Trump finally unveiled his much-touted and over-hyped “deal of the century” on Tuesday, which more or less matches what was previously reported about its contents. In practice, it treats the Palestinians as a conquered people who are forced to perpetually accept “Israel‘s” hegemony seeing as how the latter will retain its existing settlements and continue to functionally exercise dominance over them in almost all matters of life. Palestinian refugees and their descendants also won’t be allowed to return to their original homeland except for the part that the US and “Israel” recognize as constituting their so-called “state”, meaning that they couldn’t in theory democratically overturn the current state of affairs between them and their oppressors if they voted to dismantle the self-professed “Jewish State” and replace it with something more inclusive for example. The American leader portrayed his plan as supposedly being the “only option for peace”, which isn’t surprising since nobody should have expected anything different from the US.
The “deal of the century” is basically an attempt to generate more foreign support for “Israel’s” decades-long occupation of Palestine, “sweetening” the deal with promises of economic aid so as to create the “publicly plausible” pretext for Muslim countries such as those in the GCC to officially support this plan. It’s already an open secret that those aforementioned countries are on excellent terms with “Israel”, especially in regards to coordinating joint regional strategies against their shared Iranian foe, so they’re expected to eventually (if not immediately) use this proposal as their excuse for openly formalizing their relations. The dramatic marketing behind the plan also puts Palestine’s sincere and superficial international supporters alike in a soft power bind since they’ll now be portrayed as supposedly “standing against peace in order to advance their (‘anti-Semitic’) interests” if they don’t go along with it. This is even more so the case since the memory of the 75h anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz which helped “justify” “Israel’s” establishment is still fresh on the world’s mind.
Importantly, Netanyahu will be flying straight from the US to Russia to brief his close friend President Putin about this plan after last meeting him just a week ago at the “Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism” forum in Jerusalem. The Russian leader regularly talks to his “Israeli” counterpart and has met with him over a dozen times in the past several years, which strongly suggests that he’ll at the very least portray his country as “neutral” (which in this context is equivalent to tacitly supporting “Israel”) by predictably reaffirming that “Russia supports peace and will agree to whatever the Palestinians decide upon” following the standard diplomatic protocol of repeating this platitude . It’s unthinkable for Russia to openly endorse the “deal of the century” since a lot of its regional soft power rests in its historical support of the Palestinian cause during the Old Cold War, but it’s also equally unthinkable for it to oppose the deal because of its close ties with “Israel”. In the event of any progress, the Russian government already said it would be a “common success“.
Taking the so-called “middle ground” and presenting itself as the “balancer” in accordance with the role that it’s attempted to play in recent years is therefore the most realistic stance that Russia will take. After all, even in the unlikely event that President Putin thought that his country’s overall interests could best be pursued by vocally opposing the “deal of the century”, Russia won’t take any tangible action to stop it. Moscow won’t curtail (let alone cut off) its ties with Tel Aviv since it didn’t even do so after the September 2018 incident when an “Israeli” jet’s irresponsible mid-air maneuver tricked a Syrian S-200 into accidentally downing a Russian spy plane. Moreover, President Putin has proudly said on more than one occasion that he regards the Soviet-descended population of “Israel” as his own countrymen, even going as far as saying last September that their mass migration there makes “Israel” a “Russian-speaking” country and therefore their two people are now “a true common family”, which is the highest honor that the Russian leader has ever bestowed to anyone abroad.
The author’s following analyses explain the fraternal ties between Russia and “Israel” more at length:
Therefore, from the standpoint of Russia’s state interests, it won’t meaningfully oppose the proposed “deal”.
Contrary to what some “wishful thinkers” in the Alt-Media Community demand, President Putin won’t sanction “Israel” over this latest development no matter how loud his representatives might be in the reservations that they possibly voice about it. Nor, for that matter, will Russia arm the Palestinians so that they can more effectively fight for better “negotiating leverage”, let alone go to war with “Israel” directly. Simply put, modern-day Russia is a status-quo state that only supports gradual changes to the international system, not anything revolutionary like its Soviet predecessor did. In this contemporary context, it’s also vehemently opposed to anything that could de-legitimize “Israel” so it would never support any option that even remotely runs the risk of dismantling it, whether democratically or otherwise, unlike Iran for example which regularly calls for that outcome. Regardless of how one feels about this reality, it should be recognized that Russia and “Israel” are unofficial allies so Moscow is expected to tacitly support Tel Aviv instead of meaningfully oppose it.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
