Comments lost amid reporting of pro-forma support for Israel
[Jerusalem] – US presidential hopeful Donald Trump stressed in an address last week that Washington’s foreign policy needs to be ”unpredictable.” But Palestinian leaders fear that in office he would follow what they see as an all too familiar pattern of US support for Israel at their expense.
”All of the presidents from Reagan until now, whether they are Republican or Democrat, seek to help the Israeli side and this would continue under Trump,” Hassan Khreisheh, deputy speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) told The Media Line.
”We Palestinians shouldn’t waste any time with the question of who will be president,” he added, noting that many Palestinians had pinned their hopes on Barack Obama in 2009 after he condemned what he termed as ”illegitimate” settlement construction in the West Bank. ”He didn’t fulfill his promises and he failed to do anything for the Palestinians or the Israelis.”
In his foreign policy address, Trump said that containing the spread of radical Islam must be a major goal and added that he would work closely with America’s allies in the Middle East to combat extremism. He reiterated his past opposition to the nuclear agreement with Iran and flayed the Obama administration for allegedly having a tepid attitude towards Israel while enabling Tehran to emerge as a ”great, great power.”
He termed Israel a ”force for justice and peace” and did not mention the word Palestinian or refer to Arab-Israeli negotiations in the course of his remarks.
But little noticed last week amid the attention given to Trump’s speech and his stunning sweep of five primaries was an interview granted by his foreign policy adviser Walid Phares to the London-based Arabic language daily al-Hayat that took pains to present Trump as no enemy of Palestinian concerns. The remarks, in which Phares said that solving the Palestinian issue was a ”guarantee” for regional stability, differed in tone and implication from the ardently pro-Israel speech Trump himself gave to the America Israel Public Affairs Committee in March. That is when the candidate said Israel had repeatedly demonstrated its desire for peace, while he cast the Palestinians as rejectionists who engage in ”glorifying terrorists.” Studiously avoiding any mention of a two state peace solution, Trump also pledged at the AIPAC gathering to move the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and said that Palestinians must come to negotiations knowing that the bond between the US and Israel is ”absolutely, totally unbreakable.”
Fares, however, stressed to al-Hayat that Trump would be a ”fair mediator” between the two sides. ”He has good relations with the Jewish community and credit with the Israelis so he won’t be criticized by the Israeli side and he’s the only one capable of making a balanced peace that achieves the interests of both sides, which means the two state project.”
Taking a stance at loggerheads with the official Israeli position which argues that the lack of resolution of the Palestinian issue has little to do with wider Middle East instability, Fares continued that Trump ”knows solving the Palestinian issue is a guarantee for achieving stability in the region, therefore if Trump wins and gains majority support in Congress, we will have the strongest American president in six decades in terms of being able to realize achievements on the Palestinian issue.”
Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the PLC and head of the Palestinian National Initiative, said Phares’s remarks by themselves were insufficient. ”I would like to see Trump say this frankly and openly by himself, not by one of his aides,” he told The Media Line. ”He should say he supports the right of the Palestinians to end occupation completely, the removal of settlements and allowing Palestinians to have an independent state with full sovereignty, including in east Jerusalem.”
In a reference among other things to Trump’s call in December to institute a ban on the entry of Muslims to the United States, Barghouti added, ”What we want from him is to not talk in a racist manner, not to discriminate against people and to concentrate on principles of democracy. Someone who doesn’t respect principles of democracy, human rights and equality will hardly be able to do much for the Palestinians.”
Ghazi Hamed, deputy foreign minister of the Hamas government that rules the Gaza Strip, was also dismissive of Phares’s remarks. ”I don’t expect anything from any American president. Their priority is America’s interest first and second, Israel’s security. They don’t care for Palestinian lives. My impression of Trump is that he’s just trying to satisfy the Jewish community. He and Clinton are trying to show that they are heroes for Israel, that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. They don’t care about the Palestinian tragedy.”
In the al-Hayat interview, Phares denied the allegations that Trump is racist, saying ”there is no evidence of that on the personal side. Indeed, the opposite is the case. His companies have a large number of employees of various ethnicities and of Muslims and women have a central role in his companies. An important part of his investors are in the Arab and Muslim worlds and he has Arab and Muslim partners.”