United States, Israel and their Arab allies discuss forming anti-Iran alliance
Arab countries would have NATO-style mutual defense pact
The Trump administration is in talks with Arab allies about having them form a military alliance that would share intelligence with Israel to help counter their mutual foe, Iran, several Middle Eastern officials said.
The alliance would include countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that are avowed enemies of Israel, as well as Egypt and Jordan, which have longstanding peace treaties with Israel, five officials from Arab countries involved in the discussions said. Other Arab countries could also join the alliance.
Meanwhile Trump is reversing decades-old US policy:
US President Donald Trump has suggested he is open to the idea of a one-state, rather than two-state, solution to the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Asked in a media conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday whether the US would continue its policy of support for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, Mr Trump said: “I’m looking at two-state and at one-state, and I like the one that both parties like… I can live with either one.”
Trump, Netanyahu dismiss “two-state solution,” threaten Iran
In a White House press conference Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump backed away from a decades-old pretense by Washington of a commitment to the pursuit of a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Instead, echoing remarks by Netanyahu, Trump advanced a “much bigger deal, a much more important deal” that “would take in many, many countries and…would cover a very large territory.” While vague in the extreme, in the context of the evolving foreign policy of the Trump administration, the statement suggested plans for a closer US-Israeli alliance of militarist aggression against Iran, combined with an attempt to bring Arab Sunni regimes such as Saudi Arabia, the other Gulf monarchies and others on board
read more: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/02/16/neta-f16.html
Is this the path to Trump’s Middle Eastern PEace?
Jerusalem’s only rational and historical choice is to link up once more with the Christian community of Lebanon.” – Trump Foreign Policy Advisor Walid Phares writing in a 1997 paper.
Ten days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 a member of the Joint Staff told General Wesley Clark that the United States was going to take out seven countries in five years. The countries were listed as – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. This story and the subsequent history which unfolded are well known to most readers.
Read more: http://philosophyofmetrics.com/is-this-the-path-to-trumps-middle-eastern-peace-freepom/
Is the building of settlements by Israel a prelude to the annexation of Palestinian lands? Gore Vidal is writing on this subject in the last issue of le Monde Diplomatique
Israel’s parliament has approved a bill to retroactively legalise illegal Jewish outposts built on privately owned Palestinian land (6 February 2017). This confirms that the Israeli far right is banking on the Trump administration’s support to move from settlement building to annexation of the West Bank. If the Supreme Court validates the bill and the international community fails to act, despite UN condemnation, this legislation may mark a turning point in the conflict: the end of a two-state solution in favour of a single state. Would the Palestinians be citizens of such a state or victims of Israeli-style apartheid?
Read more: http://mondediplo.com/2017/02/02israel