Netanyahu leaves in his vehicle after a meeting with Donald Trump at Trump Tower, Sept. 25, 2016, in New York. Evan Vucci AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.Again, the Republican candidate in the
US presidential elections lost the popular vote but won the election. Such is
a function of the mechanics of the US flavor of democracy where not every
vote matters; only votes in key states matter. Nevertheless, billionaire Donald
Trump is heading to the White House.
Trump’s ascent into the US presidency
will be the material for political analysts and historians, not to mention
Hollywood, for many years to come. That noted, history has already clearly
established that the difference between a candidate’s campaign and their
posture once in office are like night and day.
This applies to Trump just like
it would apply to any other candidate. He should prepare himself to be the tool
of a state apparatus which is much more about the US than it will be about
Trump the person, despite the best efforts of his public relations spin
masters.
Campaigns are fairy tales driven by the
individual candidate, whereas holding the office of the US president offers a
24-hour Ph.D., especially for a non-politician, about how countries, especially
the world’s super power, are complicated institutions that require cold, hard
calculations built on strategic state interests.
In the US, the president,
the House of Representatives, and the Senate are merely three actors in a pool
of variables that define the state’s interests.
One of these important variables are the
lobbies that affect the process. The pro-Israeli lobby is one of the powerhouse
lobbies that intrudes in US politics and is driven, illegally, by the
interests of a foreign country. For Trump to reach out to king masters in US
politics is to be expected given his non-existent political experience and
shallow policy capacity. Yet less than 48 hours after announcing his victory, Trump
invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to New York for a meeting.
The Israeli prime minister is laughing
all the way to the next West Bank hilltop, thinking he is better positioned
than ever to impose his right-wing (some Israelis call it fascist) agenda on
America. He is correct to think so given the Israeli settler community mobilized to
support Trump’s campaign, so all indications would point to Trump embracing
illegal settlement building with open arms.
As part of Donald Trump’s mandatory Ph.D.
on how states operate, I’d like to provide some free advice. This is advice
from a fellow American citizen from Youngstown, Ohio, a place he visited on the
campaign trail multiple times. I also happen to be Palestinian and have lived
and worked under Israeli military occupation for nearly 25 years. Thus, I note:
Dear President-elect Trump,
Congratulations. Now that the empty
rhetoric of the campaign trail is behind you, I urge you to make the
Israel/Palestine file a priority. Actually, this is not an optional request.
Your predecessors have caused so much damage to the reality on the ground that
the situation has reached a boiling point, but not like past boiling points,
where wide scale violence breaks out. Instead, the boiling point I speak of is
a political one.
As the Obama Administration repeated
several times, in one way or another, Israel is headed toward a state of
apartheid or a bi-national one-state reality, both of which will have been imposed
by Israel’s military might, and both of which Israel, as we know it, cannot accept.
Such an Israeli-imposed reality would be in direct contravention to a two-state
solution, which is the long-standing US policy, not to mention embedded in
scores of UN resolutions.
Lucky for you, other presidents have
tried everything else so your options are limited, and have a high probability
for success.
First, without delay, you should
recognize the State of Palestine, just as over 138 countries have already done.
The US made a similar recognition of Israel eleven minutes after it was founded in
1948; don’t you think the Palestinians are due the same, even if belated more than a half
century?
You have options here, direct recognition, or reversing the “no” vote
on the UN General Assembly resolution of 29 November 2012 which upgraded Palestine
to a non-member observer state status, or let a request for full UN membership
for Palestine pass in the UN Security Council by voting in favor, or by just
not vetoing.
Next, the US must finally start to hold
Israel accountable as the military occupier that it is. A good start would be to
revoke the $38 billion military aid package, and link that money to future
Israeli concrete action to dismantle its military occupation. That $38 billion
would go a long way for your much-toted infrastructure upgrade project to help
“Make America Great Again.”
At this late hour in the conflict,
anything less would mean that the US was never serious about the two-state
solution. Palestinians may even rejoice to be able to return to a one-state
reality, even if at the beginning it would only be in theory. Israel would be
unable to swallow the one-state solution they are imposing on themselves, and
that fallout will cost the US dearly if it truly cares about Israel’s
existence.
This piece was first published on +972 on 10 November 2016.