Trump kicked the Islamic world in the teeth today, and loved doing it.

 

"President Trump said Thursday that U.S. aid to the Palestinians won't continue until they're willing to "sit down and negotiate peace."

At a bilateral meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr. Trump said that the Palestinians "disrespected" the U.S. a week ago by not allowing Vice President Mike Pence to see them on his trip to the Middle East. He suggested, therefore, the aid money is on the table.

"This was never brought up by any negotiators," Trump said, "But it's brought up by me."

Mr. Trump alluded to his decision in December to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's official capital, breaking the U.S.'s longstanding policy that the city's final status should be determined by peace negotiations.

"We took Jerusalem off the table so we don't have to talk about it anymore," he said Thursday. "What I did with Jerusalem was my honor.""

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As I have written before Trump is a total disaster in the ME.  He has no policy other than that of the extreme nationalist right in Israel.  He is evidently completely in thrall to his daughter and her Zionist husband.  Perhaps his toady behavior toward Israel is a combination of that influence and a desire to suck up to all the people in New York City who treated him with contempt and hostility for many years.

He told the world today, while sitting next to his soul mate Bibi that the Palestinians are not truly human, have no human rights and that he has "taken Jerusalem off the table" so that the Palestinians will have to settle for some portion of the Holy Land allotted to them by Bibi and company.

He took the Holy City off the table?  Who gave this man the right to do such a thing?  pl 

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-holds-bilateral-meeting-with-netanyahu-at-davos-live-stream/

Comments

[Willybilly]

Blackmail and honey traps do wonders at times........, and the egotistical desire to stand out and be counted by a fool and a buffoon at best, produce such Caco maniacal decisions.

[Huckleberry]

I don't like this New Look either. But at least it ends the charade that the foreign policy establishment in this country has been playing for five decades.

And it fits into a larger pattern of dissident rightwing politics in Europe:

(1) Stoke nationalism as a means to fight off open-borders globalists and nonwhite invaders

(2) Go all-in on Israel to in order to reassure (and divide) anti-nationalists who control the corporate media and most finance (those who you refer to as "all the people in New York City who treated him with contempt and hostility for many years"), as well as provoke domestic elements of the anti-Zionist left.

(3) Blunt the inevitable charges of "antisemitism" while pursuing domestic policies aimed at breaking the power of ATPINYC.

Macron gets it:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/macron-says-he-wont-recognize-palestine-in-response-to-trumps-jerusalem-move/

Meanwhile, in across-the-Rhine Germania, the CDU and SPD will either wane or be forced to move towards the AFD's positions as a means of keeping it from entering government.

[Jony Kanuck]

Colonel,
Several other events are upcoming that Trump may want to tweet about: On her 17th birthday, Ahed Tamimi will be convicted (97% rate) in an Israeli Military court. Her crime is slapping an Israeli soldier. She's been called the Palestinian Joan of Arc so one wonders if she will be 'shot while trying to escape'. The situation in Gaza is getting so dire the Israelis are getting worried. An epimiologist told me that if you confine people, starve them in poor sanitation, it isn't if cholera breaks out, it's when.

[Gesine Hammerling]

Strictly speaking, it wasn't Trump who did anything off the table. It was Israel in 1967, and it had started planning to do so in the middle of 1963 (Shacham Study Group).

[LondonBob]

Max Blumenthal said Kushner and Haley pushed for the cutting off of the aid to the Palestinians. It does seem as if Trump is a product of the extreme Zionist environment of NY, even if this conflicts with his instinctive isolationism, but then his circle does consist of these two contradictory groups. No question who has the upper ground currently.

[Skeptical Enlightenment]

So, the Palestinians have a right to our money? I generally love your ME background and information on the combatants, but your tone regarding anything Israel sounds shrill and suspect to me.

[turcopolier]

Skeptical Enlightenment

I will call you Hasbara #1. Do the Israelis have a right to our money? They don't do a damned thing for us and never have. I was the head liaison to IDF GS intelligence for seven years. We never got anything from them that was worth anything. Their motto was "whatever you have is ours, and whatever we have is ours." You want to call me an anti-Semite? Well, try to have the courage to do so. did they teach you in hasbara school not to do that? Ah, perhaps you ARE the hasbara operation in the Izzie foreign ministry. I will make things clear for you. Unless you are an Israeli, I probably have more direct experience of Israel than you do. I have been to the country about 20 times, led government delegations there, did commercial business there, etc. There was once some hope that Israel might be what people like you want to believe it is. It is now a mono-cultural, hyper-nationalist little country that wants to be the absolute hegemon of the ME and is absolutely ruthless about using Zionist political power in the US to bend US policy to those goals. Is that clear enough? pl

[Matthew]

Col: The next steps will be interesting. Akin to the US government shutdown, will the US provide aid to Palestinian "security" forces, but not to teachers and other government workers?

[catherine]

Your comment sounds suspect to me. You must be either a Israel loyalist or ignorant of how the US Israeli Fifth Column has corrupted US ME foreign policy and destroyed whatever respect for the US that existed in the ME and other parts of the world prior to the abdominal US/Israel partnership.

[turcopolier]

matthew

Ah, you are asking of we might fund some "gendarmes" for the Israelis? pl

[turcopolier]

Gesine Hammerling

Trump has given them the green light for absolute intransigence. pl

[Brian Weston]

No doubt if we are talking about pure diplomacy then Trumqs stance is certainly imperfect. Sadly we are probably not . Trump/Pence represent many Christians who believe that Israel right is God given and equally the Islamic world believes the same. The 2 religions are diametrically oppose. The Bible teaches that Jerusalem will become a Cup of Trembling (Zechariah 12:2) Perhaps this time is now finally sadly upon us

[Richardstevenhack]

Given that we give Israel a minimum of three billion a year (actually more, including additional millions for their anti-missile defense systems), it's obscene to ask if Palestinians have a right to our money.

Not to mention that the entire planet in the UN usually votes against Israel, and only Israel and the US vote for Israel, and the US vetoes every negative UN Security Council Resolution that Israel violates anyway.

"Israel" is nothing but six million fake Jews and a few fake Jew billionaires in the US. I use the term "fake Jews" because most of them have nothing Semitic in their background being Europeans who converted on orders of some king centuries ago. The real Semites are the Palestinians who converted to Islam centuries ago on orders of some king. So the descendants of the real Jews are being persecuted by fake Jews.

It would be hilarious if it weren't for the cost in lives and US tax dollars and the threat of WWIII because of this racist, colonialist, imperialist, fascist, and terrorist state being run by Zionist fanatics.

[turcopolier]

Brian Weston

You don't get it. this is not about f-----g diplomacy. this is about endorsing the continuing military occupation of a conquered people and abandonment of any sort of moral responsibility for that situation as the major funder and armorer of the occupiers. What is missed by many is the forever unwillingness of the Palestinians and behind them the Muslims world-wide to accept cession of Jerusalem by American fiat. pl

[turcopolier]

james

No. I heartily approve of Trump's economic program and much of what he does in the world except for in the ME where he acts like a bloody baboon. pl

[SmoothieX12]

Trump/Pence represent many Christians who believe that Israel right is God given and equally the Islamic world believes the same.

In other words Old Testament (born-again) fanatical Evangelicals aka Christian Zionists--a fertile "soil" in the US for growing rabidly neocon constituencies, thus furthering Israel's control of crucial American political institutions. 26 standing ovations to Bibi at joint session of US (???) Congress are a perfect illustration to the real state of the affairs in US foreign policy, which has very little to do with actual American national interests. But than again, what "nation"?

[Kooshy]

The Izze minders circle around the POTOS was so far successful to kicked out, or/and is kicking out the American nationalist circle around him, who well instrumental and useful to have Trump elected. In my observation this has happened in every recent election I have seen. The president gets elected on non interventionists FP/ and some BS internal ones. After election with help of media a cleansing period starts, which takes the first few months, onc the cleansing is done US goes back to continued interventionism FP and extreme pro-Israel policies. This country has been captured from whithin and by balls, by her own pro Israel ideologues and neocons, that is what is making a great number of flyovers very angry and very dangerous. Just check what happened with regard to Jewish Americans in a Montana village recently.

[SmoothieX12]

US Israeli Fifth Column has corrupted US ME foreign policy

It is not limited to just ME policy.

[Bill Herschel]

How did Trump's remarks play with Erdogan and the Turkish "street"?

Turkey does appear to be "on the table".

[dilbert dogbert]

The Palestinians have no negotiating position except to accept that the Izzies will help them move to whichever Muslim country that will have them. If that is the only solution then all the Muslim countries have to be at the table. Good luck with that.

[LeaNder]

I use the term "fake Jews" because most of them have nothing Semitic in their background being Europeans who converted on orders of some king centuries ago

Which king is this "some king"? Rsh?

[JohnsonR]

Surely something has to break soon. Trump and his pro-Israeli and Israeli friends have smashed the shabby pretence that the US regime cared a jot for the fate of Palestinians, or was anything other than wholly in the Israeli corner, and that will put huge strain on the rulers of Islamic countries that have also been pretending (somewhat) to care about the Palestinians and about Jerusalem, whilst shamelessly collaborating with Israel in order to curry favour in Washington and protect themselves from the costs and dangers of standing up to Israel.

Since 1973 the muslims have refused to admit final defeat in Palestine, whilst the Israelis have steadily built facts on the ground that exploited their actual victory in that war and in the subsequent political and other conflicts over Palestine (in large part based upon their dominance in Washington).

Are we now building to a final crisis in which either the muslims must break, and face up to final abject and probably permanent, as much as anything ever is in this world, defeat in Palestine and in Jerusalem, or they must rise up in outrage and sweep away the Saudi and other collaborationist regimes? Trump and his Zionist friends clearly believe a little more pressure will achieve the former. There's surely a chance that they might instead be rather upset with the actual results of their policies. If so, the corrupt and useless PA and the noxious Saudis seem likely to be first to the wall, with Jordan and Egypt close behind.

[jonst]

Comparing slapping some one, who did not punch back, to the myth of Joan of Arc is a bit of stretch.

[Jony Kanuck]

Colonel,
I noted with interest that Trump thought he pushed the negotiations along by 'taking Jerusalem off the table'. Having negotiating tactics for real estate deals doesn't make up for an abysmal lack of knowledge about the mid east & the Moslem religion. I'm the with radical Palestinians that it's a blessing in disguise; bye, bye corrupt Palestinian Authority & can you hear the 'wailing & gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness'? That's the sound of liberal Jews who can no longer pretend that they are not in a 'basket to hell' driven by Netanyoo. We'll know in a couple days whether the first two corruption charges against Bibi proceed to court in Israel. In court so far it's come that not only do Bibi & his wife want a lot of money, Bibi wants a steady supply of cases of cigars & whiskey delivered. Pretty good for a man who is said to see himself as God's instrument to deliver the Jewish people from another holocaust!

[nq]

Personally, I didn't take Trump's remarks seriously. The position of the Palestinians is already very similar to that of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto. They have to live that to the end. The help is coming from far away, and slowly. One after another, the plans for breaking up the Middle East are failing. Sooner or later the Israeli policy of continual war will fail (see Avi Shlaim, the Iron Wall). Israel is already afraid of Hizbullah's missiles.