He extended one to Europe; the Palestinians got the sword shaft and it was below the belt:
"Israel and United Arab Emirates strike major diplomatic agreement" by Peter Baker, Isabel Kershner and David D. Kirkpatrick New York Times, August 13, 2020
Israel and the United Arab Emirates reached a landmark accord sealed by President Trump on Thursday that could presage a broader realignment in the region as the two agreed to “full normalization of relations” in exchange for Israel suspending annexation of occupied West Bank territory.
At first look, the suspension was to give cover to the UAE for betraying the Arab position and the realignment of which they speak is the choosing of sides in the upcoming war on Iran.
Strange how COVID can stop everything in its tracks but war-making, and the Iranians should be quaking in their boots give whatever weapon was on display in Beirut earlier this month. No regime will dare stand against them now.
In a surprise announcement at the White House after a three-way phone call with Israeli and Emirati leaders, Trump said the deal would lead to greater cooperation on investment, tourism, security, technology, energy, and other areas while the two countries move to allow regular direct passenger flights, open embassies, and trade ambassadors for the first time.
If fulfilled, the pact could reorder the long stalemate in the region, potentially leading other Arab nations to follow suit in forging an increasingly explicit alliance with Israel against their mutual enemy in Iran while taking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s annexation plan off the table, at least for now.
Oh, so this was without a doubt a capitulation to Israel on the part of the UAE.
Looks like we are at a pivotal moment.
“This deal is a significant step toward building a more peaceful, secure and prosperous Middle East,” Trump told reporters in a hastily arranged event in the Oval Office. “Now that the ice has been broken, I expect more Arab and Muslim countries will follow the United Arab Emirates’ lead,” but the agreement generated an immediate backlash in the region from opposite sides of the ideological spectrum.
He means after the flattening of Iran, right?
At least some Israeli settlers and their political allies were disappointed that Netanyahu would give up his plan to claim sovereignty over West Bank territory, while Palestinians felt abandoned by an Arab nation leaving them to remain locked in an untenable status quo even without the threat of annexation.
He didn't give up anything. He reserved the right to swallow it up later.
“This is a black day in the history of Palestine,” Ahmad Majdalani, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee, said in an interview shortly before the Palestinian ambassador to the UAE was recalled in protest. “This agreement is a total departure from the Arab consensus. The Palestinian people have not authorized anyone to make concessions to Israel in exchange for anything.”
That's a good point at the end there.
No one asked them.
They are only the people that live there and are having their land stolen as Israel keeps a knee to their neck (that's also the technocratic globalists plan for the entire planet due to COVID).
Israel and the UAE have long maintained a thinly veiled secret relationship over mutual interests, and the idea of formalizing it had come up several times over the past year, but the two sides essentially took it into the open after six weeks of indirect talks through Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, culminating in Thursday’s phone call between Trump, Netanyahu, and Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto ruler of the UAE.
Ah, the great peacemaker of the failed plan who got his two buddies together to do this nothingburger! How Kerry-like, too, with the secret meetings and all!
If one needs reminding, MBZ also bailey Kushner out on bad real estate deals while Kushner gave his bed up for Bibi back in the day. Now they are all in there together.
The deal gave Trump a much-welcomed breakthrough at a time when he has been struggling at home with a deadly pandemic and economic collapse amid a reelection contest that polls show he is losing. Both Israel and the UAE, each for its own reasons, were happy to credit Trump to advance their positions in Washington, and the president plans to stage a celebratory White House signing ceremony in coming weeks.
The delicacy of the accord was on display after the announcement as the Emiratis maintained that it was contingent on Israel living up to its pledge to forgo annexation even as Netanyahu emphasized that it was only a temporary pause in deference to Trump, but both sides were playing to domestic constituencies to minimize concessions, and officials expressed optimism that the deal would hold.
“This is a historic evening,” Netanyahu said at a news conference. “Today, a new era began in the relations of the state of Israel with the Arab world.”
This is Netanyahu's attempt to INFLUENCE OUR ELECTION by HELPING TRUMP!
Someone tell Pelosi and the intel agencies!
In a statement, Prince Mohammed emphasized the annexation suspension. “During a call with President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, an agreement was reached to stop further Israeli annexation of Palestinian territories,” he wrote. “The UAE and Israel also agreed to cooperation and setting a road map towards establishing a bilateral relationship.”
A team to set up a lab was on the first public direct flight to Israel from the UAE, although a plan to publicly declare cooperation in the battle against the pandemic in June proved too much too soon, as the Emirati government distanced itself shortly after Netanyahu announced it.
The impetus for Thursday’s agreement, however, can be traced back to around the same time, when Yousef al-Otaiba, the UAE’s ambassador to the United States who has worked closely with the Trump administration, wrote an op-ed article in Israel’s popular Yediot Ahronot newspaper appealing directly to Israelis, in Hebrew, not to annex occupied territory.
“Annexation will definitely, and immediately, reverse all of the Israeli aspirations for improved security, economic and cultural ties with the Arab world and the United Arab Emirates,” Otaiba wrote at the time. The headline boiled it down to a clear trade-off: “It’s Either Annexation or Normalization.”
Either/or is a Sith viewpoint.
Kushner said that proved a turning point. “After that, we started a discussion with UAE saying maybe this is something we can do,” he said. The Emiratis were open to the idea, he said, and so he then approached the Israelis, who likewise expressed a willingness to consider it. Talks then proceeded through Kushner and the Americans.
The negotiations were closely held in the White House, with only a limited number of officials aware. Meetings and Thursday’s phone call were either omitted from schedules or listed with obscure language, according to an administration official. Kushner said a preliminary agreement was reached a week ago and final details completed Wednesday.
Any laws broken or impeachable offenses?
Aaron David Miller, a longtime Middle East peace negotiator now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the agreement was “a win-win-win-lose,” in that it provided diplomatic victories for the UAE, Netanyahu, and Trump. “The big losers are the Palestinians, who have watched the Arab world move closer to Israel, seemingly rewarding Netanyahu for ignoring the Palestinians and undermining Palestinians’ interests,” he said.
Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian journalist, argued that the deal was overhyped by both sides. “UAE was already normalizing relations & the annexation plan was already postponed,” he wrote on Twitter. “No one is a winner in this despite the hoopla that we will hear about for some time. UAE broke the Arab peace plan without getting anything of worth.”
I'm sick of the pre$$ manipulation!
They make mountains out of molehills and vice-versa!
In Israel, the development came at a perilous moment for Netanyahu, who is leading a fragile, fractious coalition government and faces trial on corruption charges. His annexation promise, made repeatedly throughout three recent elections, had left him in a box after Kushner opposed his moving forward without working through Trump’s official peace plan, but shortly after the agreement Thursday, Netanyahu and his domestic rivals announced that they had made progress in coalition talks.
OMG, Netanyahu was the big winner, huh?
Martin Indyk, who served as special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under President Barack Obama, said the deal gave both Trump and Netanyahu a way to escape a political box of their own making with the president’s stalled peace plan and the prime minister’s politically problematic annexation drive.
He's the founder of Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Washington-DC-based $tink tank and part of the so-called pro-Israel Lobby. That's who the Joo York Times turns to for expert anal-ysis.
“It gets Trump out of the corner he was in, having agreed to legitimizing the settlements and then discovering that the Arab world had a problem with that,” he said. “Now he’s got something he can claim credit for.”
Claim credit for what?
--more--"
Speaking of leaders clinging to power:
"Mass beatings, detentions in Belarus as president clings to power" by Ivan Nechepurenko and Anton Troianovski New York Times, August 13, 2020
He won 80% of the vote, NYT!
MINSK, Belarus — Accounts of violent beatings of protesters and mass detentions mounted in Belarus on Thursday as the country’s embattled president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, deployed brute force to cling to power.
He's clinging to power!
One really has to wonder why they don't like him!
Widespread protests against Lukashenko, an authoritarian who has ruled for 26 years, have gripped the Eastern European country ever since he claimed victory in a presidential election on Sunday that his opponents and international governments widely considered fraudulent.
Aren't they all.
The protests were initially largely peaceful, but riot police officers and military forces responded with stun grenades and rubber bullets, and could be seen pummeling unarmed protesters with their boots and batons. Dozens of journalists were among the thousands detained; those who were released reported fierce beatings and horrific conditions in overcrowded detention centers.
The arrests and violence appeared geared at scaring people off the streets, but protests against Lukashenko continued in Minsk, the capital, and across the country on Thursday.
Footage circulating on social media showed workers walking off the job at the BelAZ truck factory in the city of Zhodzina, a crown jewel of Belarusian industry, chanting the protest movement’s message to Lukashenko: “Leave!”
Thousands of people, mostly women in white shirts, came to the city’s main avenue on Thursday afternoon, waving flowers to protest police violence. “Flowers are better than bullets,” one poster said.
$mells like $oro$.
The scene outside a pretrial detention center in Minsk was one of desperation and grief. Hundreds of people gathered, as they had for much of the week, looking for loved ones. They swarmed the occasional departing ambulance, seeking scraps of news.
People released from the jail said that they had not been fed and had to take turns to sleep or even sit. They were not allowed access to lawyers and had no way to tell their relatives where they were. At night, they said, they heard the sounds of beatings.
“The walls were thick, but we could still hear screams,” said Daria Andreyanova, 28, an actress. “When we asked for some fresh air, they would open a door and throw a bucket of water on us.”
Andreyanova showed a piece of toilet paper with holes in it, with the number of holes on each line representing a phone number that a person being released would call to pass along word about a cellmate still in prison.
More than 1,500 people detained during protests over the past days have gone missing, according to a list updated by a group of volunteers. Every day, they pass their list to the prison authorities, who mark whether those named are being held there. Some people have not been able to find their relatives for days, said Yelena Radaman, 35, one of the volunteers.
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Related:
"In its first session since a devastating explosion rocked Beirut last week, Lebanon’s Parliament approved a state of emergency that extends sweeping powers to the army in the city, a situation that rights groups have said could pose a threat to freedoms. The Parliament’s approval has raised concerns about enabling a crackdown on protesters and those critical of the government. The state of emergency allows the army to impose curfews, ban assemblies, and impose censorship on media organizations and publications if it deems them threatening to national security, and also extends the ability of officials to try civilians in military courts. It will last until Aug. 21 but can be renewed. The decision to confirm the state of emergency came as widespread protests continue over the mishandling of the country’s affairs that many believe led to the explosion, which was triggered by a fire that ignited some 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in Beirut’s port since 2014....."
The Lebanese army should declare a COVID lockdown; then they would be off the hook.
"Officials had known for years that highly explosive materials were being kept at the site, which is the country’s main port. Turmoil has gripped the government as well. Lebanon’s Cabinet resigned Monday as fury over the explosion grew, but ministers will stay on in a caretaker capacity until the country’s president appoints a new government. Many believed that the resignation of the Cabinet leaves the country back at an impasse it faced last fall when earlier protests forced the resignation of then Prime Minister Saad Hariri. Little has changed for the country’s most powerful politicians since then, a situation that protesters say has led to continued widespread corruption and mismanagement. Karim Makdisi, an associate professor of international politics at the American University of Beirut, called the approval of the emergency measures a “very dangerous development that may lead to abuse of army power without recourse for citizens,” in a post on Twitter.
That is true for all citizens of the world at this point.
The decision was passed during a parliamentary session convened in the theater of Beirut’s UNESCO Palace, because the Parliament’s own chambers were severely damaged in the blast. The government had already implemented a “state of general mobilization” in March to allow it to impose restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic, including curfews, and some legal groups have questioned why an additional state of emergency was imposed. Karim Nammour, a lawyer and board member of The Legal Agenda, a group that monitors public policy in Lebanon, said the declaration of a state of emergency followed a “repressive approach” similar to that used to respond to previous emergencies. “The law doesn’t really specify what constitutes a threat to security, so this can be wildly interpreted in order to include other activities that are not necessarily threatening to security but are rather not compatible to the regime or powers’ view on how things should go,” he said. Nammour said that letting military authorities forbid any publication of content that it considers a threat to security was the most alarming aspect of the emergency measure because of the role the press plays in holding the authorities to account. Recovery efforts are still in their early stages in the city, where the explosion caused an estimated $10 billion to $15 billion in damage, according to the governor of Beirut. International groups and nongovernmental organizations have taken the lead in the aid efforts. On Thursday, David Hale, a senior US diplomat, visited Beirut. While touring a neighborhood damaged in the explosion, Hale said the FBI would take part in the investigation into the cause of the blast at the invitation of local officials, according to the national news agency of Lebanon."
I'm sure the UN will soon be taking over, and elite accountability seems to be pandemic!
Also see:
The Beirut Explosion Exposed
US official says FBI will join investigation
Comment: The FBI showing up to assist in an “impartial investigation” only makes it’s-not-real/zusa look more and more guilty as the culprit
All about these guys:
"The Iranian navy boarded and briefly seized a Liberian-flagged oil tanker near the strategic Strait of Hormuz amid heightened tensions between Tehran and the United States, the American military said Thursday. The US military’s Central Command published a black-and-white video showing what appeared to be special forces fast-roping down from a helicopter onto the MT Wila. The Iranian navy held the vessel for some five hours before releasing it Wednesday, said a US military official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet made public. The Wila made no distress calls before, during, and after the seizure, the official said. Iranian state television later on Thursday acknowledged the brief seizure, referring to the operation as a routine inspection without elaborating....."
That's odd, because I saw a report that said the U.S. grabbed four Iranian vessels near Venezuela, and of you think I'm buying some grainy Black-and-white film from the U.S. military, ha-ha-ha-ha.
Related:
"The Iranian navy also handles all operations in the Gulf of Oman on the eastern side of the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of all oil traded passes. Two other Iranian naval vessels took part in the seizure, Central Command said. The International Maritime Security Construct, which is a US-created maritime group to protect Persian Gulf waterways, called the Iranian boarding “a blatant violation of international law that undermines freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce.” It said one of its vessels “monitored the incident” but did not intervene. “We call on Iran to articulate to the international community the legal basis for its actions,” the group said in a statement. “This type of reckless, aggressive behavior by Iran destabilizes the region and threatens the rules based international order.”
Who put your business under lockdown again?
Officials in the UAE, a US-allied federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula, did not respond to a request for comment. Private maritime intelligence firm Dryad Global said it suspected two other ships had been harassed by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in the Persian Gulf over the last week as well, based on the ships’ behavior. As tensions between Iran and the United States heated up last year over America’s unilateral withdraw from its 2015 nuclear deal, tankers plying the waters of the Mideast became targets, particularly near the strait, the Persian Gulf’s narrow mouth. Suspected limpet mine attacks the United States blamed on Iran targeted several tankers. Iran denied being involved, though it did seize several tankers. In July, a US-sought oil tanker was “hijacked” off the coast of the United Arab Emirates after allegedly smuggling Iranian crude oil. The vessel later ended up back in Iranian waters, suggesting Iran itself seized the vessel."
Yeah, it is time to CHOOSE UP SIDES so Trump can bring the peace of the grave and the security of the slave to the region.
Also see:
"State Street Corp. has opened its first office in Saudi Arabia and hired Abdullah Saleh Bakhrebah from Ashmore Group Plc as chief executive officer for its operations in the kingdom. The Boston-based financial-services firm is entering Saudi Arabia as part of its plans to boost its presence in the Middle East, State Street said in a statement Thursday. It also hired Haifa Al Goufi as Middle East and North Africa chief compliance officer and Hassan Al Khalaf as chief financial officer for the region. International banks and investment firms including BlackRock, Citigroup, and Credit Suisse have opened offices in Saudi Arabia or increased their presence as the kingdom diversifies from oil and opens up its capital markets to foreign investors."
Looks like the Saudis have $igned up as well, and I know the US government stopped drafting young men into the military in 1973, but every male must still register for the draft when he turns 18 so TEN-HUT!
Are you READY for a WAR?
