A week before Trump’s inauguration, Jerusalem already sees a change in the rules of the game that has broken the deadlock in the hostage negotiations. Unusually, the outgoing Biden administration has let Witkoff lead the process, on the grounds that any obligations the United States undertakes will be incumbent on Trump, not on Biden.
Witkoff is a Jewish real estate investor and developer who is close to Trump. He doesn’t have the background of the kind of people who usually fill diplomatic roles. “Witkoff isn’t a diplomat. He doesn’t talk like a diplomat, he has no interest in diplomatic manners and diplomatic protocols,” says a senior Israeli diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He’s a businessman who wants to reach a deal quickly and charges ahead unusually aggressively.”
In fact, Witkoff has forced Israel to accept a plan that Netanyahu had repeatedly rejected over the past half year. Hamas has not budged from its position that the hostages’ freedom must be conditioned on the release of Palestinian prisoners (the easy part) and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza (the hard one). Netanyahu rejected this condition and thus was born the partial deal proposed by Egypt.
If trump manages to end the genocide I will be gloating to all of my liberal friends about their lesser evil bullshit. I can’t fucking wait. I can’t stand trump but I had a feeling his anti war stance in general is maybe the only genuine thing about him as he’s been fairly consistent on that throughout his fame well before entering politics.
Short of glassing the Middle East I can’t imagine trump would be worse than biden. The bar would have to be in the deepest depths of Dante’s inferno of hell.
If there’s anything, he can just continue onto a country like Algeria and start a new Iraq-American-style war there
Problem is I expect the same if the dems won instead. More new wars under biden, why would one expect any different under Harris?
Right wing factions in the Israeli govt were blocking the deal. Now with Trump in they’ve got the green light to move on to West Bank.
Thanks for that wild speculation
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2024-06-03/ty-article/.premium/trump-is-desperate-for-cash-but-donors-have-conditions/0000018f-df3a-db29-a3ef-ff3a27530000
Paywalled.
Adelson paid $20 million in exchange for moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem last cycle. His window, a megadonor for settlement development in the West Bank just donated 100m with her stated goals being Israeli annexation of the West Bank and a U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty in all the regions of the land. Trumps #1 donor above Musk.
So that article does confirm your speculation.
I also don’t know how to tell you this; but Israel is already settling the West Bank. Turns out they don’t need some green light from Trump that Biden was withholding.
The only thing that formally annexing West Bank would do is force Israel to actually address the question of the Palestinians living there.
If only Adelson had hired you she could have saved a lot of money.
God you’re an idiot