Can Donald Trump's Art of the Deal business mastery solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict？
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Summary
Today, I talk about Jared Kushner's speech in Bahrain, where he tries to make a deal to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. I'll play a clip from that speech, and I'll give you my recollection of the Camp David proposals of almost 20 years ago.
Transcript
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Hello, my rebels. Today, I talk about Jared Kushner's speech in Bahrain, where he tries to put forward a deal to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli dispute.
00:00:11.060
I'll give you my thoughts on it. I'll play a clip from Kushner, and I'll give you my recollection of the Camp David proposals of almost 20 years ago.
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Before I do, though, can you mosey on over to the rebel.media slash shows, and would you please consider becoming a subscriber?
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All right, without further ado, here is today's podcast.
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Tonight, can Donald Trump bring his deal-making skills to the intractable Palestinian-Israel standoff?
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It's June 27th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
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He's Donald Trump's son-in-law and general fixer.
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To be clear, economic growth and prosperity for the Palestinian people are not possible without an enduring and fair political solution to the conflict,
00:01:48.520
one that guarantees Israel's security and respects the dignity of the Palestinian people.
00:01:55.640
However, today is not about the political issues.
00:02:00.920
The goal of this workshop is to begin thinking about these challenges in a new way.
00:02:05.960
Let's try to view this conflict and the potential of the entire region through a different lens
00:02:10.580
and work together to develop a concrete plan to try and achieve it.
00:02:15.100
For a moment, imagine a new reality in the Middle East.
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Imagine a bustling commercial and tourist center in Gaza and the West Bank where international businesses come together and thrive.
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Imagine the West Bank as a blossoming economy full of entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, and business leaders.
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Imagine people and goods flowing quickly and securely throughout the region as economics become more integrated and people become more prosperous.
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This is actually the historical legacy of the Middle East, specifically of Gaza and the West Bank.
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It is a legacy of great cultures coming together as a center of commerce, innovation, and prosperity.
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I'll give you some thoughts on the substance of it, and we'll ask a smarter guy than me, our friend Joel Pollack, in a moment.
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But, you know, the first thing I thought about when I saw that clip, it's how long it's been since I heard anyone serious in politics, in a leadership position, a decider, talk about the Israel-Palestine issue.
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You know that Sherlock Holmes story where the clue was the dog that didn't bark?
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We're so busy listening and responding to and thinking about the dogs that bark in our life, maybe we don't notice the voices we no longer hear.
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A Canadian example was the national unity crisis under Stephen Harper.
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That was the central obsession of the Liberal Party, for example.
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In 1995, the Quebec separation referendum came within half a percent of succeeding.
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And that was after Brian Mulroney's PCs and their disastrous Charlottetown Accord.
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And, of course, the Bloc Québécois itself, remember them, emerged from Mulroney's coalition.
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It was all the country's fancy people seemed to talk about.
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And then suddenly, when Stephen Harper and his conservatives took office, with very few seats in Quebec, I might add,
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and he himself being a true blue Westerner, sometimes called a cowboy,
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well, you'd think separatism would have boiled over in Quebec, but the opposite.
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He cooled it off so much that the Bloc Québécois just sort of evaporated as a party.
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Same with the national afraidness on the subject.
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And, by the way, Harper also cooled off any lingering Western separatism, too.
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For a decade under Harper, national unity was the dog that didn't bark.
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Incredible how quickly Justin Trudeau has inflamed that again, by the way.
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It was an obsession of the political class, the media class, the pundits, the pollsters, the lobbyists.
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All federal spending was viewed through that lens of how can we keep Quebec in.
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Anyone and everyone was walking on eggshells about Quebec.
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Political leaders for every party, well, they just had to be from Quebec, obviously.
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And that's what I'm thinking about, the Israel-Palestinian issue.
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During the Cold War, it was obviously less dominant than the central challenge of that age.
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Although it was sort of a proxy for the Cold War, with Israel being backed by the Democratic allies
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and the Arab states generally being on the side of the Soviet Union.
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But when the Berlin Wall fell, and before the horrors of 9-11 changed the, I suppose, the next chapter,
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And filling that empty void of things to talk about, I guess, was the Israel-Arab dispute,
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more particularly the Israel-Palestinian dispute.
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I should tell you that all of Israel's disputes with all of its Arab neighbors
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and all of its domestic terrorism and all its fights with the Palestinians,
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all of its wars and all the terrorism in the past 75 years, 100 years,
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its War of Independence in 1948, the famous Six-Day War in 1967,
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the 1973 Yom Kippur War, all the war in Lebanon, and all the terrorist attacks and Israeli counterattacks,
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you know that all of that combined for the past 75 years,
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you know the total death toll on both sides for that entire history of the modern conflict?
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But in the scope and the scale of things, that is a drop in the bucket.
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You know the Syrian civil war, that alone has cost half a million lives in, what, five years?
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The civil war in Yemen, much briefer, but it's much more recent,
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is estimated to have already cost 70,000 lives.
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That's as much as a century of disputes between Israel and the Palestinians.
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My point is not to dismiss the tragedy of the Israel-Palestinian conflict or any of the other conflicts,
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but to point out that the amount of political interest and political capital
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and attention the political media spend huffing and puffing about Israel and the Palestinians
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is bizarrely disproportionate compared to other conflicts, even in the same region.
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For years, the size of the international press corps in Israel
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was as large as it was in cities like Paris or London.
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The CBC was the worst, by the way. CTV, the same.
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During Bill Clinton's term as president, that was really the end of history interregnum
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During Clinton's tenure, did you know that Yasser Arafat,
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the head of the terrorist Palestinian liberation organization, the PLO?
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Arafat became the number one most frequent visitor to the White House of any foreign leader.
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Maybe Bill Clinton wanted some sort of legacy other than Monica Lewinsky.
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And so everybody wanted to be known for all time as the bringer of peace.
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And so Israel and America offered a terrorist named Yasser Arafat.
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Israel gave the Palestinians control over the Temple Mount.
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The Temple Mount is in the remains of the Jewish temple itself.
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Israel gave Palestinians around the world the right to move back into Israel.
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150,000 a year, which for a tiny country like Israel is stunning.
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That would be like almost a million people coming into Canada every year.
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In fact, America and Israel would actually train and arm the Palestinians.
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The three men, Israel's Ehud Barak, the PLO's Yasser Arafat, and Bill Clinton.
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And all he had to do was to accept yes for an answer.
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I've heard it said that he was worried he himself would be overthrown by hardliners.
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Or maybe it said he didn't want the boring and hard work of actually building a country.
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You know, picking up the garbage, cleaning up, you know, doing the day-to-day humdrum work.
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Maybe he preferred the exciting work of being a gun-toting airplane hijacker.
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Maybe he thought in terms of centuries, not weeks.
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Bill Clinton, of course, was just six months away from his own retirement.
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I won't go down in history as the Muslim to make peace with the Jews.
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but he immediately sparked a violent uprising across Israel.
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but it actually killed the Israeli political left
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because it proved to every Israeli, right or left,
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that you could literally offer anything and everything to the Palestinians.
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There literally was nothing left to offer them.
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It proved that the peace process wasn't about peace.
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Ehud Barak was the last left-winger, if you can call him that,
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He said Arafat once complimented him by telling him,
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But I suppose it's better to be disillusioned than illusioned.
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And sure, leftists around the world, including Canada's own Justin Trudeau,
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they still love the Palestinians for whatever reason.
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when he cut $25 million from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip because of their terrorism,
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Justin Trudeau jumped to the front of the line to restore their funding by giving them our money.
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But with the departure of Barack Obama a couple years ago,
00:12:07.660
the focus, the obsession on the Israel-Palestine issue was really gone.
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I mean, Canada and the leftists of the European Union aren't that important in the region.
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And with the rise of ISIS in 2014 and the rise of Iran's nuclear program,
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there are more important things to do than talk about the PLO.
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Trump dispatched with those old illusions in a few tweets.
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He said, it's not only Pakistan that we pay billions of dollars to for nothing,
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As an example, we pay the Palestinians hundreds of millions of dollars a year
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They don't even want to negotiate a long overdue.
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We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table.
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But Israel, for that, would have had to pay more.
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But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace,
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why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?
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And that's not even his toughest tweet, by the way.
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Even the free trade deal with Canada and Mexico.
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A long-running stalemate between the PLO and Israel
00:13:24.120
And really, it hasn't been a top issue for most Sunni Arab countries either.
00:13:28.540
They're either worried about being devoured by a terrorist group like ISIS,
00:13:36.520
And I think slowly they just realized Israel might be their ally,
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And what the PLO terrorists want isn't really that important
00:13:54.120
You'll remember one of Trump's first visits as president was to Saudi Arabia.
00:14:00.200
And in Saudi Arabia, Trump told the Arab countries to throw off extremism
00:14:04.540
in language that you could never imagine Obama saying.
00:14:10.780
And it is a choice America cannot make for you.
00:14:15.340
A better future is only possible if your nations drive out the terrorists and drive out the extremists.
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That was the first time any American president had spoken so bluntly to the Saudis.
00:14:46.840
And the rest of the Saudi-oriented leaders were there, too.
00:14:56.100
And they accepted what Trump said, more or less.
00:15:01.780
And now here's Kushner, his son-in-law and fixer.
00:15:05.860
Numerous well-intended programs, investments, and plans have been derailed by violence,
00:15:11.400
political instability, and the lack of a resolution to the longstanding core issues of this conflict.
00:15:17.680
To be clear, economic growth and prosperity for the Palestinian people
00:15:22.960
are not possible without an enduring and fair political solution to the conflict.
00:15:28.980
One that guarantees Israel's security and respects the dignity of the Palestinian people.
00:15:35.540
However, today is not about the political issues.
00:15:40.940
The goal of this workshop is to begin thinking about these challenges in a new way.
00:15:46.000
Let's try to view this conflict and the potential of the entire region through a different lens
00:15:50.600
and work together to develop a concrete plan to try and achieve it.
00:15:55.000
For a moment, imagine a new reality in the Middle East.
00:15:58.980
Imagine a bustling commercial and tourist center in Gaza and the West Bank,
00:16:03.160
where international businesses come together and thrive.
00:16:07.120
Imagine the West Bank as a blossoming economy full of entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, and business leaders.
00:16:14.860
Imagine people and goods flowing quickly and securely throughout the region
00:16:19.660
as economics become more integrated and people become more prosperous.
00:16:26.880
This is actually the historical legacy of the Middle East, specifically of Gaza and the West Bank.
00:16:33.040
It is a legacy of great cultures coming together as a center of commerce, innovation, and prosperity.
00:16:43.420
It feels like that end of history moment after the Cold War again.
00:16:48.060
We can all, I don't know, find common ground, eat the same McDonald's, watch the same music videos.
00:16:54.280
There's never going to be another war because we'll all be buying and selling stuff to each other.
00:17:02.540
Maybe because the rest of the Muslim world is a bit tired of the Palestinian issue.
00:17:07.960
Maybe because they, I don't know, really want to be rich like Dubai in Gaza, the West Bank.
00:17:14.340
Maybe because Donald Trump drives a hard bargain.
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Immediately after Kushner's announcement, look at this headline.
00:17:23.940
The Palestinians, or at least some of them, have rejected the idea.
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Here's a PLO diplomat quoted in that LA Times story.
00:17:31.780
Hassam Zomlot, the head of the Palestinian mission to the UK, and another ambassador to
00:17:37.000
Washington, dismissed the conference as a way to legitimize Israel's annexation of the
00:17:42.520
They're talking about Kushner's speech in Bahrain where he said those things.
00:17:48.860
This is the most disingenuous, deceitful act by a state in a long time in the history of
00:17:53.700
international relations, said Zomlot in a phone interview Tuesday.
00:17:56.940
Their idea is that this is a real estate deal with Israel getting the property and Palestinians
00:18:06.040
You know, I got to admit, it did sound a little bit like a real estate pitch.
00:18:17.560
So maybe that insults things because maybe it's close to the truth.
00:18:21.260
But look, real estate developers get deals done.
00:18:25.380
It's a deal that there's money and there's emotion and there's religion and there's geography.
00:18:36.580
Because he was worried about being killed or being hated or making the wrong choice in
00:18:45.620
There is no tradition of liberal democracy in Arabia.
00:18:49.660
There's no civil society left in Gaza, not much in the West Bank.
00:18:58.640
There's some crony capitalism and some robber barons.
00:19:19.660
And joining us now is our friend Joel Pollack, senior editor at large at Breitbart.com.
00:19:31.180
Jared Kushner, who's the master fixer for the Trump administration, although I think he's
00:19:36.520
too liberal for many Republicans, seems to be spearheading the greatest art of the deal
00:19:43.040
of all, a deal to solve the Palestinian problem.
00:19:46.720
I'm a big skeptic because what he says sounds a lot like the deal that was tried and failed
00:19:53.620
Basically, give everything to the Palestinians and a ton of cash and think that they'll be
00:20:09.580
This time, they are doing things in a different order.
00:20:12.800
And if you can find me, by the way, I'm on stage here just before the start of the Democratic
00:20:17.480
debates, which are going to take up the rest of the week here in Miami, Florida.
00:20:22.440
The candidates have been walking through and preparing, and it's going to be pretty exciting
00:20:27.040
to see how this all shakes out over the weekend.
00:20:28.820
But yeah, look, they're putting things in a different order this time.
00:20:31.740
They're not putting the political solutions first.
00:20:36.540
And I think the reason they're doing that is to say, look, we know there's this roadblock.
00:20:41.100
There's this intransigence, this refusal to negotiate on the final settlement issues,
00:20:51.780
For too long, I think previous administrations have said the agreement is the goal.
00:20:56.200
And what Jared Kushner has actually done is interesting.
00:20:58.160
He has said, no, the future is the goal, the better future, the integrated region,
00:21:02.960
the economic growth, the West Bank and Gaza prospering, Israel safe, Palestinians with
00:21:09.140
dignity, people making money, people investing, people finding work.
00:21:20.580
There's been too much emphasis on where the parties divide.
00:21:23.660
He's asking people to fast forward in their minds and think about a future that works for
00:21:28.900
everybody, even if there are still disputes about other things.
00:21:33.700
Now, Palestinians haven't agreed to anything yet, but I think what he's doing is creating
00:21:39.900
It's going to be harder and harder for them to leave $50 billion on the table.
00:21:44.180
All he's asking them to do is join this economic plan before they get to the political issues.
00:21:49.360
I think it's a no-brainer for the Palestinians.
00:21:51.320
And he's increasingly making the sale to the general public in the Middle East.
00:21:54.820
Now, when I first heard $50 billion was at stake, I thought, oh my God, first of all,
00:22:00.020
that's going straight into a bunch of Swiss bank accounts.
00:22:06.400
But then I learned that the money would not be coming from America, but rather from the
00:22:11.300
That made me feel slightly better about it, that it wasn't American money.
00:22:15.860
But look, I have no doubt that an ordinary Palestinian man and woman, a man or woman living
00:22:22.740
in Ramallah, or even in Gaza, would like to move away from constant conflict to, I mean,
00:22:30.460
if you want to be visionary, to a future like Dubai.
00:22:32.960
I mean, there was once a point in time where West Bank Arabs were amongst the most liberal,
00:22:43.660
The last Palestinian elections, you know, Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, Hamas in the Gaza Strip,
00:22:55.620
You could have 99% of Palestinians agree to this happy future, but if you can't get the
00:23:00.140
terrorists at the top to agree, what's the point, Joel?
00:23:02.880
Look, I think the point is to move forward regardless of what the Palestinian leadership
00:23:13.960
You can start moving ahead with peace initiatives, economic initiatives, and you can presume that
00:23:19.060
If they decline, well, then Israel has done its best.
00:23:24.780
If they'll walk away from $50 billion, they're not interested in peace at all.
00:23:28.060
They're not interested even in talking about it.
00:23:29.740
So I think it's a win-win for the administration.
00:23:32.080
Either way, they're going to move past this in terms of their foreign policy.
00:23:37.400
They're basically saying, we are not going to let our entire Middle East policy be tripped
00:23:42.080
And I think it'll be convincing to other Arab states, other Arab communities.
00:23:47.800
They'll say, look, we've done everything we can for the Palestinians.
00:23:54.420
And so I think it's a win-win for the administration.
00:23:56.420
I think it's very interesting the way they've done it.
00:23:59.220
Well, let me ask you, because, I mean, Mahmoud Abbas, who is the, you know, I don't even
00:24:06.360
His thesis was a Holocaust revisionist, anti-Semitic thesis in school.
00:24:12.120
Like the guy, I don't even want to call him moderate, but I suppose compared to Hamas,
00:24:16.280
At least he's not crucifying people literally on the streets.
00:24:19.600
He's not invoking Sharia law in the same way as Hamas is.
00:24:28.340
I mean, would you literally do a deal with the Hamas terrorist group, which runs Gaza?
00:24:32.940
I mean, listen, if this is just a thought exercise, if this is just a call the bluff
00:24:38.680
I mean, I think it's pretty easy to call the bluff.
00:24:40.700
These guys hardwired in their party constitution of Hamas is the destruction of Israel.
00:24:46.720
I mean, listen, I think it's great to daydream and envision things, but I don't even know
00:24:54.940
If it's even possible with, how would you do it?
00:24:59.660
Well, first of all, Mahmoud Abbas has been in power forever.
00:25:03.780
But he's also 84 years old and he's not in the best of health.
00:25:07.780
So this is not a situation that's going to last forever.
00:25:10.580
I'm not saying a better leader will come after him.
00:25:13.700
In fact, after him, the entire project may dissipate.
00:25:15.980
And then you may have a freer hand in the Middle East to figure out this question without having
00:25:22.040
to kowtow to the PLO and the Palestinian Authority.
00:25:27.000
The assumption of Western foreign policy elites has been that time is on the Palestinian side.
00:25:34.060
And actually, when you look at it from his perspective, Trump has made it such that time
00:25:40.980
Palestinians are running out of time to do a deal.
00:25:42.560
And I think the fact that this economic plan is coming now, in advance of any kind of
00:25:46.700
concessions from Israel or any sort of agreement from the Palestinians, I think makes it clear
00:25:52.280
that Palestinians are at risk of being left behind.
00:25:55.660
So whether it gets to a deal or not, I think it does move the ball forward in terms of foreign
00:26:04.140
And it, again, releases us from being held hostage by this corrupt, terroristic dictatorship,
00:26:10.740
Well, we were in, we had a little rebel mission to Israel last summer.
00:26:20.320
And I'm not just talking about the Arab population, the Jewish birth rate, which is, I think,
00:26:24.080
an indication of optimism and economic prosperity and hope of any Western nation.
00:26:33.240
And I guess this is sort of the dog that didn't bark, Joel.
00:26:36.880
I mean, under the Clinton administration, no one visited the White House more often than
00:26:41.080
Now, it's not an obsession of the West or of the Saudis or others.
00:26:47.660
Between dealing with the crisis of ISIS and now the crisis of Iran and just moving on,
00:26:55.560
And Kissinger's terrible statement is true, that maybe the Palestinians never miss an opportunity
00:27:03.140
Well, this is the Trump administration's way of getting out from under that problem.
00:27:10.900
They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
00:27:12.880
But basically, Trump and Kissinger are saying that's not going to hold back American foreign
00:27:21.700
And the American administration has decided that for the broader interest of the United
00:27:25.160
States, especially confronting Iran and building strategic alliances in the Middle East,
00:27:29.920
they're not going to let the Palestinians hold up the issue any longer.
00:27:32.380
Putting this massive amount of money on the table, $50 billion, is a way of signaling,
00:27:37.340
first, to the Palestinians about what they're losing if they don't go with the deal.
00:27:40.880
And secondly, to the other states in the region about how little the Palestinians care
00:27:45.820
Yes, Palestinians say that money is not the issue.
00:27:50.780
They want Jerusalem and all that other sort of thing.
00:27:53.160
What Trump is basically saying is you can't hold the entire region back because you're
00:27:58.620
You can decide to be part of that, or you can decide to sit on the sidelines and let other
00:28:09.120
And I know you've got a laptop and you've got a phone.
00:28:11.960
And thanks for working with us when we lost you briefly there on Skype.
00:28:17.400
Maybe we'll have you on in a few days to talk about how all that went, because it's
00:28:24.520
Well, I'm so grateful for our friend, Joel Pollack.
00:28:28.800
The Democratic presidential nominations, they're not really in full swing yet.
00:28:34.760
But boy, it reminds me in some ways of the Republican nomination.
00:28:39.100
So many candidates, so many colorful characters.
00:28:44.020
Of course, here in Canada, we've got our own federal election coming first.
00:28:46.920
But it's very interesting to talk with Joel, who I regard as an expert on the question
00:29:10.800
Like I said, the first thing I thought of when I saw Jared Kushner was, well, I haven't
00:29:14.960
heard anyone serious talk about the Palestinian and Israeli issue in a long time.
00:29:20.720
My second was, look, I've seen this movie before, 19 years ago.
00:29:32.400
I should point out that 50 billion is not American money.
00:29:35.180
It's money from the Arab countries, which makes me feel better.
00:29:38.740
I thought, geez, if you've got $50 billion, how about build a fence in the United States
00:29:46.880
And maybe when the Palestinians say no, as they seem to be doing, Jared Kushner and Donald
00:30:00.380
On behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night and