\n<\/p>\n
Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid his fifth visit to the United States since President Donald Trump took office in January. Before the meeting between the two, the Israeli press described the prime minister as fully engaged in an attempt to placate his domestic political partners by achieving \u201cconcessions\u201d from Trump. What were these concessions? They were predominantly related to denying Turkiye any presence in the Gaza stabilisation force and to US approval for an Israeli strike on Iran.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu failed on both counts. Trump specifically referred to his good relationship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and spoke of \u201cBibi\u2019s\u201d respect for him, too. With regard to Iran, Trump mentioned Iran\u2019s willingness to \u201cmake a deal\u201d and provided clear guidelines for American involvement while saying nothing about authorising a solo Israeli operation. Israeli media suggests that Trump provided Israel with a \u201cgreen light\u201d for a strike on Iran. That is not reflected in Trump\u2019s official statement in any way.<\/p>\n
Trump talked about the reconstruction of Gaza beginning \u201csoon\u201d. When he spoke of the disarmament of Hamas, he said that it must happen or nearly 60 states will make it happen. Hamas has already agreed to disarm if the process is carried out by a Palestinian-led force. Trump said nothing to suggest that he does not agree with Hamas\u2019s logic, especially when one considers the refusal of most participating countries to carry out a violent disarmament of the group. Trump also made no mention of the last hostage body held in Gaza as a necessary condition for moving to \u201cStage II\u201d of the deal.<\/p>\n
Nothing is more significant in Trump\u2019s world than the use of language and symbolic gestures. When Trump referred to Netanyahu as a \u201cgreat wartime prime minister\u201d as he was discussing his blueprint for \u201cpeace\u201d, he made it clear that his guest was running out of time. This was also clearly apparent when Trump said he had spoken with Israel\u2019s official head of state, President Isaac Herzog, about a pardon for Netanyahu and was assured such a pardon was imminent. President Herzog, by the way, categorically denied that such a conversation had taken place.<\/p>\n
What may be the best reflection of the Trump-Netanyahu meeting at Mar-a-Lago has to do with a brief conversation over the phone between Trump and Israeli Minister of Education Yoav Kish. The purpose of the call was for Kish to inform Trump that he will be awarded the Israel Prize on Israel\u2019s Independence Day in 2026.<\/p>\n
The award is given out by the minister of education in a televised ceremony attended by Israel\u2019s leaders. It marks the official end of Independence Day celebrations. Its recipients are most frequently career academics at a late stage of their careers. The prize reflects a lifetime\u2019s devotion to the expansion of human knowledge. Sometimes, special prizes are awarded in civic categories, most often for what is called a \u201clife\u2019s work\u201d, such as fostering coexistence between Jews and Palestinians, promoting social equality, etc.<\/p>\n
The prize, as understood by its name, is nearly always awarded to Israeli citizens but can be awarded to Jews living abroad and even to non-Jews who have made a \u201cspecial contribution to the Jewish people\u201d.<\/p>\n
In other words, the Trump-Netanyahu meeting involved Trump instructing Netanyahu with regard to upcoming measures and Netanyahu snapping to attention and signalling his acceptance by heaping yet another semi-fictitious honour on Trump\u2019s already crowded head.<\/p>\n
Yet, despite these clear displays of the unequal nature of their relationships, there have been persistent voices suggesting that Trump and Netanyahu are operating in cahoots. According to such analyses, the United States fully supports the Israeli attempt to \u201cchange the Middle East\u201d \u2013 Netanyahu\u2019s favourite phrase \u2013 as the Americans make a pivot to Asia and the global race for dominance with China.<\/p>\n
Israel will \u201ctake care\u201d of the \u201cIranian threat\u201d as the Arabs languish in their own irresolvable internal tensions and competitions. The mobilisation of Arab states after the Israeli strike on Doha is all but ignored.<\/p>\n
These voices also point to the fact that Israel continues to completely ignore the \u201cceasefire\u201d enacted by \u201cStage I\u201d of the Trump plan, and does so with the full support of the United States. In fact, Trump said that Israel has \u201clived up\u201d to the ceasefire \u201c100 percent\u201d, and that he has no problems with Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza. These include bombing, destruction of buildings and infrastructure, the blocking of life-saving aid amid harsh weather and many other steps that ensure and expand the ongoing Israeli genocide.<\/p>\n
It is indeed extremely difficult to reconcile this with the notion that Israel has run out of options for delaying Stage II and an internationally-brokered solution to Palestinian statehood. After all, one hears repeatedly from Israeli media about initiatives to \u201csettle Gaza\u201d, \u201crelocate\u201d 1.5 million Palestinians to Somaliland and dismantle the Oslo Accords, one ethnically cleansed Palestinian community at a time.<\/p>\n
The US and other countries, like Germany and the UK, continue to buy Israeli arms at a massive rate and to equip Israel with arms of their own. How is it possible to reach a conclusion that the Israeli genocide is reaching its endgame?<\/p>\n
The short answer is that it is not. Israel continues to kill, destroy, subvert and expand its efforts to destabilise any semblance of regional order. For example, Israel recognised the statehood of Somaliland in order to have a \u201cdumping ground\u201d for ethnically cleansed Palestinians, but also to pit the United Arab Emirates against Saudi Arabia, as both have conflicting interests in Somalia, and, by doing so, ensure that the Palestinian question is not addressed and that everyone remains frozen by fear of Israeli weapons.<\/p>\n
The longer answer recognises the effects of this genocide on Israel itself: Genocide consumes genocidaires.<\/p>\n
That is not to suggest that justice is assured by cosmic forces; far from it. Justice should be pursued at the most grounded and realistic level, as should the dignity and preservation of Palestinian lives.<\/p>\n
However, the genocide has shaped Israel in its image on a daily, immediate level. Violence is rising as quickly as the prices of the staples, democracy is backsliding, and there is no end in sight to the \u201cforever war\u201d. This is not an abstract, \u201cstrategic\u201d matter.<\/p>\n
While Israel has been actively seeking to delete Palestinian identity for nearly 80 years, it has not succeeded in doing so. Israel\u2019s internal contradictions have surfaced with paralysing force over the past two years.<\/p>\n
Israel will not \u201cdie\u201d or \u201crecede\u201d, but the gap between Israeli perceptions of the world and global perceptions of Israel has never been wider.<\/p>\n
Trump and his vision of America do not appreciate \u201closers\u201d. Israel no longer has any \u201cwins\u201d in the offing. It can and does kill and burn, procrastinate and obfuscate.<\/p>\n
Even Trump recognises that this power has no lasting effects following its own immediate application. Israel has no options. There is no greater loss.<\/p>\n
The views expressed in this article are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera\u2019s editorial stance.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid his fifth visit to the United States since President Donald Trump took office in January. Before the meeting between the two, the Israeli press described the prime minister as fully engaged in an attempt to placate his domestic political partners by achieving \u201cconcessions\u201d from Trump. What were these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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