US ‘Peace to Prosperity’ conference actually offers Palestine little hope

.... America’s vision for a high-rise Metropolis conveniently overlooks the Palestinian civilians killed and injured in their tens of thousands during three major Israeli military offensives against the enclave. So-called Operation Protective Edge, launched on 8 July 2014, for example, slaughtered thousands of civilians over a seven-week period during which carnage, punishment bombings and devastation on a massive scale were inflicted upon Gaza’s besieged population who had nowhere to run. More than 550 Palestinian children were among those killed, while hundreds more received life-changing injuries in war crimes which still have to be accounted for.

These are the facts bulldozed to one side by the son-in-law of the US President who wants the world to embrace his vision for economic prosperity in Palestine.....

..... What he will not do is address the real problem, which is exactly how Palestinians will achieve their aspirations for a sovereign state of Palestine. Kushner is doing everything in the wrong order; ......

... The truth is that all the evidence points to the fact that a Palestinian State could flourish only if Israel stepped back and stopped meddling. Israel, though, does not want to see Palestine prosper beyond Zionist control. ....

... What’s more, thanks to the continuing expansion of the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, Palestine has been reduced to a series of “Bantustan” pockets of land surrounded by roadblocks, the grotesque wall and settler-only highways making it impossible to establish free movement for trade or any other normal life. ...

I have another word of warning for the Palestinians. Promises of state money, foreign investment and international funding upon achieving independent statehood were once made to the good citizens of East Timor and South Sudan. Their experience demonstrates that promises are easy and plentiful, but real investment is more elusive until and unless genuine freedom is part of the deal. Trump’s “deal of the century” is unlikely to provide anywhere near that. “Peace to Prosperity” actually offers Palestine and its people very little hope indeed.

article on MEMO