Forces, Peshmerga fighters and the people of Iraq in the difficult fight ahead.”

Neither did Operation Inherent Resolve Commander Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend who stated:

“But to be clear, the thousands of ground combat forces who will liberate Mosul are all Iraqis,”

The involvement of 15,000 Shiite PMU militiamen — designated by the Iraqi Government as “an independent military formation” - could aggravate already existing sectarian divisions in Iraq.

This could eventually lead to a Shiite land grab of territory liberated by the PMU.

The retention of land conquered by the Peshmerga forces is also a realistic possibility.

Iraq as a distinct and separate territorial unit could be in real danger of being carved up.

Obama’s inability to remove Assad from power in Syria during the last five years has been a spectacular Presidential policy failure.

Obama must be reeling after further reading on that:

“Ahmed al-Assadi, a spokesman for the Iraq-sanctioned paramilitary known as Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), said on Saturday that they will fight alongside Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s forces in Syria after finishing their battle against ISIS in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Al Arabiya News Channel reported…"

Obama’s inability to remove Assad from power in Syria during the last five years has been a spectacular Presidential policy failure.

His justified hatred of Assad — propped up by Russia and Iran - has seen him refuse to accept Russia’s invitation to jointly seek a United Nations Security Council Resolution to first take military action against Islamic State in Syria and then try to resolve Syria’s future after Islamic State has been defeated there.

Obama could not fail to be also very worried about Al-Arabiya’s further report:

”... Jaafar al-Husseini, a spokesman for the Hezbollah Brigades, said they launched an offensive Saturday along with other large militias toward the town of Tal Afar, which had a Shiite majority before it fell to ISIS [Islamic State] in 2014. Iranian forces are advising the fighters and Iraqi aircraft are providing airstrikes”

Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan said on 30 October that Ankara - which already has a military presence in Iraq — would act if forces from the PMU abuse civilians in their fight for the town of Tal Afar.

“Tal Afar is a very sensitive issue for us. We definitely do not regard it [Shia militia involvement] positively in Tal Afar and Sinjar,”

Tal Afar is a totally Turkmen city, with half Shia and half Sunni Muslims. We do not judge people by their religious affiliation, we regard them all as Muslims.

“But if Hashid Shaabi [PMU] terrorises the region, our response would be different.”

In other parts of Iraq retaken from Islamic State - such as Fallujah and Ramadi - there have been allegations of Shia fighters mistreating Sunni civilians.

Iraq is fast becoming a tinderbox containing different elements and interests that could set Iraq ablaze — should Islamic State eventually be defeated in Mosul.

Obama’s decision to commence the attack on Mosul appears to have been made without any real thought to the possible involvement of the PMU and Turkey.

Why Obama thought it that urgent to commence the battle for Mosul at this late stage of his Presidency is a question that will be increasingly asked over the coming week
— especially by Clinton and Trump.