A most sensitive issue: Peace in the Middle East ( a delicate peace

How did it become the “Middle East”?

I also have a dream and it is pure nostalgia, it’s about getting back to the Garden of Eden, “as it was in the beginning” with our ancestors, Adam and Eve.

 It’s a fundamentalist’s dream.

Donald Trump too is a fun-da-mentalist. Fundamentalist or not, think about it.

As someone asked Trump last night at his town hall meeting, “When has America been great for African Americans in the ghetto of America?”

I would have thought that Trump was going to give this as an answer: “When Barack Obama was President!”

In a comedian mood, if he at all had that kind of a “sense of humour” Trump could have also added with just a tinge of racism, “the idea or rather the definition of “House Negro” was gradually modified when Brother Barack Obama was democratically elected President of the United States of America. The definition of House Negro was further extended when he won a second term and here’s the proper definition: Any Negro who is elected President of the United States and occupies the White House, is by definition a “House Negro!”

Of course, Trump could never answer the question he was asked.

A second term for Trump also has its own dangers, not only for the American people but also for us in Europe, and the rest of humanity and the rest of humanity includes China which has a population of 1.4 billion people. That’s a big market and a big army. We also want peace in the Far East and in the South China Seas which belong to China. He that has ears, let him hear:  America is well advised not to mess with China. And I’m saying all this because of what I heard on CNN at 6.30 a.m. Stockholm Sweden time, and it’s not funny, because the saying is that “Faith comes through hearing.” If that is so, then what happens when you don’t or can’t believe your ears, as happened with me at 6.30 this morning when I heard Nicholas Burns (former Ambassador to NATO and current Biden 2020 Foreign Policy Adviser) say on CNN,

  "…the damage that Donald Trump could do in a second term! Even John Bolton the arch-conservative former National Security Adviser to Trump said publicly a month ago his fear that Trump could take the United States out of NATO, leave NATO in a second term - that’s one of the reasons, one of the many, many reasons I’m supporting Joe Biden. He’d be a much stronger president of the United States, a much more unifying president and one who knows what he’s doing around the world and the world in foreign policy. “

The USA would leave NATO? Russia would love that. Russian collusion?  

Not only that, at this critical point in time it looks like Trump would like to put another coalition together by getting the United State and Israel to join the Arab League. Gaddafi had already proposed Isratine and invited Israel to join the Arab League.

“The peace of the brave

Not the peace of the grave “,

as Chairman Arafat the shahid used to say…

Today’s greatest news is that Bahrain (with a significant Shia majority population) and the United Arab Emirates have just signed a peace deal with Benjamin Netanyahu, witnessed by Trump and Jared Kushner, his beloved son-in-law in the White House. Mr. President’s beloved daughter Ivanka was not in the photo op about “normalising relations” between Israel and the aforementioned Arab nations. The outstanding question is, how does one “normalise” what is not normal?

Normalising, sounds like between a husband and his estranged wife – they start sleeping together again…

 It’s a great gulf in both meaning and intention between nostalgia for the once upon a time good old days when Muslims and Jews lived together or side by side mostly in peace and tranquillity in a Palestine that was a tiny province of Syria in what was then the Ottoman Empire, at which time neither the Jews  - albeit Dhimmis, nor the Muslim and Christian Arabs and Samaritans of Palestine thought of declaring statehood, of raising any national flags since they were all protected citizens of the Great Ottoman Empire.

There was little talk of “Zionism” then.

Was the demise of the Ottoman Empire prophesied in Islamic eschatology?

 Naturally, on this very day, Turkey is not happy with the so-called “normalisation”.

 Iran of course also condemns the so-called normalisation as abnormal, accursed, and from the Iranian point of view, what to expect of some uncle tom business class Arabs who are hell-bent on betraying the just cause of fellow Arabs, their long-suffering Palestinian brothers?  As to be expected at this stage Palestinians are protesting albeit like Mahatma Gandhi and the martyred Rev Dr Martin Luther King, non-violently, which in itself is not normal – if anything Palestinians are closer to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz / Malcolm X who said,

“There is nothing in our book, the Qur'an, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That's a good religion. In fact, that's that all-time religion. That's the one that Ma and Pa used to talk about: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and a head for a head, and a life for a life. That's a good religion.”

 Michael Winiarski summarises the peace agreement normalisation event in this morning’s Dagens Nyheter in his report entitled,

” Flera arabländer lär följa efter och erkänna Israel”:” Several Arab countries are expected to follow suit and recognize Israel”

 As he explains, “Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have never been at war with Israel. Yet Donald Trump calls the agreement between the Jewish state and two Arab states on the Persian Gulf a "peace agreement". In reality, it is a formal confirmation of an alliance directed at Iran, one which has existed for many years.” As he further points out, “Peace in the Middle East” usually means solving the long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, but the normalisation agreement has nothing to do with that conflict; the Palestinian Authority’s Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh is demanding that President Mahmoud Abbas should reconsider relations with the Arab League  if that organisation does not condemn Arab countries which “normalise “ relations with Israel, and at the moment the Arab League is split between the four states that are in bed with Israel ( Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and  Bahrain) and the others who are not ( in bed with Israel)  

The US presidential elections are just around the corner, the fires in California and Oregon are raging, blazing, on the COVID-19 war front the invisible enemy has claimed close to 200, 000 American lives, and the bells are still tolling, law and disorder are locking horns, trigger-happy  police brutality has escalated in the run-up to the elections and Trump is behind in the polls. His only hope now is to get Saudi Arabia on board his Zion Train and if he can manage to do that then he’s going to win a second term, if not then he’s going to be desperate and it’s anybody’s guess because he is  not looking too great in the opinion polls, not only that, Biden is getting  audacious, aggressive, attacking him on climate change and a whole range of other burning issues. However, this diplomatic breakthrough is another feather in Trump’s hat, more grease to his elbow, something for the dealmaker of the century  to crow about,  he and Kushner should be happy that the parties to normalisation don’t want to see Joe Biden as the next US president because he might want to make some  peaceful reconciliation overtures to Iran who are now isolated and only have Syria, Lebanon and Iraq as Arab allies.

So, what do Palestinians gain by the normalisation deal?  What do they get in return? Do they get back any land? Do they get any peace? 

If Israel were to withdraw to the 1967 lines that would indeed  be some kind of normalisation  or reciprocity,,,

Sure, lots of frantic behind-the-scenes diplomatic promises, inducements, arm-twisting and subterfuge have landed the deal; behind the scenes and upfront promises of weapons deliveries for which Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates are paying and going to pay through their teeth and through their noses; that's what’s in it for them. How much do the Arab nations in the Middle East spend on weapons? We are to suppose that the more stockpiles of weapons that they purchase with their petro-dollars, the more powerful they must feel as masters in their neighbourhood and at the same time the more they become dependent, client states to those who deliver them the weapons, their spare parts and the maintenance of their military hardware, aeroplanes etc. But who do they want to fight? On whom do they want to make jihad, with Israel as their military ally/ Jihadi allies and partners, as "the children of Abraham"?  Who are they afraid of?  I’m looking forward to an update/ latest edition of Aaron David Miller’s “The Missing Peace”. It would seem that from the land-grabbing Israeli point of view, it has always been a matter of the missing piece 

The last word on this matter must go to the Middle East Media