Playing "dress-up" with the Middle East

You know how little kids play "dress-up," pretending to be grown-ups and acting out their fantasies of how grown-ups act.   Fortunately, they don't have the power to actually make these things happen . . . which is the main difference that makes our White House's Middle East actions so dangerous.    Donald Trump and Jared Kushner, are like those little kids playing dress-up, thinking they know what to do in the Middle East -- the difference being they have the power to set the whole place on fire.   Real fire.  As in rockets, bombs, and guns.

The Guardian has just posted online an article by Moustafa Bayoumi, an Arab-American writer of "Being Young and Arab in America."

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". . . .  In his role as the president's special advisor, [Jared] Kushner seems to have decided he can remake the entire Middle Ease, and he is wreaking his havoc with his new best friend, Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, the 32 year old who burst on to the international scene by jailing many members of his country's ruling elite, including from his own family, on corruption charges.

"Days before Salman's unprecedented move, Kushner was with the crown prince in Riyadh on an unannounced trip.  The men are reported to have stayed up late, planning strategy while swapping stories.  We don't know what exactly the two were plotting, but Donald Trump later tweeted his "great confidence" in Salman.

"But the Kushner-Salman alliance moves far beyond Riyadh.  The Saudis and Americans are now privately pushing a new "peace" deal to various Palestinian and Arab leaders that is more lop-sided toward Israel than ever before.

"Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian parliamentarian in the Israeli Knessdet, explained the basic contours of the deal to the New York Times:   no full statehood for Palestinians, only 'moral sovereignty.'  Control over disconnected segments of the occupied territories only.  No capital in East Jerusalem.  No right of return for Palestinian refugees.

"This is, of course, not a deal at all.  It's an insult to the Palestinian people.  Another Arab official cited in the Times story explained that the proposal came from someone lacking experience but attempting to flatter the family of the American president.  In other words, it's as if Mohammed bin Salman is trying to gift Palestine to Jared Kushner, Palestinians be damned.

"Next came Donald Trump throwing both caution and international law to the wind by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel."

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Let me interject here for emphasis.   Jared Kushner is an observant, orthodox Jew whose family has known Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu since Jared was a small boy and Netanyahu visited them in their home in New Jersey.   Mohammed bin Salman is the crown prince of the powerful Arab nation, Saudi Arabia, which practices a conservative branch of Islam, Wahhabism.  This contributes to their rivalry with the Shia majority nation of Iran.

So a deal cooked up by Kushner and Salman -- a conservative Jew and a conservative Muslim -- might seem to have the blessing of both Israelis and Palestinians.   Far from it.

The Kushner/Netanyahu alliance would be selling out what many Israelis -- and most Palestinians, as well as the international community -- want to see as the eventual two state solution.

To add to the complexity religion brings in the region, the Arab Saudis are more closely aligned religiously with the Sunni Palestinians than with the non-Arab, Shia Iranians, but they still have religious differences.   Wahhabism began as a reform movement within the Sunni sect, advocating a return to a purer form of Islam.  Hence, although the Wahhabi Saudis and the Sunni Palestinians have Shia Iran as a common enemy, they are not natural religious allies either.

In short, who is looking out for the interests of the Palestinians?  This complexity seems borne out in the comment above that the Kushner-Salman  plan is "more lop-sided toward Israel than ever before."

Bayoumi goes on to discuss the Saudi's brutal war against Yemen, which has been brought to the brink of humanitarian disaster.  And now the Saudi's are participating with the Emiratis in the blockade against Qatar, which is having a devastating effect on that country's economy.   Bayoumi asserts that the Saudis and Emiratis believe that they have the tacit approval of the Trump administration, even though Trump very belatedly and half-heartedly criticized the blockade.

The Trump-Kushner tilt toward Saudi Arabia -- and these actions of the Saudis -- begin to look like Trump may be encouraging a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which backs some of the rebel forces in Yemen and Qatar.

The point for us here is that we have two young men in their thirties, with little knowledge or experience in the complex geopolitical and religious history and culture, who seem to be in charge of a concerted effort to bring peace to the region.   In Bayoumi's inimitable phrase:  ordinarily this "would be the time to bring in the State Department."

But no.   Because, under Donald Trump and Rex Tillerson, the State Department has been hollowed out of the knowledgeable people that would ordinarily be intimately involved in such advisory and negotiating roles.   Trump has not yet appointed ambassadors for:   Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, or Qatar.   The vital post of assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs is vacant.  No one has been nominated for those positions.

Tillerson himself has been shut out of all of these negotiations that Kushner seemingly is carrying out for his assignment to "bring Middle East Peace."   Even if he were involved, however, Tillerson no longer has the expert under-secretaries  to advise him, as John Kerry and Hillary Clinton did.  Not that Jared Kushner does either.

It's way past time to bring back the adults, to benefit from the experience and knowledge of career diplomats who know the region and its problems.   But Donald Trump likes to play dress-up and pretend to be an adult.   A year ago, the voters recklessly gave him the adult power to go with the dress up role.  He passed some of it on to his son-in-law, just as an aging Saudi king gave a favored young prince the adult power over his kingdom. 

So we are at the mercy of the children . . . . in a complex problem that has evaded even the best of the expert adults.  

Ralph