Monday, June 22, 2020

Trump’s “Israel-Palestine Peace Deal”: Cheered by Israelis and Jeered by Palestinian Authority

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Nikhita Gautam

Article Title

Trump’s “Israel-Palestine Peace Deal”: Cheered by Israelis and Jeered by Palestinian Authority

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Global Views 360

Publication Date

June 22, 2020

URL

President Trump Unveils a Plan for a Comprehensive Peace Agreement Between Israel and the Palestinians

President Trump Unveils a Plan for a Comprehensive Peace Agreement Between Israel and the Palestinians | Source White House via Wikimedia

In January 2020, President of the United States, Mr. Trump, elaborated on a plan that, according to him, would bring peace to the Middle East with respect to the ongoing Palestinian crisis. The plan was welcomed by Israel but rejected by the Palestinians as they perceive it to favour Israel at the cost of Palestinian interests. It gave Israel the right over Jerusalem and the settlements in the West Bank as well as Jordan Valley. The settlements in the West Bank came as a consequence of the 1967 Mideast war, in which Israel had captured it but never formally claimed it due to international opposition. 

According to the plan, the proposed Palestinian state would not have a standing military and would be required to live up to benchmarks set up by the Israelis. The new state of Palestine will be established on the land which is non-contiguous and Israel would retain the security responsibility of the West Bank. The new Palestine therefore will become unviable as a functioning state.  

The president of the Palestinian authority, Mahmood Abbas, denounced the plan immediately and called it a conspiracy deal which is unworthy of serious contemplation. “We say a thousand times over:”, he said ”no,no,no,” after which the Palestinian leadership has not been on speaking terms with the Trump administration. Mr. Abbas played no substantive role in the plan-making process.

In January, Israel was planning to vote on the unilateral annexation of the West Bank after their Knesset elections, which is the national legislature of Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who promised the annexation if he was elected, was re-elected in the March elections. "Today, I announce my intention, after the establishment of a new government, to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea," said Mr. Netanyahu in September as a part of his election campaign.

The annexation, in the opinion of the Prime Minister of Palestine, would destroy the progress made in the Oslo accords, which were agreements between the two states signed in 1993. On 20th of May, the Prime Minister vowed to annex parts of the occupied West Bank and that he’d act in July, to which the Palestinian authority dissolved all treaties, understandings and agreements with Israel and the United States, which include the Oslo accords.

In the beginning of June, the Palestinian Prime Minster announced that the state would declare independence for Palestine if Israel follows through on the threat. The announcement detailed that the authority would declare an independent state along the 1967 partitions with Jerusalem as its capital. The authority would also manifest as a state on the ground, which means there would be a founding council and a constitutional declaration. 

All eyes are now on the action of Israeli government and reaction of Palestinian Authority in this  long drawn saga.

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February 4, 2021 4:44 PM

Are Black Americans victims of Police Militarization in the US

In the USA, there are reports of police using tear gas, flashbangs, and many other weapons to fight against the riots which are occurring now in over 350 cities against police brutality against the Black Community. There have been many reports on how the police brutality is disproportionate in terms of race; the Black people are thrice as likely to have violence committed on them by the police force than the whites, and the factor is 1.5 for the Hispanics. There is a first-hand account of a person present in the recent protests who talks about the use of batons on demonstrators.

This, however, leads to the question whether it was the militarization of the police force that caused violence towards minority communities. The police militarization was, in the aftermath of the 9/11 US terrorist attack, justified by the policymakers as a necessary tool to prevent the terrorist attacks in the future. This policy decision led to the military grade weapons and military style training regime for the police force. Some of the states in the US partnered with highly militarized police of Israel for training their police force. Such lethal weapons which were provided to the police force  used against terrorists were gradually used by the police force against common civilians on suspicion of minor crimes and the group of protestors.

The civil right groups were voicing concerns for many years about the use of disproportionate force on the Black and Hispanic Americans, which they blamed on the arming of police with lethal weapons. It was the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, who was shot and killed on Aug. 9, 2014, by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in Ferguson, Montana, USA that galvanised the public to demand for demilitarization of police force. As a response to public anger against the killing of Michael Brown, President Obama set up a Task Force on 21st Century Policing. This task force, in its report put special emphasis on de-escalating situations, with civilians in training and policies, and reduced funding by the Department of Homeland Security for such weapons. However these recommendations failed to have much effect on solving the issues at hand.

The continued use of such lethal weapons casts the police force as a separate, powerful entity which is to be feared, instead of a friendly cop who is trying to provide security to a citizen in distress. Such equipment serves to distance the police from the people, giving them power, and if left unchecked, entitlement over the rest of the citizens. In many instances the presence of a weapon itself leads to more aggressive behaviour and there have been calls to make the police wear body cams to restrain them from acting with disproportionate lethal force.

The racial profiling and discriminatory actions against the black and other communities that was already practiced by the police forces was now being enforced by more lethal power in the force’s hands. A study by Olugbenga Ajilore shows that counties with more race segregation were more likely to request additional weapons, and counties with an African American/Asian American population are more likely to acquire military equipment. Another report of 2017 shows a direct correlation between the degree of police militarization and the killing of civilians in police action.

It can be reasonably said that the militarization, in some sense, inflated the already existing racial profiling based violent actions of police force.

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