Another step towards Middle East ‘peace’ which is anything but – at least for the Palestinians

While the Palestinians will go on losing their land, the Gulf princes and their satraps will ensure that Israel is awarded peace at any cost, writes Robert Fisk

Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the foreign ministers of Bahrain and UAE at the White House on Tuesday (AP)

Perhaps Covid-19 is turning into a worldwide version of 9/11, an excuse for fear and self-regard rather than a need for sensitive, level-headed thinking.  

For as the Middle East tourniquet on the Palestinians turns ever tighter under Donald Trump, our demands for justice in the region become ever more enfeebled. Trump’s so-called “Abraham Accords” – a Hollywood movie title for the latest Gulf Arab-Israeli “peace” if ever there was one, but instantly accepted by the experts and literati of Washington – would surely, at any other time in history, be a cause of astonishment, even outrage.

But as if the coronavirus mask covers our eyes as well as our mouths, we reverted to the same old western reaction to anything that occurs in the Middle East: if it’s good for Israel, it must be good for the world; if it’s helping Israel, then that means yet another historic “peace” to be proclaimed at the cost of Palestinian dignity and land.