You Will Anyway: An excuse to crush Palestine

Thursday, January 25, 2018

An excuse to crush Palestine

President Trump on Thursday threatened to cut even more aid money to the Palestinians if they don’t come to the table for peace talks with Israel.

“That money is on the table and that money is not going to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace,” Trump said during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The president knocked Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for refusing to meet with Vice President Pence during his recent Middle East trip, a protest against Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and recognize that city as Israel's capital.

[...]

Trump’s warning comes after the U.S. announced it was withholding $65 million in aid to the United Nations agency that serves Palestinian refugees. The State Department said the agency must make reforms.

[...]

“They disrespected us a few weeks ago by not allowing our great vice president to see them,” Trump said.

The Hill

I'm reading Mario Putzo's Godfather, and that sounds just like a Mafia complaint. They're not showing the proper respect. They disrespected the Don.

Trump has been hanging around the Russian mob too long.

The president, however, argued the Palestinians should not be upset with the United States' decision to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, even though they want east Jerusalem as a capital of a future Palestinian state.

Trump said the move should help the peace process because it takes the contentious issue of Jerusalem off the table.

“You won one point," Trump told Netanyahu. “You'll give up some points later in the negotiation, if there's ever a negotiation."

Takes it off the table? It put it squarely in the middle of the table.

A spokesman for Abbas reiterated during a phone call with CNN after Trump's remarks that the Palestinian Authority no longer recognizes the U.S. as a mediator in the peace process.

“If Jerusalem is off the table, then America is off the table as well,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh said.

And, they have China, Russia and Iran to turn to if they need money.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

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"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

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Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.