ArabDigest.org: A real estate deal writ large: the Kushner peace deal

A real estate deal writ large: the Kushner peace deal Summary: After much delay the Kushner Middle East peace deal is finally rolled out in Washington. Critics of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and the president’s Middle East peace negotiator, have long assumed that he lacks both the expertise and the experience to successfully manage the complex challenges of the Palestine-Israel conflict. Their assumptions are wrong. From the moment Kushner was assigned the brief, he has played a subtle and effective hand on behalf of both the West Bank settler movement and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister and a long-time friend of the Kushner family. Kushner, whose family foundation has given generously to settler projects, has carefully constructed a strategy designed to win by seeming to lose. Its modus operandi is to force Palestinians into a corner from which there is no escape, and where the only answer to the deal is “no”. Kushner learned this trick from his days of acquiring rent-controlled properties, forcing sitting tenants out, refurbishing the flats and then putting them back on the market as luxury suites. It is a squeeze play: a combination of withdrawal of services, together with an offer of some financial compensation, neatly wrapped in veiled and not-so-veiled threats, along the lines of “accept this or it only gets worse”. Kushner has cleverly applied the lessons learned in the Manhattan real estate market to what his father-in-law calls the “deal of the century” in the Middle East. He eagerly seized the opportunity to advance Netanyahu and the settler cause after Trump surprised the world by winning the presidency in November 2016. In December of that year, the president announced that bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman was his nominee as US ambassador to Israel. In March 2017, Friedman, who has a long history of supporting the illegal settler movement in the West Bank, was duly confirmed by the Senate. Kushner was handed the Middle East portfolio, while another Trump lawyer and hardline settler advocate, Jason Greenblatt, joined him as an envoy. Kushner convinced his father-in-law that the president’s first overseas trip should be to Saudi Arabia in May 2017. By that point, Kushner had already established a close working relationship with Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who subsequently became the crown prince. A crucial element of Kushner’s strategy was to wean the Saudis off the Arab Peace Initiative proposed in 2002 by former Saudi King Abdullah, who at that time was the crown prince. Integral to Abdullah’s plan was the recognition of a viable Palestinian state, side-by-side with Israel.  The plan called for the withdrawal of Israeli settlements from the West Bank and Gaza and the recognition of East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. Kushner appeared, at least in private, to have successfully killed off Abdullah’s two-state solution, as Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, notably the United Arab Emirates, moved closer to the Israelis. At the same time, in what was a pincer movement, Donald Trump was dramatically altering America’s stance, aligning it much closer to the settler position and to Netanyahu’s aspirations and those of the settler movement to incorporate much of the West Bank into a greater Israel. In December 2017, the president announced that the US embassy would move to Jerusalem. Experts were mystified, and Trump was attacked for giving something away and getting nothing in return. But Kushner wasn’t looking for anything: he simply wanted  the president to make a big statement right in the face of the Palestinians. He did, and with the world watching, the US got away with it: on 14 May 2018, the 70th anniversary of the founding of Israel, the embassy opened in Jerusalem, while 90 kilometres away, Palestinians were being gunned down on the Gaza border. By that time, Trump had announced the US was abandoning the two-state solution. Washington then cut more than half of its planned funding ($65m out of a $125m aid package) to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees that supports more than five million registered refugees. In August 2018, the US cut more than $200m in economic aid, then followed that up by withdrawing the rest of the UNRWA funding. In September, one of the few remaining American aid programmes, $25m for Palestinians in East Jerusalem hospitals, was ended. Then, the Palestine Liberation Organisation office in Washington, the formal diplomatic link, was shut down. The Kushner squeeze play, designed to make life ever more miserable for the Palestinians, was well underway. Next the Golan Heights was annexed by Israel in March 2019 with the full backing and approval of the Trump administration.  A win by Netanyahu in the Israeli election in April was to be the icing on the cake to then facilitate the incorporation of the West Bank settlements into Israel. At that point, however, fate - in the form of Avigdor Lieberman - intervened. The ex-defence minister and Netanyahu’s arch-rival refused to enter a coalition, upending the applecart and forcing a new election in September. Trump was not happy. His plan, looking ahead to 2020 and a re-election bid, was to impress his base by rewarding Israel and putting Palestinians in their place. “Israel’s all messed up with their election,” he complained. “Bibi got elected, now all of the sudden they’re going to have to go through the process again, until September? That’s ridiculous. So we’re not happy about that.” The September election solved nothing, leading to a third vote to come in early March. It had seemed  for some time that Kushner’s critics were right and that he was a failure: his deal would not see the light of day. But political exigencies in both the Trump and Netanyahu camps meant that Kushner’s plan gained new momentum and it was finally released on 28 January. It proved to be the Manhattan real estate strategy writ large. The border is to be redrawn in order to incorporate large West Bank settlements into Israel while the Israelis continue to control large swathes of the remaining Palestinian territories as part of a larger security package. In return the Palestinians will receive $50 billion in economic aid and the promise of some form of a future non-contiguous state in what remains of the West Bank with a capital on the outskirts of East Jerusalem; essentially it is Palestinian enclaves surrounded by the Israeli army and by land the American president has agreed the Israelis have illegally seized and are  now entitled to incorporate into a greater Israel. It is, as critics have already noted, apartheid by another name. Ahead of the deal being unveiled,  Trump predicted that “we will ultimately have the support of the Palestinians,” and he added “That’s a plan that Bibi, maybe, and his opponent (Benny Gantz), I must say, they have to like very much.”  Then, when he was announcing the deal on 28 January, he warned the Palestinians that "this is the last opportunity they will ever have." For Trump who is fighting his removal as president and for Netanyahu who is fighting to avoid being convicted and jailed on fraud charges, the Kushner deal can be seen as something of a life raft. For Kushner, often derided and underestimated by his critics, it is, for now, a triumph.  For the Palestinians it is yet one more act in a long tragedy called betrayal.