Shoving realpolitik down the throats of allies has been for a while the order of the day in the Trump White House. First buddy Steve Witkoff has been dispatched to deliver the message.
Skipping Zelenskyy, Trump met directly with Vladimir Putin for a framework for Ukraine. One can see an abashed Zelenskyy watching morosely as Trump and Putin jointly appeared at a press conference.
Since then, Trump has admonished Zelenskyy saying, “You should never have started it.” The Nobel Prize winning Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez once noted with his usual acuity, “It is easier to start a war than end it.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was a little bitter about Europe in a recent statement following his meeting with the Emir of Qatar when he charged Danish PM Mette Frederiksen who is reputed to have said that Ukraine was better off with war than with peace under present circumstances — Russia holds the Russian speaking eastern Ukraine. Lavrov accused Europeans of goading Ukraine into war.
We will have to wait and see if Trump’s initiative excluding Europeans yields better results. The Russians of course are unlikely to give up the eastern Russian speaking areas under their control as they would probably consider it a betrayal of the people living there. Ukraine has a centuries old history of being melded with Russia and was once considered Russia’s granary.
The Middle East situation particularly with respect to Gaza is the other major problem at present. Trump’s sympathy with Israel is long lasting but he appears to differ from Israeli prime minister Netanyahu on the best course for Israel.
If ever there was an intractable problem, this is it. There are approximately 9.5 million Israelis and 5.1 million Palestinians (West Bank & Gaza). Several billions are now required to rebuild Gaza. Netanyahu intended to force the evacuation of Gaza but where can the Palestinians go? Trump had Jordan’s king over but he offered to accept 30 to 40 thousand — a drop in the bucket.
Since the Israelis cannot get rid of the Palestinians — and the latter cannot get rid of the Israelis, logic dictates a simple solution: they have to live side-by-side and learn to co-exist.
Israel is similar to other countries in the West. It runs a democracy begun by European Jews who fled persecution in Europe but later arrivals came from North Africa and other Middle East countries. Thus within itself it is divided along those lines and the non-Europeans are often discriminated against. In fact, the North Africans and other Middle East Jews are likely to have more cultural similarities (food and customs) with Arabs than with their European coreligionists. That they suffer discrimination as a result is well known.
Whatever the end for this agglomeration, one thing is perfectly clear: the different groups must learn to live together. Lord Balfour may have thought he had found a home for British and other Jews in Palestine. He, too, failed to realize: It is easier to start something than to end it.