Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today Inc.
Donald Trump describes the recent signing of an agreement between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and the Zionist state of Israel in Washington as a new dawn of peace in the Middle East region.
The reality is, like previous agreements, this current one is not the dawn of anything it is rather another onset of despair for the Palestinian people.
Western governments in particular have never been honest brokers when it comes to the Palestinian cause and this became clearer under the Trump administration.
Trump has now managed to bring along two other Arab nations joining Egypt and Jordan who previously signed agreements with Israel.
These nations have openly showed their hand while there are others who don’t openly show it but do have relations with the state of Israel.
These agreements are usually touted as “peace making” but the reality is that this is entirely about politics, economics and who wields the power.
The Palestinians are figuratively and literally “thrown under the bus” in this entire process. On the day that this so-called peace agreement was being signed in Washington Israel was bombing Gaza once again. Nothing in Israel’s actions with Palestinians suggests peacemaking or wanting to right wrongs they have inflicted.
Sami Hamdi, Editor-in-Chief of The International Interest is an experienced geopolitical risk consultant with extensive experience in the Middle Eastern and North African region. He analyses this most recent agreement and puts it into perspective.
He argues that these agreements or “normalizing of relationships” has nothing to do with peace but instead have several other dynamics that are being played out.
The first of which is that Donald Trump wants to go down in history as the President that made it happen – peace between the Arabs and the Israelis. Especially in an election year he wants the American public to view him as the “peacemaker”
and foreign policy master.
A “peace” that eluded his predecessors. Secondly, it helps bolster the standing of the UAE in the region amongst the other bigger players in the Middle East and brings it in favour and closer with Washington.
These Arab regimes see establishing ties with Israel as currying favor with the US and thereby giving them access to military hardware and other benefits, including ensuring their long-term survival in power in their respective countries.
Another important dynamic is that by rescuing, pushing and getting acceptance for a two-state solution, an Israeli state and a Palestinian state, the US is basically altering the narrative, changing it and re-writing history.
By accepting this so-called solution, it means that any discussion on illegal occupation of Palestinian lands that started in the 1940s is thrown out the window.
It changes the historical realities of which land was taken and occupied illegally and unjustly by a foreign, external force to a matter where the land should now be divided between
two entities.
This so-called solution also seeks to sacrifice any attempts at the restoration of rights and justice for the Palestinian people on the altar of accepting this ‘solution”.
Accept an illegal occupation, accept a forced removal of the Palestinian people from their lands, accept the atrocities committed by the state of Israel and legitimize that state with acceptance of a two-state configuration.
These attempts at so called normalization of relations pushes the US and Israeli narrative forward by bringing on board Arab states that buy into this revised story and having them then sell this propaganda to their people. It makes palatable and legal all the years of injustice, oppression and abuse by the state of Israel on the Palestinians.
And if one examines carefully the two-states being proposed it basically means allowing the Palestinians to live on two separate tracts of disjointed land spaces, the West bank
and Gaza strip.
Isolated communities and cities, surrounded by and at the will and might of the state of Israel. Either this is accepted by the Palestinians and the Arab neighbours or it gets worse.
The late Nelson Mandela said it best in 1997: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” This acknowledgement of the just cause and the right to justice for the Palestinian people is known by persons
of conscience throughout the world.
Huthifa Fayyad points out in his article: “South African President Cyril Ramaphosa compared US President Donald Trump’s so-called ‘deal of the century’ to apartheid South Africa’s Bantustan system.
“It brought to mind the chronicled history that we as South Africans went through,” Ramaphosa told the African Union summit.
“The apartheid regime once imposed the Bantustan system on the people of South Africa without consulting them and with all the oppressive elements which that plan had.
Bantustans were territories set aside for black South Africans during apartheid-era South Africa.
“As I listened to the Arab League and as I listened to colleagues from Palestine, its sounds like this plan has been consulted without all the people that matter and it sounds like a Bantustan type of construct.”
Those who were victims of apartheid recognize and understand fully what a system of apartheid looks like and how it operates. There is no doubt that the Israeli state is an apartheid state especially when it comes to Palestinians.
I know there are several persons and perhaps groups here that have unequivocal support for the state of Israel. In most cases this support is based on an interpretation of their scriptures that the land belongs to the state of Israel.
In other words, it is their God-given right. I have always found this type of thinking challenging. How does a group of people systemically remove another group of people from their legitimate homes and lands through extreme means and measures, including murder and extortion, and then claim it is a God-given right?
Every time I hear Mighty Gabby’s song Emmerton I cannot help but think about the Palestinian people. The lyrics equally reflect almost 100 per cent the Palestinian holocaust, just need to change out Emmerton and put in Palestine.
You tell me tuh forget
dat my granmuddah was born right here so
All right I say I shall go
yuh tell me tuh forget
it is there
I want my own children to grow
All right I say I shall go
But I hope yuh understan’
how I feel
‘bout Emmerton
My home land my home land my home land
An uh hope yuh know it’s true
dat I will nevuh fuhgive you
Because looka looka wha yuh do
to my Emmerton
you tell me to fuhget
dat yuh bring bull
-dozers an push-down de houses so
Alright I say I shall go
yuh tell me tuh fuhget
dat yu uproot my people
an’ scattah dem to an ‘fro
Alright I say I shall go
yuh tell me tuh fuhget
dat yu did dem wrong things an
didn’t let my children know
Alright I say I shall go
Suleiman Bulbulia is a Justice of the Peace; Secretary of the Barbados Muslim Association; Muslim Chaplain at the U.W.I, Cave Hill Campus and Chair, Barbados Childhood Obesity Prevention Coalition. Email: suleimanbulbulia@hotmail.com
