Kushner Plan Aims to Assert Colonial Privilege over Quds: Australian Prof.

“Washington and Tel Aviv are trying to consolidate the apartheid colony in Palestine, in face of tremendous rejection worldwide,” Professor Tim Anderson said in an interview with the Tasnim News Agency.

“The Kushner Plan follows closely attempts to assert colonial privilege over al Quds/Jerusalem and over the Syrian Golan,” he added.

Professor Tim Anderson is a distinguished author and Director of the Sydney-based Centre for Counter-Hegemonic Studies. He has worked at Australian universities for more than 30 years, teaching, researching and publishing on development, human rights and self-determination in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East. In 2014, he was awarded Cuba’s medal of friendship. He is Australia and Pacific representative for the Latin America based Network in Defence of Humanity. His most recent books are: Land and Livelihoods in Papua New Guinea (2015), The Dirty War on Syria (2016), now published in ten languages; and Countering War Propaganda of the Dirty War on Syria (2017). His next book Axis of Resistance is due out in 2019.

The following is the full text of the interview:

Tasnim: Bahrain hosted the so-called "Peace to Prosperity" conference to discuss what the US has described as the economic part of President Donald Trump's "deal of the century", a plan which aims to consign the Palestinian cause to oblivion. The Palestinian leadership boycotted the meeting on June 25 and 26 in Manama, leading critics to question the credibility of the event. In your opinion, what goals are the US and Israel pursuing by holding the conference? Would they reach their goals?

Anderson: Washington and Tel Aviv are trying to consolidate the apartheid colony in Palestine, in face of tremendous rejection worldwide. The Kushner Plan follows closely attempts to assert colonial privilege over al Quds/Jerusalem and over the Syrian Golan. None of this changes international law. Nevertheless, the best ally in this has been Riyadh, which uses the Bahrain regime as a ‘front man’ and promises some finance after the dirty deed is done.

Which dirty deed? The Zionists have made no secret about it: give up the entire project of Palestinian nationhood. Their ambassador in New York, Dany Danon asks rhetorically ‘What’s wrong with Palestinian surrender?’ (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/opinion/palestinian-peace-bahrain-conference.html).

Most of the world these days would respond, ‘what is wrong with equal rights for all in Palestine?’ Few propositions are as straight forward, now that the Netanyahu regime has effectively destroyed any remaining illusions over a possible ‘two-state solution’. Indeed, as Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley pointed out two years back (https://counter-hegemonic-studies.net/israeli-apartheid/), dismantling the apartheid system, where more than half the population lacks equal citizenship, is mandated by international law.

The Kushner plan involves a promise of investment money, after Palestine surrenders. According to Reuters, there would be a “global investment fund to lift the Palestinian and neighboring Arab state economies, and fund a $5 billion transportation corridor to connect the West Bank and Gaza”. However this would only take place after the peace/surrender deal, the money would be spread across ten years and half of it would go to Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-plan-exclusive/exclusive-white-houses-kushner-unveils-economic-portion-of-middle-east-peace-plan-idUSKCN1TN0ES).

There is a threat behind this blackmail. If Palestine does not surrender, the resistance will be hunted down and killed. Whatever the rhetoric, this ‘deal of the century’ was meant to be a ‘win-win’ for Israel, and a ‘lose-lose’ for Palestine.

Fortunately, even much of the US corporate media has branded the ‘deal’ as ‘dead on arrival’ (DOA). They recognize that the Kushner Plan has no support from Palestinians, who were not even represented at the conference.

Tasnim: Some analysts say that the Trump administration’s focus on an economic plan, led by his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, is a strategic mistake that could stymie the peace negotiations even before they begin. What is your assessment of the US approach to the conflict and the future of the plan? Is it practical at all?

Anderson: There can be no practical impact of a plan in which no-one believes. Kushner’s proposal has pre-conditions which will not be met, so the hedged money promises will never materialize. The Israeli media observed that the Palestinian Authority regarded the Bahrain stunt as a ‘stunning failure’ for Trump administration (https://www.timesofisrael.com/pa-calls-bahrain-conference-a-stunning-failure-for-trump-administration/). The resistance news site al Manar notes the Israeli media’s disappointment that the conference “Failed to Oblige Palestinians to Concede” and that “the absence of all the Palestinian forces has mainly contributed to the failure of Al-Manama conference” (https://english.almanar.com.lb/771047).

It is quite obvious that the US undermined, rather than built, Palestinian confidence, by encouraging Netanyahu’s relentless land theft and ethnic cleansing, and by backing the illegal claims over al Quds/Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan. There has been little to appeal to even the most demoralized Palestinian leader.

However the latest impasse, in some respects, may serve to further discredit the US and Saudi roles, and to enhance the anti-apartheid, ‘One Democratic State’ campaign.

Tasnim: Israeli occupation forces have killed 84 Palestinians during the first half of 2019, including eight women and 19 children, according to local media reports. On Friday, Israeli forces once again opened fire on Palestinians taking part in the peaceful “Great March of Return” protests, along the separation fence between the besieged Gaza Strip and occupied territories. According to media reports, more than 270 people, including 52 children, have been killed since the demonstrations began in March 2018. Most of the dead and the thousands wounded were unarmed civilians against whom Israel was using excessive force. Why has the international community, particularly the Western mainstream media, made a muted response to the Tel Aviv regime’s crimes against Palestinians so far?

Anderson: At a political level we see little immediate change, as there are entrenched positions over Palestine and even the exposure of Zionist atrocities can seem to have little impact at the political level. However there is a groundswell of change, and the colonists are worried.

We see a big Israeli campaign to block a change of government in Britain, where large sections of the British Labor Party are rejecting Zionist influence. Zionists fear to lose the support of the original sponsor of their colony, the British state, should a government led by Jeremy Corbyn come to office.

In the US, there is a shift away from Zionism by liberal Jews. They have been influenced by the staunch Palestinian resistance and exposure of Israeli crimes. This is a gradual movement of ‘liberal Zionists’ towards a more anti-Zionist position, using their own logic.

For example, two US academics who call themselves “lifelong Zionists” explain that they have chosen to boycott Israel out of “love for Israel and a desire to save it”.

Clearly, these ‘liberals’ have some dream which does not sit well with the reality of a Netanyahu-led apartheid state. In any case, they go on to say “we are refusing to travel to Israel, boycotting products produced there and calling on our universities to divest and our elected representatives to withdraw aid to Israel … until Israel seriously engages with a peace process that either establishes a sovereign Palestinian state or grants full democratic citizenship to Palestinians living in a single state” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-zionist-case-for-boycotting-israel/2015/10/23/ac4dab80-735c-11e5-9cbb-790369643cf9_story.html).

Whatever their logic, these ‘left Zionists’ effectively lend support to the ‘One Democratic State’ proposal, urged by Palestinian activists (https://counter-hegemonic-studies.net/amal-odsp-1/). Importantly, their call was run in the US establishment paper, the Washington Post.

Similarly, the US anti-war group ‘Jewish Voices for Peace’ has recently declared itself anti-Zionist. This has led to an avalanche of Zionist accusations that they are “self-haters”, “anti-Jewish”, representing “far-left antisemitism”, and so on. Other media highlights young Jewish liberals who now claim to be anti-Zionist (https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/new-faces-jewish-american-resistance-israel). The result is that a large split is opening up between Israeli Jews (who mostly support President Trump) and the US liberal Jews (who mostly hate Trump), whose self-image is offended by an ugly apartheid state.

All this is important in terms of undermining the foreign support on which the Zionist colony depends. Nevertheless, the bedrock of hope for the future remains the steadfast Palestinian resistance. Remaining and resisting, strengthening links with their regional allies, the Arab and Muslim population of Palestine now outnumbers the Jewish Israeli population. Jewish emigration is now greater than that of Arabs. Many Israelis have dual nationality and are finding life easier in Europe and the USA. The contradictions of Zionist apartheid are starker than ever, and that is opening doors for the future.