Israel

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.

On the late afternoon of September 29, 2000 (nearly 20 years ago now), I took a cab from Jerusalem into Bethlehem to visit with an old friend and his family, the owners of a well-known Bethlehem hotel. The streets were bustling; buses filled with tourists roared up the main Jerusalem-to-Bethlehem road towards the Church of the Nativity (the reputed birthplace of Jesus), and the city’s gift shops were jammed. My plan was to stay the night, but my friend (a Palestinian Christian who’d moved to Bethlehem from Philadelphia), shook his head: ‘No room at the inn,’ he said, and smiled at his joke. ‘In fact, you won’t find a room anywhere in the city.’ I was surprised. In all of my years traveling to the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, I’d never had trouble finding a place to stay.

On Sunday, Beto O’Rourke claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t ‘represent the true will of the Israeli people.’ Israel is a democracy in which every citizen has the right to vote, a fact of international trivia apparently lost on O’Rourke. Although it’s easy to criticize Bibi for many of his recent remarks — and for his recent decision to welcome the racist Jewish Power party into the mainstream, it’s silly to argue that he doesn’t represent the true will of the Israeli people. The Israeli people have spoken for more than a decade: they like to have Bibi at the helm. It’s possible the Israeli people will have something new to say in their election today.