http://www.voltairenet.org/article199086.html
Jared Kushner reorganises the Middle East
A personality who is highly contested by his fellow members of the Trump administration, Jared Kushner nevertheless enjoys the total confidence of the President. He has been handed the job of reorganising the Middle East according to the « reality principle », against the received wisdom of each camp. After tangible successes in Saudi Arabia, he is now taking on the Israëlo-Arab question.
Jared Kushner is a very secret personality about whom we know very little. At best, we know he has a high regard for the Law, and was destined to become a prosecutor. However, when his father was arrested and incarcerated for tax evasion, he was sure this was an injustice. According to him, his father had fallen victim to a sting operation. He therefore abandoned his law studies and set to work rescuing the family business, a real estate development firm - which he managed with success. During this period, he developed for himself the smoothest image possible in order to distance himself from the accusations leveled against his father.
His father-in-law, Donald Trump, seems to trust him implicitly, to the point of tasking him de facto with the organization of his electoral campaign. Certain of his adversaries expressed their surprise that he was able to run this campaign with minimal means, and yet lead it to victory.
As soon as he arrived at the White House, President Trump asked him to participate in the most secret meetings, despite the fact that he does not have Top Secret accreditation – which in fact he still does not have.
Hoping to leave a name in History by succeeding in a task that his predecessors have all addressed without ever having realised, President Trump tasked him with resolving the Israëli-Arab conflict and pacifying the Middle East. This is a gamble which is all the more perilous in that the young man (age 36) has previously taken a stand alongside Israël by financially supporting Tsahal and the Jewish colonies on Palestinian land. However, Kushner has a great need of being accepted by his milieu, so it is quite possible that these gifts have another meaning.
Nominating for this assignment a trusted personality who is devoid of diplomatic experience is a second challenge for President Trump. Considering the failure of US professional diplomats, he is attacking an old problem from a new angle. For this mission, Jared Kushner has obtained a rare privilege – he is the only senior administrator whose meetings with foreign political personalities are not the object of written records. In this way, no-one can rebuke him for his mistakes, nor even criticise the way in which he approaches the subjects - not even the Secretary of State, since he is accountable only to the President.
In the opinion of those personalities who have met him, Kushner follows the same principles as his father-in-law:
• first of all, acknowledge reality, even if this implies abandoning well-established official rhetoric;
• secondly, consider all the advantages that can be drawn from earlier bilateral agreements;
• and thirdly, as far as possible, take into account multilateral Law.
The only difference with his father-in-law is his perfect mutism, as compared to the provocative and contradictory declarations used by the President to destabilise his listeners.
During the last ten months, Jared Kushner has multiplied his journeys to the Middle East - particularly to his favourite destinations – Saudi Arabia and Israël. We have just experienced, without understanding it, the beginning of his operation.
Saudi Arabia
- The reality of Arabia, from Trump’s point of view during his electoral campaign, was as follows:
• the accumulation of petro-dollars, or the massive sums in dollars paid by the USA for oil that the Saudis do not produce.
• the central role of the Kingdom, under the control of MI6 and the CIA, in the fight against Arab nationalism and the manipulation of Islamic terrorism.
• Its crisis of succession.
The bilateral agreements are the Quincy agreements signed by Franklin Roosevelt in 1945, renewed by George Bush Jr. in 2005, and valid until 2065. Although they have never been published, many people who participated in their negotiation have described them as follows:
• The King of Arabia accepts the control of its oil by the United States, while in return, the US agrees to protect the King, and by extension, his private property, Saudi Arabia.
• The King of Arabia agrees to raise no obstacle against the creation of a state for the Jewish population of the ex-Ottoman Empire, while the United States favours its regional role.
So Jared Kushner prepared the summit on 21 May 2017 in Riyadh which brought together almost all of the heads of state of the Muslim world around President Trump. Saudi Arabia immediately broke its ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and ceased financing the jihadist groups all over the world – at least, almost all, except for Yemen [1]. The Kingdom used its influence to convince the other Muslim states present. However, this success had a price:
• Qatar refused the new US policy. Not wishing to have wasted the 137 billion dollars it had spent in the fight against Syria [2], it continued its support for certain jihadists. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates unilaterally decided on an embargo. While Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tried to distance himself from this quarrel, Kushner and President Trump took sides with Arabia.
• Kushner agreed to help King Salman sort out his succession to the throne as he saw fit.
The palace coup of 4 November
At the end of October, Jared Kushner went to Saudi Arabia for three days. He shared long work sessions with the King’s son, Prince Mohammed ben Salmane (MBS), and drew up with him a list of the members of the royal family who were to be neutralised. Unsure of the possible reactions of the Royal Guard once Prince Mutaib had been dismissed, he offered MBS the assistance of the mercenaries of Academi (ex-Blackwater) in order to proceed with the arrests. Finally, remembering the media campaign against his father, he provided the spin doctors with a soothing tale of « the fight against corruption » with which to gloss over the palace coup.
He had already left Riyadh when the Lebanese Prime Minister, Saad Hariri – the legal son of Rafic Hariri, but the biological son of a Fadh prince [3] – was invited to an emergency meeting in Riyadh, « where he would be received by King Salman ». We know the end of this story [4] – the resignation speech of Hariri and the arrest or execution of all the princes capable of contesting or claiming the succession to the throne.
Hundreds of cousins of MBS were arrested, and placed under house arrest or in detention. One after the other, they agreed – often under torture – to hand over their fortunes to their sovereign. In this way he collected more than 800 billion dollars, according to the Wall Street Journal [5].
No voices anywhere in the world spoke up to come to the aid of these fallen billionaires, who until then had sat in the most prestigious board of directors.
Witnesses declared that certain members of the royal family were hospitalised and treated before they were taken back into the interrogation room. MBS affirmed that he had liberated several personalities, including Prince Mutaib himself, Turki ben Abdallah, Doctor Ibrahim ben Abdelaziz ben Abdallah al-Assaf (ex-Saudi Minister of finances) and Mohammad ben Abdel Rahman al-Toubaichi (ex-head of protocol to the Court).
This is certainly not the end of the story. In conformity with the instructions of President Trump, Jared Kushner will now attempt to recuperate part of the confiscated fortunes for his country.
The Hariri affair
Contrary to what the French Press pretends, the liberation of the Lebanese Prime Minister owes little to Paris. It is true that President Emmanuel Macron intervened, since Saad Hariri has triple nationality - Saudi-Lebanese-French. It is true, Macron went to Riyadh, but only succeeded in being insulted [6]. The only useful action came from his Lebanese counterpart, President Michel Aoun.
France was blocked by a simple reality – in international consular Law, multinationals are not allowed to benefit from diplomatic immunity in a country of which they are citizens. However President Aoun overturned the situation by defending not Saad Hariri the man, but his Prime Minister Saad Hariri. There is no doubt whatsoever that arresting and placing under house arrest the head of the government of another country outside of any judicial procedure is an act of war – and indeed, the international press whispered rumours of a possible Saudi bombardment of Lebanon. Immediately, the Baabda palace threatened to bring the affair before the arbitration court of the United Nations, and simultaneously, to alert the Security Council. And via his Syrian counterpart Bachar el-Assad, he also contacted Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, who made the connection between the pro- and anti-US. It was al-Sissi who telephoned Jared Kushner and obtained, with his support, the liberation of the Prime Minister. And in fact, as soon as Hariri was freed, he went to Cairo to thank al-Sissi.
The Israëli-Arab question
This leaves us with the Israëli-Palestinian question.
The naked reality is this:
• Over the last 70 years, Israël has continually been stealing its neighbours’ territory. It currently occupies the Syrian Golan, the farms of the Lebanese Shebaa, and a very large part of the Palestinian territories of 1967, including almost all of East Jerusalem.
• The leaders of the Palestinian Resistance have almost all been neutralised by Israël – many of them have been assassinated, those who remain with Fatah have mostly been corrupted by their enemies, while those of Hamas have openly collaborated with Mossad to eliminate their rivals [7]. The only organisations who continue to fight for their rights are a few small groups like the Islamic Jihad and the FPLP-CG.
• It is true that the Palestinians and the other Arab and/or Muslim people maintain a sense of the Law, and militate for the respect of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. But in the absence of credible political representation, they can do nothing, apart from marching by the tens of millions on « Jerusalem Day ».
The bilateral agreements are:
• The realisation of the project expressed by the British Balfour Declaration, and by the 14 points of US President Wilson which created Israël [8].
• The letter addressed to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon by President George Bush Jr., which refutes the right of return to Palestinian refugees, and recognises the territories conquered since 1949 as being integral parts of Israël [9].
The multilateral agreements are:
• Resolutions 242 [10] and 338 [11] of the United Nations Security Council and article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention.
Only President Trump and a few of his advisors know the scenario written by Jared Kushner. He has followed the policy of his predecessors by reducing the situation to a simple Israëli-Arab dispute. Following the line of John Kerry, he has favoured the reconciliation of Fatah and Hamas against Israël, and has succeeded in persuading them (but not the FPLP-CG, nor the Islamic Jihad) to sign an agreement, on 12 October in Cairo [12]. He has engineered the election to the head of Hamas of a childhood friend of the leader of Fatah, Mohammed Dahlan, in preparation for the fusion of the two movements.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian factions continue to express radically different ideas. For Fatah, Israël is a second Rhodesia, a colonial State which pronounced itself independent. For Hamas, based on an interpretation of the Hadiths (not the Coran), the problem is that a Muslim land cannot be governed by non-Muslims.
The beginning of events came with the announcement of the transfer of the US embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem.
Clearly, the White House is testing its ability to force its way through. Indeed, on one hand, the plan for the sharing of Palestine in fact anticipates that West Jerusalem will be the capital of the Hebrew state. But on the other hand, the Security Council has condemned Israël for designating West Jerusalem as its capital [13].
The strange meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, which has just been held in Istanbul, proposed to transfer the capital of the Palestinian State from Ramallah to East Jerusalem [14]. Except that this seems difficult to realise, and in fact has not been realised. Perhaps this was simply a gallant last stand designed to force the acceptance of this abandon by Muslim public opinion.
Provisional Conclusion
The adversaries of President Trump are attempting by any means possible to oblige him to give up on his advisor Jared Kushner. Nevertheless, he is still in office. He has, for the moment, managed to end Saudi support for terrorist groups and resolve the question of the succession to the throne by cutting the Gordian knot, in other words, by neutralising the royal family. We may regret the method chosen – hanging old men by their feet and torturing them until they hand over their bank accounts. The fact remains that all the other solutions, or even worse, the absence of solutions, could have led to a civil war. The fault lies not with Jared Kushner, but with those who have for so long accepted the barbaric and medieval régime of the Saouds.
Equally, it is today extremely unjust, not to transfer the US embassy to West Jerusalem, but to give up on establishing the Palestinian government in East Jerusalem. Here again, the responsibility does not lie with Jared Kushner, but with the « international community », and in particular with the Arab Sionist governments, who have allowed Israël, for the last 70 years, to eat up the city, apartment by apartment.
So while, for 70 years, Western diplomats have contrived to multiply and complexify the conflicts in the Middle East, Jared Kushner is the first to have brought a resolution. The angel-faced Presidential advisor is a talented organiser.
Thierry Meyssan
Translation
Pete Kimberley
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[1] « L’Arabie saoudite et les Émirats n’ont pas rompu avec les Frères musulmans », Réseau Voltaire, 15 décembre 2017.
[2] Figure revealed by ex-Prime Minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim.
[3] And not prince Abdallah, as I once wrote by accident. (Author’s note).
[4] “Palace Coup in Riyadh”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 7 November 2017.
[5] “Saudis Target Up to $800 Billion in Assets”, Margherita Stancati & Summer Said, Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2017. This figure contradicts the assertions of MBS, for whom the sums seized did not exceed 100 billion dollars: “Saudi Arabia’s Arab Spring, at Last. The crown prince has big plans for his society”, Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, November 23, 2017.
[6] “President Macron snubbed by Saudi Arabia”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 14 November 2017.
[7] “Mossad agents in the Al-Qaeda unit that attacked the Yarmouk camp”, Voltaire Network, 2 January 2013.
[8] “Who is the Enemy?”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 4 August 2014.
[9] “Letter from US President George W. Bush to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon”, by George W. Bush, Voltaire Network, 14 April 2004.
[10] « Résolution 242 du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU », ONU (Conseil de sécurité) , Réseau Voltaire, 22 novembre 1967.
[11] « Résolution 338 du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU », ONU (Conseil de sécurité) , Réseau Voltaire, 22 octobre 2003.
[12] “Palestinian Reconciliation”, Translation Anoosha Boralessa, Voltaire Network, 13 October 2017.
[13] The rejection by the Security Council of the Jerusalem Law, in 1980, did not entertain the question of whether Israël had chosen as its capital West Jerusalem or Jerusalem in its entirety. It condemned the principle of a unilateral declaration, considering that the status of Jerusalem could only be modified by Israëli-Palestinian negotiation. Cf. Resolutions 476 and 478.
[14] This proposition is intended to short-circuit a Saudi proposition to transfer the Palestinian capital to a suburb of Jerusalem, Abou Dis, which is separated from the rest of the city by the Israëli separation wall.
