Peloni: Witkoff and Kushner share their sense of betrayal by Israel as they describe how essential they estimate Qatar to be to peace in the Middle East. There is an important historical corollary to their inexplicable attempt to pursue peace by over valuing relationships of those who have little interest in actually achieving peace. Ted Belman, obm, described something very similar to the overselling of America’s relationship with KSA during the early 2000’s in his important essay, “Saudi Arabia and the Peace Process”. In this essay, Ted recalls how America was manipulated by their dependency on the Saudis to upend US Mideast policy. The result was not peace, but rather the 2005 Expulsion of Jews from Gaza, which ultimately lead to the 2023 October 7 Massacre. The relevant section in this essay is shared below along with my further comments.
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Ted Belman:
Bush 43, on taking office in 2000, decided not to get involved with a peace process as President Clinton had done. For the Saudis, this wasn’t good enough.
It appeared that the United States had made a strategic decision to adopt Sharon’s policy as American policy, or so the Crown Prince understood.
He sent Prince Bandar to Bush with an urgent message:
“Starting today, you go your way and we will go our way. From then on, the Saudis will look out for their own national interests.”
Within thirty-six hours, Bandar was on his way to Riyadh with a conciliatory response from Bush. When Bandar returned, Powell cornered him.
“What the f*ck are you doing?” witnesses recall Powell asking. “You’re putting the fear of God in everybody’s hearts here. We’ve all come rushing here to hear this revelation that you bring from Saudi Arabia. You scared the sh*t out of everybody.”
As a result of this exchange, Pres Bush made his vision speech in June ’02 in which he supported a Palestinian state subject to many preconditions. Ten months later, the U.S. invaded Iraq with Saudi blessing, and one week later, the Roadmap was announced, which included the Saudi Plan calling for a Palestinian state with ’67 borders subject to minor changes and East Jerusalem as its capital.
Much has changed over the past more than twenty years of course, but not the need for American peace processors to play the role of sycophants to Mideast partners who use their influence to mold US policy against any hope of long term peace in the region. Qatar is a Muslim Brotherhood country, with a rich history of funding terror and radicals around the world, while they were also notorious in the complicity of protecting KSM from scrutiny for his role in the first attack on the twin towers as he simultaneously planned the murder of thousands of Americans in the second attack on 9/11 while he was under the Qatari blanket of protection…and yet the Witkoff-Kushner duo judge this same Qatari ruling family as being the essential cog to forming peace in the Middle East.
Instead of chasing after their Qatari business partners and friends, Witkoff and Kushner should have quoted Prince Bandar and simply stated,
“Starting today, you go your way and we will go our way.”
Doing so might have led to something other than the slaughter which is now ongoing in the Gaza Strip under the Qatari arranged return to power of Hamas and the new attacks on Israel which have brought us back towards war. Quite unfortunate, but very predictable when considering the import which is being placed on personal relationships rather than national interests. Don’t look for the US pivot to Asia taking place anytime soon under the guidance of Qatar.
The deal is uppermost in everybody’s mind. We can’t ruin the deal under any circumstances, That’s why they declared betrayal by Israel when disposing of Hamas leaders in Doha. That threatened the deal and the Qataris know how to handle that kind of deal. There are other “interesting deals out there like those with EU heads of state to “recognize” the State of Palestine. If the Qataris were to lose their source of income, we might make some better deals.
What amazes me is that the Witkoffs of the world really believe that “ordinary people” don’t have the mind-power to analyze what they have done and come to their own conclusions…
Oh they felt betrayed, poor babies.
Assholes, maybe finding out that Witkoff and his son were making hundreds of millions with Qatar while play an “unbiased” negotiator left some of us feeling a bit…betrayed.