Mahmoud Abbas

Washington funded, propped up, and perfumed Abbas’s unelected West Bank regime, while Hamas’s stronghold in Gaza was turned into the biggest prison camp on Earth for 1.5 million human beings, relegated to a free-fire zone for Jerusalem to attack at will with impunity. David Rose wrote of how the Cheney White House, in the person of Likudnik sympathizer Elliott Abrams, orchestrated an attempted military takeover of Gaza by Fatah in 2006. It failed.

Evidently, Abbas has grown weary of being treated like a stooge and having little to show for it. Surely he hoped that Peace Prize Obama could deliver concessions and a modicum of rationality from Sharon’s successor, the double-talking Bibi Netanyahu.

But all Obama delivered was pap, platitudes, and bromides. Contrary to his grandiosity, Obama had no clout when it came to dealing with Israel or the domestic pro-Israel lobby.

Abbas and his apparatchiks are obviously desperate. They have been subsidized by Washington, Saudi Arabia, and the EU, but that is getting them nowhere fast. They may even be worried about an internal revolt on the West Bank along the lines of what happened in Egypt. They need leverage in dealing with their Zionist overlords. They have no bargaining chips. Washington and Jerusalem like it that way. 

This explains Abbas’s démarche to the UN. No wonder Jerusalem and Washington are going ballistic. Their “peace process” playbook has been torn up. For Obama, it will be especially embarrassing. If the US vetoes Palestinian statehood in the Security Council—I’m praying that Hillary Clinton will be the US representative sitting at the table who casts the veto—Obama will be exposed before the entire world as just another hypocrite, dwarf, and proxy for Jerusalem along the lines of Tony Blair. Obama has pretended to be a principled, liberal, evenhanded, and sincere peacemaker. It will be most difficult to maintain that fiction after the veto. As for Hillary’s reputation, a veto will only confirm what has long been obvious. Can you imagine her next trip to Riyadh?

Does Obama want to be regarded as a yes-man for Jerusalem to shore up Jewish funding and votes for his reelection campaign? That is entirely possible, even likely. Like Hillary, Obama is a consummate opportunist. Meanwhile, Republican fruitcakes and fools are blasting Obama for supposedly throwing Israel under the bus. They must believe that spouting such falsehoods advances their cause.

When it comes to America and the Middle East, we are not dealing with foreign policy. This goes back to Harry Truman’s difficult election campaign of 1948 and his recognition of Israel as a legitimate state, which went against the US State and Defense Departments’ advice. In the current hubbub over Palestinian statehood, as in everything pertaining to Zionism’s march since 1917, we are dealing with American domestic politics—specifically, with ethnic politics, campaign contributions, special interests, and a favorable press. In other words, it’s a racket.