For many months, the US administration has labored over an Israel-Palestinian peace plan. But the recent announcement of a Bahrain economic conference at the end of June suggests that the administration of President Donald Trump would like the Palestinians to be satisfied with economic incentives instead of statehood. In other words, using cash to pressure them.
So what is really behind the “Peace to Prosperity” economic workshop the Trump administration has asked Bahrain to host? Does it express a total lack of understanding and racist contempt for Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular? Is this yet another step coordinated with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to waste time and exhaust Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas? Could we be witnessing another display of ignorance regarding the forces at play in the Middle East?
Israel is no stranger to the racist use of economic sanctions designed to stifle the aspirations of a nation struggling against a foreign occupier. Who can forget the notorious 1946 order by Gen. Evelyn Hugh Barker, the head of the British Forces in Palestine and Trans-Jordan, to boycott businesses owned by Jews? In July of that year, following the bombing of the British headquarters in Jerusalem’s King David Hotel by the underground Jewish movement Irgun, Barker said, “[We] will be punishing the Jews in a way the race dislikes as much as any, by striking at their pockets and showing our contempt of them.”
For over two years, the Trump administration has been “striking the pockets” of the Palestinians in an effort to force them to accept its unilateral measures that benefit Israel — chief among them US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the relocation of the US Embassy there last year. The administration has cut US aid to the Palestinian Authority and revoked its support for UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency dedicated to humanitarian aid for the Palestinians. It has also used defunding to undermine activities by humanitarian organizations and initiatives promoting Israeli-Palestinian coexistence.
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