Gloomy presage

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has become not only the Republican Party front-runner in the upcoming US presidential election, but virtually the Republican nominee, following after the withdrawal of his main competitor, Ted Cruz, from the presidential race after his stunning defeat in the recent Indiana primary elections.

As such, what Trump says now must be taken more seriously, and what he has been saying about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is of no comfort to the Arab side.

At the beginning of his campaign for the White House, Trump pretended to hold a neutral stance vis-à-vis on the Palestinian problem, claiming that neutrality will give him the ability to close the “deal of all deals” on the issues.

His neutrality proved to be false.

Sure enough, as Trump got closer to becoming his party’s nominee to the White House for the November presidential election, his “neutrality” shifted dramatically to bias in favour of Israel.

He is espousing every Israeli posture and negotiating stance on the Palestinian conflict.

Trump’s most shocking stand was revealed in a recent interview with the British daily newspaper The Daily Mail, where he revealed his true colours.

He adopted the Israeli position on settlement expansion in the West Bank, refusing to accept that halting the expansion of Jewish settlements should be a prerequisite for peace talks.

Perhaps “strong”, “determined” Trump abandoned his stance on the Palestinian question after Democratic Party front-runner Hillary Clinton accused him of being “neutral” on the issue, when no American can “ever be neutral when it comes to Israel’s security and survival”, when Israel is part of “some things [that] aren’t negotiable”.

It is pathetic to see the two foremost candidates for the White House trying desperately to outbid each another in showing support and undying love for Israel, with not a pang of consciousness or care for fairness.

This gives the Palestinians and the entire Arab world a taste of what they may expect from the US in the next four to eight years.

Time to shed the US as an “impartial” mediator in an already skewed peace process, if, of course, it ever starts again.