The Erickson Report, Page 1: "Deal of the Century" - Other Voices

The Erickson Report, Page 1: "Deal of the Century" - Other Voices

I noted last time that I would refrain from taking a real look at Tweetie-pie's "Deal of the Century" for Israel and the Palestinians because the text was being released almost literally at the same time I was recording the show so I would hold off until this time so we have the actual plan before us.

Well, it's this time now and the deal is every bit as bad as predicted. Wait, no that's wrong: Because as I said last time, with Tweetie-pie, the actuality is almost always worse than the prediction. And so it is here.

This thing is a monstrosity. It is horrendous, evil, bigoted, a slap in the face - make that a kick in the gut - make that two kicks in the gut and another to the head - not only of the Palestinians but to anyone who has held on to any shred of a hope for anything better out of the gang of thugs making up the US and Israeli governments. I could spend the entire show on how bad this is, in fact I probably will, on how much it reveals the not so much pro-Israel as anti-Palestinian bias at the heart of not just Trumpian but US foreign policy on the issue.

How bad is it? A few quotes:

Michael Lynk, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied territories, says the deal doesn’t offer Palestinians a state but "a 21st century bantustan," consisting of "scattered archipelagos of non-contiguous territory completely surrounded by Israel."

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, says that under the plan,

Palestinians will not have self-determination and will continue to be completely dependent on Israel’s goodwill, with no political rights and no way to influence their future.

They will, the group went on, continue to be at the mercy of Israel’s draconian "permit regime" and would in fact be worse off because the plan "perpetuates the situation and gives it recognition." The group's executive director, Hagai El-Ad, added that “What the Palestinians are being ‘offered’ now is not rights or a state, but a permanent state of Apartheid."

Al-Haq, a Palestinian NGO that has special consultative status with the UN, declares that the proposal “rewards Israel for its illegal colonization of the occupied Palestinian territory" by allowing Israel to annex more territory, "in flagrant violation of international law."

Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project and a former Israeli government negotiator under Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak, labeled it "a hate plan, not a peace plan" where "the language of peace had been cut and pasted, then put through a grinder, delivering an act of aggression dripping with the coarse syntax of racism," a plan which "oozes colonialist supremacism."

Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, called the plan "insidious" and "little more than a piece of political malware masquerading as a credible diplomatic initiative," one intended "not to bring about peace but to normalize the status quo, including Israel’s military rule over millions of Palestinians, and render it permanent."

Tareq Baconi, an analyst for The Crisis Group observed that “The plan sets out parameters that are impossible for Palestinians to accept, and effectively provides Israel with a blueprint to sustain the one-state reality that exists on the ground.”

For its part, on February 4 the European Union rejected the plan and opposed any Israeli move to annex more territory.

Oh, and Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren rejected the plan, along with fellow Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Chris Murphy and Reps. Mark Pocan, Pramila Jaypal, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Andy Levin, and Debbie Dingell.