Peace de Resistance
Critics on the left are loathe to recognise Trump’s contribution towards diplomatic normalcy in the Middle East. By Nick Cater.
Alfred Nobel must have breathed a ghostly sigh of relief upon learning that the World Health Organisation would not be awarded his famous peace prize.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee brushed aside Time magazine’s form guide last Friday, opting instead for the safe choice of the World Food Program as the 2020 laureate.
The absurdity of Time’s top three nominations — WHO, Greta Thunberg and Jacinda Ardern (whose name it misspelt) — shows that Time has moved on from the days when it offered us a window on a wider world.
Today the magazine is just another marched-through institution, little more than a window on the world of woke seen through the eyes of graduates with pointless, postmodernist degrees.
Articles that might once have appeared in obscure neo-Marxist journals now adorn the magazines’ pages. “At the intersection of two criminalised identities”, reads one headline this week. “Black and non-black Muslims confront a complicated relationship with policing and anti-blackness.”
It’s complicated all right, just like Time’s hate-hate relationship with Donald Trump, who squeezed into fourth place, just behind Ardern.
In a less irritable world, the President would have been a worthy contender for laureate. For a start, he managed to get himself elected, an achievement for which his predecessor was honoured by the Nobel committee in 2009.
More substantially, Trump brokered the Abraham Accords, the most important step towards a Middle East solution since the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty in 1994.
There are other achievements in Trump’s favour. He has stuck by his pre-election promise not to send Americans into foreign wars, unlike the majority of those who have occupied the office since World War II.
His preparedness to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party is not an act of warmongering, as his critics suggest, but a principled, strategic stand for freedom.
Trump, ironically, nominated David Beasley, a former Republican governor of South Carolina, to run the Nobel prize-winning WFP, the United Nation’s food assistance body, which has outshone other UN quangos simply by doing its job.
Under Beasley it has helped stop the coronavirus from turning into a hunger pandemic by restoring critical supply chains to those in need.
Trump has achieved more in foreign policy in less than four years than any president since Ronald Reagan. Yet his triumphs are either ignored or disparaged by his detractors who are incapable of imagining Trump in two dimensions, a leader with strengths and weaknesses with achievements to balance his transparent failure to adapt to the role of president.
Yet on balance, the Nobel committee was wise not to rub salt into the raw nerves of the Trump haters. The ferocity of the Twitter storm might have melted fibre optic cables and brought satellites crashing down.
Worse, Palestinian victimhood would have risen up the ranks of social injustice as the left finally recognised the meaning of the accords signed on the South Lawn of the White House a month ago by Israel, Bahrain and the UAE.
The normalisation of relations between Israel and two more Arab states again bypasses Palestinian demands for the right of return to Israel.
It is inconceivable that the accords would have been struck without a nod from Saudi Arabia, the most influential Arab state. Chances are the Saudis will also sign if Trump is re-elected. Other Arab states — Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Morocco, Sudan — would likely follow.
The thawing of relations has had an immediate effect. Last week the Israeli and Emirati foreign ministers paid a joint visit to the Holocaust memorial in Berlin. Israeli midfielder Dia Saba has signed for Dubai’s main soccer club, al-Nasr.
Emirates airline has scheduled direct flights from Dubai to Tel Aviv from January.
The left’s insistence on rubbishing anything in which Trump has a hand has blinded them to the implications of this development for the status of their cause celebre, the liberation of Palestine.
Should the accords run their predicted course, their virtuous anti-colonial crusade would become just other sectarian and nationalistic dispute.
The demotion of the Arab cause would ill suit the Palestinian leadership which has turned a historical grievance into a successful business model.
Their vested interest in perpetuating resentment has been one of the largest obstacles to peace. Now it finds itself out in the cold.
Financial aid from Arab Gulf states has dried up since March, compounding a 50 per cent decrease in foreign aid, the Jerusalem Post recently reported, citing data from the Palestinian Finance Ministry Service and The New Arab newspaper.
Ramallah’s total revenues are said to have fallen about 70 per cent this year to $US255m from $US500m.
The US cut its economic support for the Palestinian territories two years ago, along with support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, a controversial body committed to the right of 5.5 million Palestinians to become Israeli citizens.
As foreign minister in 2012, Bob Carr awarded $90m to UNRWA. In a little-spotted line item in last week’s budget, Australia’s support for UNRWA was cut from $20m to $10m. Carr, once a solid supporter of Israel, turned his back on what he termed “the Melbourne Jewish lobby” to become an activist for the Palestinian cause. In 2014 he sponsored a successful resolution at the NSW Labor conference declaring “NSW Labor recognises a Middle East peace will only be won with the establishment of a Palestinian state”.
Australians on the left, like their counterparts in the US, are loath to recognise the significance of Trump’s initiative.
They will continue to do so unless an incoming Democrat administration rejects the initiative or adopts it as its own. Most likely it will be the latter, since success breeds many fathers.
Trump’s contribution to the Middle East is gathering a momentum that is profoundly changing the diplomatic landscape.