Axios is reporting on the guest list for the imminent Israeli-Palestinian peace plan to be presented by Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner:
The White House has decided not to invite the Israeli Minister of Finance Moshe Kahlon or other Israeli government officials to the Bahrain conference in Manama on June 25, where it plans to launch the economic part of the Trump administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, U.S. officials told me.
The big picture: The decision follows a Palestinian boycott of the conference, which has put pressure on other Arab and Muslim nations not to attend. A senior U.S. official told me: “The goal of the workshop in Bahrain is to present our economic vision for the Palestinian people. As such we want to focus on the economic aspects and not the political ones.” The Bahrain conference will now take place without Israeli or Palestinian officials.
It feels like colonialism, doesn’t it? The parties concerned aren’t there, just a proposal. And for economics, too. Now, I won’t argue that economics is a strong influence on most everyone, but the formal problem here has to do with a political fight over ownership of the land. That’s economic at its roots, but political and religious in its presentation – and I fear that without some sort of political and religious settlement, an economic plan is little more than dry oatmeal.
I’m not expecting much out of this. I expect Trump isn’t, either, but he’ll try to push it as a big accomplishment, because he’s desperate to pump up a re-election campaign which seems to be lifeless.
