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Kushner unveils Middle East peace plan

justabubba said:
Why not a plan in it’s totality?
What has been presented is the dangling carrot; phase 2 will be the stick
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That is how I view it also (see Post #17).

This is the sweetener for the undoubtedly acidic settlement proposal that suppurates in the Kushner pipeline.
 
Here's my plan for peace in the middle east. Everyone else stop getting involved, stop sending money for arms, and let them sort it out on their own. Send a bunch of planes and visas to anyone who wants to escape the insanity, and get on with our lives. They're never going to stop.
 
OlNate said:
Everyone else stop getting involved, stop sending money for arms,
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The Trump administration's foreign policy is virtually predicated on arms sales.
 
ThirdTerm said:
Probably this is the Trump administration's true intention. The $50 billion Middle East economic plan would only benefit the Palestinians, only after they agree to scrap the two-state solution, which is the source of ethnic conflicts in the region. I don't think we can achieve peace by encouraging separatism.
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Sorry why would agreeing to an independent state that doesn't have all of the land the Palestinians are currently claiming, combined with commitments to constrain behaviour, not be a two state solution?
 
Dittohead not! said:
No, it makes a lot more sense for the leading nations of the world to get together and make a deal with Iran. Unfortunately, that deal was damaged by the new American president.
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Right. Cause that deal really helped reduce Iran's aggressive conduct.

Oh wait, it actually had the opposite effect.

It makes sense to undermine the Iranian regime. It makes sense to do a deal with them that allows them to maintain the Iranian population as subjects of a barbaric repressive regime too, I guess, but only if the deal actually constrains Iran from being a horrifically bad actor in the region.

But it doesn't make sense to give the Iranians a whole whack of money and allow them free reign to pursue their expansionist, imperial geopolitical ambitions in the region while funding and facilitating terrorism abroad (you may have seen the recent news that they got caught smuggling explosives into France in diplomatic transport and then had those explosives flown on commercial airlines?).
 
Evilroddy said:
CJ 2.0:

It was US policy (two Iraq wars) which created the power vacuum and regional chaos into which Iran expanded its influence and proxy military power into Mesopotamia and reinforced its power in the Levant. Take out Iran and you could see an expansionist and already nuclear-armed Pakistan or an expansionist and soon-to-be nuclear-armed and Islamist Saudi Arabia or an expansionist and nuclear-armed Israel disrupting the region. Blowing things up and violent overt or covert regime change are usually failed policies for reestablishing political and military equilibrium in a region. It's time for a new approach.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.
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What allowed Iran the freedom of movement to pursue its geopolitical ambitions through terrorism and violence is not relevant to the question of whether the Iranians should be permitted to act that way (obviously).

Iran is not really a counterbalance to Pakistan and Pakistan's interests are elsewhere, so that's not really relevant. The Saudis are a problem but the Americans have them pretty constrained for the time being. Israel's interests are and always have been only in their immediate backyard so that's not an issue.

And yes, it is time for a new approach. Undermining the Iranian regime to restore control to an educated and formerly westernized population is clearly in the best interests of the people who live there, and an Iran that is not controlled by the expansionist theocracy can only be a good thing.
 
justabubba said:
Why not a plan in it’s totality?
What has been presented is the dangling carrot; phase 2 will be the stick
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It won't be the stick. The stick is what will happen if the Palestinians do not take the deal. It will jus be a smaller carrot than the Palestinians think they are entitled to and will be a variety of carrot that the Palestinians may not have wanted. But it will still be carrot.
 
ElChupacabra said:
Sure, but that's the hard part better diplomats have not been able to resolve. Getting people to fund growth once the hard part is done sounds nice, but circumvents the real issue.
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Yes. Palestinian rejectionism and unwillingness to accept Jewish sovereignty in Israel has always been the core of the issue and won't be fixed with money all by itself. And while this will undoubtedly fail, the likelihood of success of this approach is better than anything Obama and his predecessors tried, so from that perspective it is something worth supporting to see how it plays out.
 
Is Iran considered “Middle East?” If so, Kushner’s plan is moot!
 
CJ 2.0 said:
Right. Cause that deal really helped reduce Iran's aggressive conduct.

Oh wait, it actually had the opposite effect.

It makes sense to undermine the Iranian regime. It makes sense to do a deal with them that allows them to maintain the Iranian population as subjects of a barbaric repressive regime too, I guess, but only if the deal actually constrains Iran from being a horrifically bad actor in the region.

But it doesn't make sense to give the Iranians a whole whack of money and allow them free reign to pursue their expansionist, imperial geopolitical ambitions in the region while funding and facilitating terrorism abroad (you may have seen the recent news that they got caught smuggling explosives into France in diplomatic transport and then had those explosives flown on commercial airlines?).
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So, should we bomb them, or invade them?
 
CJ 2.0 said:
It won't be the stick. The stick is what will happen if the Palestinians do not take the deal.
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They won't accept such a horse-manure deal and I don't blame them. Someone should clue Trump and sonny boy in ... not everything is transactional.
 
Dittohead not! said:
So, should we bomb them, or invade them?
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Take a look at the start of the discussion and where we have now ended up. I don't really see how anything I said gets us to where you have taken us.
 
What's the point of a peace deal where neither of the opponents attend the unveiling?
 
Rogue Valley said:
They won't accept such a horse-manure deal and I don't blame them. Someone should clue Trump and sonny boy in ... not everything is transactional.
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Yeah, much better to keep on with the objectives that have served them so well thus far.

But you are right. Not everything is transactional. The Palestinians' entire national identity is built around opposition to Jewish self determination. Without that opposition, what is left? Certainly, the dream of pursuing national aspirations based on self determination and building a better society where they can be free to pursue their own opportunities is "horse manure" compared to the dream of destroying Israel so that they can "return"...
 
OldFatGuy said:
Wouldn't have made an iota of difference. Arms can be bought from Bulgaria, South Africa, Brazil, Russia, China, and many other sources. Maybe not as sophisticated, but powerful enough for continued never ending death and destruction. Sweden's Saab is selling a lovely little fighter bomber, more advanced than anything offered by the US or Russia, and relatively inexpensive. 25 for the price of an F35. Finland bought 50 to keep Russian planes from its airspace. The intrusions by Russian aircraft over Finland has come to a halt. Damn crazy Finns.

Evolution proves where there is a void, something or someone with an itch will step into that niche.
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Maybe not to you but it is still a travesty that we supply weapons to kill women and children to a country run by dictatorship who murders our journalists and oppresses their own people. Is that what America stands for to you? I think we can do better.
 
iguanaman said:
Maybe not to you but it is still a travesty that we supply weapons to kill women and children to a country run by dictatorship who murders our journalists and oppresses their own people. Is that what America stands for to you? I think we can do better.
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When Arabs and Persians want to kill each other, themselves, it doesn't matter to me who supplies the weapons. No nations sells as much arms internationally as the US does. One man's horrors are another's pleasures. It isn't for you or me to dictate terms of governance for any other nation. We are not the world's police.

Claims of moral superiority and chest thumping accomplish nothing. Journalists die everyday. Comes with the territory. Your outrage changes nothing. When you have real solutions, give me a holler.

Nothing would please me more than to see Europe or China trying to rule the world's messes, peaceably. Damn. Made myself laugh.
 
CJ 2.0 said:
Yeah, much better to keep on with the objectives that have served them so well thus far.
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Israeli occupation?

With 12,000+ dead so far, it doesn't seem like the Ukrainians will accept Russian occupation either.
 
Jared Kushner’s Middle East Development Project

His conference in Bahrain hears of big dream plans divorced from reality.

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Jared Kushner touting his economic plan in Bahrain.

6/28/19
The slick promotional publication, titled “Peace to Prosperity,” described a $50 billion investment surge in the Palestinian economy over the next decade, like a fantastical New York real estate promotion. Palestinians certainly could use the investment and jobs in their economically depressed communities, where unemployment last year was 31 percent. Mr. Kushner invited participants to “imagine a new reality in the Middle East.” But except for its patronizing tone, there’s little new about the plan, which relies heavily on the construction of much-needed infrastructure projects that are retreads of proposals the World Bank, the United States and others made in previous failed peace efforts. While tantalizing, the plan as it stands is, to be gentle, unrealistic. Israel controls the economic life of the Palestinian territories, meaning none of the proposals are possible without its concurrence. Yet the plan makes no demands on Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Gulf states, along with European nations and private investors, are expected to help finance the plan, but there have been no actual commitments, and the idea that the Arabs would bankroll a peace plan that sidesteps a Palestinian state is unlikely. Making the whole initiative even more surreal, it arrives after the administration in which Mr. Kushner serves sharply cut funds for programs that support Palestinian schools and health care.

Team Trump is betting that dangling lucrative investments will cause Palestinians to abandon their aspirations for an independent state, a goal the United States supported as part of a negotiated peace since 2002, until President Trump voiced a more fluid view. If it were that easy it would have happened years ago. Palestinian leaders, who halted contact with Washington months ago, rejected Mr. Kushner’s economic blueprint out of hand. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, allies with Israel against Iran, were supportive but made clear that the plan needed to be combined with a political solution. Mr. Kushner is right when he says the “old way hasn’t really worked.” However, by presenting a plan that ignores Palestinians’ aspirations for statehood and their demands for ending Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, he is making success even less likely. “If we are going to fail,” he has said, “we don’t want to fail doing it the same way it’s been done in the past.” What happens next is anybody’s guess. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted in a recent closed-door meeting with Jewish leaders that the plan may be “unexecutable.”
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Like his father-in-law Donald Trump, Kushner views diplomacy in transactional and business terms. Without an acceptable settlement proposal, the Kushner Development Project is pie in the sky and folly.
 
An economic Sykes-Picot Agreement which is utterly divorced from the needs and realities of the people who will be affected by it. More Western hubris at work in the Middle East a century after the original Sykes-Picot Agreement set the stage for a century of conflict and misery in this part of the world. Mr. Kushner is just building the framework for the extinction of the Palestinian people by bullion as well as bullets.

Cheers?
Evilroddy.
 
Heyyy Palestinians, I've got a juicy little peace plan for you. The deal involves giving your land to Stephen Schwartzman at Blackstone, and we'll make sure your kids get educated properly so they're not stupid anymore, and don't get uppity around the chosen ones! Phew, I've done it, I've solved the peace problems in the middle east!

Sincerely,

Jerry Kushner
 
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