Israel

Scene: the beach at Tel Aviv. Jews disport themselves in the waves, soundtracked by a Yiddish-absurdist tinkling reminiscent of Curb Your Enthusiasm. ‘Attention all swimmers! Attention all swimmers!’ the lifeguard shouts into the megaphone. ‘Stay to the right — it’s much safer!’ ‘Bibi?’ Two young men interrupts their game of beach tennis. ‘Mr Prime Minister, what are you doing here?’ ‘Doing what I always do, keeping you safe,’ Netanyahu says. The nation’s lifeguard explains that he’s ‘supposed to start another shift’ on September 17, but it’s up to the two young men. They’re secular, Ashkenazis from Tel Aviv, the kind who despise Netanyahu and Likud’s chauvinism. They ask about the alternatives.

Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar should have been allowed to enter Israel, even if they hate it, and deny its right to exist. Even if they agitate for its destruction which, given the neighborhood, means agitating for the mass murder of Jewish civilians because they are Jewish. Even if, though of course this is simply unthinkable in both cases, they hate Jews in general. And even though, instead of joining last week’s 72-strong bipartisan congressional delegation, which bipartisanned its way optimistically around meetings with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders of various parties, they instead set up their own visit with the globally renowned and seriously named Humpty Dumpty Institute, so they could malign Israel as much as they possibly could.

Jared Kushner’s two-day ‘Peace to Prosperity’ workshop in Bahrain, the administration claims, was the first step in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians sent delegations. The roll-out of the strategy paper that preceded it was met with near silence. America’s regional partners provided only lukewarm support to Kushner’s efforts and, not least, the workshop was amateurishly misnamed. Kushner believes it’s actually ‘prosperity to peace’ — not the other way around. The workshop’s results, or lack of them, were predictable. But criticism among those who have been down this road before has been muted, partly because of Kushner’s quiet but focused effort to solicit their views.

The problem of resolving the tangle of conflict in the Middle East is one that has defeated generations of the world’s most experienced statesmen, and resisted the blandishments of its greatest orators. So who better now to step in than a well-groomed thirtysomething New York property developer, offering the 'deal of the century'? There were some hiccups to start with, sure. Jared Kushner launched his 'Peace to Prosperity' workshop in Bahrain with a cocktail party – alcohol not being traditionally the thing with Muslims. And it was boycotted from the off by the Palestinian Authority. Still, he had a bash.

There’s not much going on in the buzzing new village of Trump Heights. Turning off route 959, which runs from northern Israel to the Golan Heights, it wasn’t quite clear at first why our Israeli guide had taken us to an abandoned farm field. Standing in the middle of some flattened yellow grass, however, we saw it: a big (yuge) green sign with bold gold letters in Hebrew and English, the Israeli and American flags crossed in friendship - ‘TRUMP HEIGHTS’. It must have been 10 feet tall. The latest settlement in the Golan was a gift from Benjamin Netanyahu to the President, as thanks for US recognition that the disputed region is Israeli territory.

Beirut It seems that American planes were actually on their way to bomb Iranian targets last night when they were called back. That’s what the New York Times was told by a senior official in the administration, speaking anonymously of course. ‘Planes were in the air and ships were in position, but no missiles had been fired when word came to stand down.’ Was this President Trump or the Pentagon? It’s possible that the US military suddenly learned of a vulnerability in some part of their forces spread around the Middle East, in Bahrain, in Iraq, or in Syria, but then again, they’ve had time to prepare. More likely, this was Trump.

It’s not every day that global diplomat and ex-Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt makes a fool of himself on Twitter. On some days, Carl’s too busy to tweet. But on Friday, the Stockholm speculator went full wag-the-dog. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1139117308838891520 ‘Are there state or non-state actors that have an interest in provoking a conflict between Tehran and the US? It is difficult to see any other motive behind the tanker attack.

It is with a heavy heart and a nice calming feeling that I find myself agreeing with Rashida Tlaib. Tlaib claims to get a ‘calming feeling’ every time she thinks about how the Arabs of British-controlled Palestine gave Jews a ‘safe haven’ after World War Two. This remark has elicited accusations of anti-Semitism and disbelief from President Trump, prominent House Republicans Steve Scalise and Liz Cheney, and a host of reality-based historians. But Tlaib is right, in this if little else, to protest that her words were not anti-Semitic.