Inexperienced and ill-prepared to deal with sensitive policy matters, in the very first three weeks of his administration, new US President Donald J Trump has managed to make deeply controversial decisions leading to push backs. While his ban on Muslims from seven Muslim majority countries entering the US is being challenged in courts, his National Security Adviser General Mike Flynn has been forced to resign for his telephonic conversations, during the transition period, with Russian ambassador. And in a latest development his choice for labour secretary, Andrew Puzdar, has withdrawn nomination over an immigration scandal. Trump has now come up with yet another controversial, provocative decision. In a major foreign policy announcement on Wednesday, he moved away from the US' longstanding commitment to a two-state solution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, on which there exists an international consensus. Just last month, at a Middle East Conference hosted by France some 70 countries, including the US, had endorsed the two-state solution, also calling for a stop to the ongoing Jewish settlements building fin the occupied Palestinian lands.

Although Trump did not say the idea of two-state solution is undesirable that clearly was what he meant when, standing beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a news conference said he, "I thought for a while the two-state looked like it may be easier of the two but, honestly, if Israel and the Palestinians are happy, I'm happy with the one they like the best." What can make Israel happy is well-known: driving Palestinians from all of their ancient lands, especially the West Bank, to create greater Israel, which is the object of ceaseless settlements construction activity. Netanyahu made that goal plain saying "in any peace agreement, Israel must retain the overriding security control over the entire area west of Jordan River - better known as the West Bank, occupied in the 1967 war that as per UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 Israel must vacate. As for the Palestinians, knowing what is likely to happen, they have denounced the new policy as an attempt to "bury the two-state solution and eliminate the state of Palestine." They would be happy though if the alternative, as senior PLO leader Saeb Erekat said, is a single democratic state that guarantees equal rights to all: Jews, Muslims and Christians. That surely is not what Israel's far right leadership has in mind. It wants a Jewish state only for the Jews. Trump surely is aware of that, but is pleased to please the US' influential Jewish lobby.

In fact, encouraged by his support during the recent weeks, Israel has gone faster with its settlements activity, in defiance of international law, announcing construction of thousands of new housing units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians aspire to establish the capital of a future state. All Trump had to say on the subject was to tell Netanyahu to hold back "a little bit." In other words, he has no qualms about ongoing Palestinian evictions from their homes and confiscation of their lands. His policy pronouncements will further fuel anti-US sentiments in the region, undermine the country's interests, and make an already unstable Middle East even more unstable.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2017