Redefining Reality in Trump’s Israel-Palestine Plan
Realpolitik is the game of defining what reality is to make what was once radical and extreme seem pragmatic and necessary. This has been the defining ethos of the US and Israel in relation to any possible Palestinian state. With almost a century of history dividing the circumstances of Balfour to the reality of today it is hard to know what is or was realistic. While Trump has been noted for being a President not concerned with the conforming to any objective sense of reality, he is now using his lack of reality as the standard which Palestinian’s are to be oppressed with.
To begin with a platitude reality is a complicated concept, but here it has taken on a very political meaning. To understand how ‘realistic’ is used in the proposed plan one only has to look at the opening pages of the Peace to Prosperity plan that states under the subtitle ‘Realistic Two-State Solution’:
A realistic solution would give the Palestinians all the power to govern themselves but not the powers to threaten Israel. This necessarily entails the limitations of certain sovereign powers in the Palestinian areas (henceforth referred to as the “Palestinian State”) such as maintenance of Israeli security responsibility and Israeli control of the airspace west of the Jordan River.
Is it realistic to expect a ‘Palestinian State’ to not be allowed the sovereign rights inherent in every sovereign state existing today? Depends on your definition. Is non-contiguity a realistic basis for a sovereign state? Depends for whom you are talking about. It was unthinkable for Israel in the past, but reality dictates its necessary for the Palestinian’s today.
In the greatest softball interview the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, decided to engage in an interview with Ben Shapiro over the proposed plans for Israel and Palestine. In attempting to fill the shoes of Alan Dershowitz by attempting to defend the indefensible Shapiro agreed with Pompeo before he even asked the questions. Agreeing with what Pompeo was invited to defend he abandoned any inquisitive or oppositional position known to the profession of journalism. But sometimes unctuous harmony is more telling than honest dissonance.
What is clear from the interview is that there is a ‘reality on the ground’. What this means in Washington-speak is that the levels of illegal encroachment, military aid, and confiscation done by Israel has reached a level and duration that now it is irreversible. This is how the politics becomes history. Once it is ‘reality’ it is the reasonable starting point for political discussion or action, and therefore any talk of previous arrangements is off the table.
The fact that there are so many people who are kicking back against the plan I think is recognition of the fact that people are unwilling to recognize realities on the ground.
The doctrine of the ‘realities on the ground’ of today for Jerusalem, for instance, means that ‘Jerusalem cannot be divided’. Cannot be divided now he means to say. Because Jerusalem, as he admits, was divided; and most importantly divided under international agreement for a proposed two-state solution. When Israel took the east of the city during the Six-Day War of 1967, and later ratified its ownership of the entirety of Jerusalem, the UN Security Council issued resolutions 476 and 478 condemning the illegal acquisition of territory through force. But times have changed and so has the ‘reality’.
Now that Israeli settlements have continued unabated the new plan ‘recognizes that Israel is not going to dismantle cities that have tens of thousands of people living in them’; this is how realists make fanaticism seem pragmatic. After years of dismantling towns and move populations in Palestinian land regardless and deaf to vocal opposition, now arguments of the opposition is adopted to highlight the absurdity and illegality of committing to them what they did to others.
No Israeli will be required to uproot; no Palestinian will be required to uproot. These are just recognizing fundamental facts, and we think presents a basis upon which to build.
This basis upon which to build is a basis that has taken the United States and Israel many years to create in defiance of international law and consensus. Impunity for long enough begins to look like legality, and criminality begins to look like the regular progress of history. While the details of the plan itself will be carefully analyzed and found wanting, the standards of international law, justice, and fairness have already been calibrated to make any such attempt meaningless.
