In any other country, the current American bribe to Israel, and the
latter's reluctance to accept it, in return for even a temporary end
to the theft of somebody else's property would be regarded as
preposterous.
Three billion dollars' worth of fighter bombers in return for a
temporary freeze in West Bank colonisation for a mere 90 days?
Not including East Jerusalem – so goodbye to the last chance of the east
of the holy city for a Palestinian capital – and, if Benjamin
Netanyahu so wishes, a rip-roaring continuation of settlement on Arab
land. In the ordinary sane world in which we think we live, there is
only one word for Barack Obama's offer: appeasement. Usually, our
lords and masters use that word with disdain and disgust.
Anyone who panders to injustice by one people against another people is
called an appeaser. Anyone who prefers peace at any price, let alone a
$3bn bribe to the guilty party – is an appeaser. Anyone who will not
risk the consequences of standing up for international morality
against territorial greed is an appeaser.
Those of us who did not want to invade Afghanistan were condemned as
appeasers. Those of us who did not want to invade Iraq were vilified as
appeasers. Yet that is precisely what Obama has done in his pathetic,
unbelievable effort to plead with Netanyahu for just 90 days of
submission to international law. Obama is an appeaser.
The fact that the West and its political and journalistic elites – I
include the ever more disreputable New York Times – take this
tomfoolery at face value, as if it can seriously be regarded as
another "step" in the "peace process", to put this mystical nonsense
"back on track", is a measure of the degree to which we have taken
leave of our senses in the Middle East.
It is a sign of just how far America (and, through our failure to
condemn this insanity, Europe) has allowed its fear of Israel – and
how far Obama has allowed his fear of Israeli supporters in Congress
and the Senate – to go.
Three billion dollars for three months is one billion dollars a month to
stop Israel's colonisation. That's half a billion dollars a
fortnight. That's $500m a week. That's $71,428,571 a day, or
$2,976,190 an hour, or $49,603 a minute.
And as well as this pot of gold, Washington will continue to veto any
resolutions critical of Israel in the UN and prevent "Palestine" from
declaring itself a state. It's worth invading anyone to get that much
cash to stage a military withdrawal, let alone the gracious gesture
of not building more illegal colonies for only 90 days while
furiously continuing illegal construction in Jerusalem at the same
time.
The Hillary Clinton version of this grotesquerie would be funny if it
was not tragic. According to the sharp pen of the NYT's Roger Cohen,
La Clinton has convinced herself that Palestine is "achievable,
inevitable and compatible with Israel's security". And what persuaded
Madame Hillary of this? Why, on a trip to the pseudo-Palestine
"capital" of Ramallah last year, she saw the Jewish settlements –
"the brutality of it was so stark" according to one of her officials –
but thought her motorcade was being guarded by the Israeli army
because "they're so professional". And then, lo and behold, they turned
out to be a Palestinian military guard, a "professional outfit" – and
all this changed Madame's views!
Quite apart from the fact that the Israeli army is a rabble, and that
indeed, the Palestinians are a rabble too, this "road to Ramallah"
incident led supporters of Madame, according to Cohen, to realise
that there had been a transition "from a self-pitying,
self-dramatising Palestinian psyche, with all the cloying
accoutrements of victimhood, to a self-affirming culture of
pragmatism and institution-building". Palestinian "prime minister" Salam
Fayyad, educated in the US so, naturally, a safe pair of hands, has
put "growth before grumbling, roads before ranting, and security
before everything".
Having been occupied by a brutal army for 43 years, those wretched,
dispossessed Palestinians, along with their cousins in the West Bank who
have been homeless for 62 years, have at last stopped ranting and
grumbling and feeling sorry for themselves and generally play-acting
in order to honour the only thing that matters. Not justice.
Certainly not democracy, but to the one God which Christians, Jews
and Muslims are all now supposed to worship: security.
Yes, they have joined the true brotherhood of mankind. Israel will be
safe at last. That this infantile narrative now drives the woman who
told us 11 years ago that Jerusalem was "the eternal and indivisible
capital of Israel" proves that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has
now reached its apogee, its most treacherous and final moment. And if
Netanyahu has any sense – I'm talking abut the Zionist, expansionist
kind – he will wait out the 90 days, then thumb his nose at the US.
In the three months of "good behaviour", of course, the Palestinians
will have to bite the bullet and sit down to "peace" talks which will
decide the future borders of Israel and "Palestine". But since
Israel controls 62 per cent of the West Bank this leaves Fayyad and
his chums about 10.9 per cent of mandate Palestine to argue about.
And at the cost of $827 a second, they'd better do some quick
grovelling. They will. We should all hang our heads in shame. But we
won't. It's not about people. It's about presentation. It's not about
justice. It's about "security". And cash. Lots of it. Goodbye
Palestine.