On 28 January, amidst great fanfare, US President Donald Trump unveiled new details of the so-called “deal of the century”- designed to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by, you know, definitively screwing over the Palestinians.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz notes that, according to the Trumpian plan, the Palestinians "would have no territorial contiguity, would be fully economically dependent on Israel, and most importantly, would be giving up the Palestinian national vision to establish a sovereign state”.
Illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank would be annexed to Israel, and Jerusalem would be recognised as the undivided Israeli capital.
Some "deal".
The day after the unveiling, Trump’s senior White House adviser and simultaneous son-in-law Jared Kushner - the primary architect of the plan - appeared on Sky News Arabia to enumerate some of his qualifications as Middle East peacemaker: “I’ve been studying this now for three years. I’ve read 25 books on it.” To be sure, three years is an impressively short time to go from having zero experience in politics or foreign policy to resolving one of the defining conflicts of the modern era.
A Washington Post columnist aptly quipped: “I have just read 25 books and am here to perform your open-heart surgery."
Since Kushner has not deigned to reveal the titles of any of his chosen texts, I attempted to contact him for the full reading list, stressing that I felt it would be “an immensely helpful resource for other folks out there who might be considering spontaneous reinvention as Middle East experts”.
As of this article’s publication, however, I had yet to hear back.
But it doesn’t take a Middle East expert to guess the nature and orientation of Kushner’s top 25. After all, only by reading 25 books of undiluted Zionist propaganda could anyone concoct the “deal of the century”. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.