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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/politics-of-humiliation-trump-palestine-the-arab-peoples/">http://www.palestinechronicle.com/politics-of-humiliation-trump-palestine-the-arab-peoples/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Politics of Humiliation: Trump,
Palestine, the Arab Peoples</h1>
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<div class="reader-estimated-time">June 4, 2019<br>
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<hr><strong>By <a
href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/ramzy-baroud"
title="Display all articles for Ramzy Baroud">Ramzy Baroud</a></strong>
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<p><span>The Deal of the Century has inspired much
discussion about Washington’s latest political gambit
in the Middle East. Largely excluded from the debate,
however, is the emotional toll involving the Arab
peoples everywhere.</span></p>
<p><span>The ‘politics of humiliation’ is fairly a new
discourse associated with the sense of collective
defeat and emasculation generated by the violent and
condescending American foreign policy in the region,
especially in the extremely bloody response to the
September 11, 2001 attacks.</span></p>
<p><span>The Donald Trump administration’s anti-Muslim and
pro-Israel policies have further cemented the
pervading sense of humiliation felt by Arab
collectives, especially as Arab rulers are themselves
taking part in Trump’s regional designs, all with the
aim of normalizing Arab-Israeli relations, at the
expense of Palestinians and their rights.</span></p>
<p><span>But the Middle East is not entirely shaped by US
interests. Since the early decades of the 20th
century, Palestine has served as a meeting point for
all Arabs, a just cause for their collective fight and
a rallying cry against western colonialism and its
direct spawn, the Zionist movement.</span></p>
<p><span>Cognizant of the depth of meaning that Palestine
symbolizes to Arab masses, Arab rulers have used and
misused the Palestinian struggle to achieve a degree
of political validation, especially as their regimes
have often lacked any democratic legitimacy. Thus,
since the establishment of Israel on the ruins of the
Palestinian homeland in 1948, freeing Palestine became
a common official Arab mantra, even when Arab regimes <a
href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300172348/palestine-betrayed"><span>conspired</span></a> with
the very colonial powers, and oftentimes with Israel
itself against the Palestinians.</span></p>
<p><span>While Israel occasionally <a
href="https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Strategic-Affairs-Ministry-Palestinian-incitement-against-Israel-rising-570313"><span>raged
against</span></a> Arab ‘incitement’, using
official Arab discourse to further illustrate its
point of being a perpetual victim of Arab hostility,
both Tel Aviv and Washington were unperturbed by the
status quo. As long as Israel was able to enrich its
military occupation unhindered, through the
construction of more illegal Jewish settlements, the
Arabs could carry on with their harmless tirade and
claims of Palestinian solidarity. The barter suited
Arab rulers well.</span></p>
<p><span>The 2011 <a
href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-12813859"><span>Arab
revolts</span></a> created a new paradigm in the
region. While it pitted newly empowered Arab
populations against their corrupt, undemocratic
governments, it left the door wide open for further
foreign intervention. US-led Western governments,
desperate to sustain the century-old status quo,
fought for relevance, doing their utmost to prop up
rotten political systems, especially in oil-rich
countries. </span></p>
<p><span>While gains of Arab revolts were reversed by
counter-revolutionary forces – sending the whole
region into a seemingly perpetual quagmire – the
political hawks within the Trump administration
discovered in the region’s chaos an opportunity to
settle old scores against Iran, to advance Israeli
interests and to further <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/04/trump-saudi-arabia-buys-lot-don-lose-190428094048617.html"><span>exploit
Arab wealth</span></a>.</span></p>
<p><span>As if the humiliation of military defeat and the
faltering revolutionary momentum were not enough, the
Deal of the Century, championed by Trump’s son-in-law,
Jared Kushner arrives with the intentions of <a
href="https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/176673/emotional-nakba"><span>associating
collective Arab misery</span></a> with an actual
document, a new American <a
href="https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2016/sykes-picot-100-years-middle-east-map/index.html"><span>Sykes-Picot</span></a> that
divides the Arabs once more with the aim of weakening
them even further so that Israel may reign supreme a
while longer.</span></p>
<p><span>But the truth is, the Deal of the Century is not
just an official document authored by Kushner, US
Middle East envoy, Jason Greenblatt or any other
pro-Israel US official. It is the <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-is-trump-s-deal-of-the-century-just-the-biggest-bribe-in-history-1.6979863"><span>marriage
of interests</span></a> between corrupt Arab
governments and those of Israel and its benefactors.
Neither Palestinian rights nor Arab aspirations for
which generations of Arabs fought factor in the least
in this arrangement.</span></p>
<p><span>Thus, it is not the Deal of the Century, in its
technical details that matter, but its timing and
implications as the Arab world continues to reel under
failed revolutions, foreign interventions, civil and
regional wars. The US initiative is the political
equivalent of the <a
href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180721-shock-and-awe-the-truth-about-americas-invasion-of-iraq/"><span>shock
and awe</span></a>, the unprecedented violent
bombing campaign unleashed against Iraq in the early
days of war and subsequent invasion in March 2003. </span></p>
<p><span>The idea is that while Arab nations are
desperately trying to weather the storm of regional
upheavals, the US and Israel are presented with the
perfect opportunity to alter the very reality of the
region’s politics, discard Palestinian rights
altogether, and make Tehran – not Tel Aviv – the new
common enemy.</span></p>
<p><span>All of this is likely to contribute to the
growing sense of anger and betrayal that Arab nations
feel towards their self-serving governments, who are
playing into American and Israeli hands to guarantee
their own survival. However, the Arab peoples
shouldn’t be so easily dismissed and discounted, for
humiliation can have many unintended consequences.</span></p>
<p><span>The rise of the ‘humiliation’ discourse has
placed much focus on how emotions – those of despair
and humiliation – often lead to <a
href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1354066108100053"><span>terrorism</span></a> as
a way to explain militant groups’ abilities to
generate new recruits. That conclusion – while it
contains much truth – caters to research interests in
western academic institutions, always keen on
deconstructing and combating terrorism as opposed to
ending western hegemony and challenging the
destructive US-Israeli relationship. However, the
collective humiliation that has been felt by Arab
masses throughout the years deserves to be studied
from an Arab-centric viewpoint. </span></p>
<p><span>Indeed, <a
href="https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/articles_papers_reports/729"><span>humiliation</span></a> leads
to a sense of collective emasculation, which
undermines the sense of nationhood altogether, leading
to economic downturns and mass migrations. Violence is
only a component of the politics of humiliation. And
even then, it should not be readily assigned the
ever-denigrating designation of “terrorism.” In his
introduction to Frantz Fanon’s ‘Wretched of the
Earth’, Jean-Paul Sartre refers to violent resistance
as a process through which “a man is re-creating
himself”.</span></p>
<p><span>Due to the current restrictions on the media,
public demonstration and opinion in general, it is not
always possible to demonstrate the centrality of
Palestine to the popular Arab discourse. However,
ordinary Arabs take every opportunity to show their
solidarity with their Palestinian brethren. Who could
forget how in February 2016, 80,000 Algerian sports
fans <a
href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/sports/2016/02/18/Algerians-cheer-Palestine-football-team-against-own-countrymen.html"><span>cheered</span></a> for
the Palestinian national team against their own team,
simply because for them their love for Palestine
trumps their love for sports? The same pattern is
often repeated, most notably in Morocco as well.</span></p>
<p><span>In fact, for various Arab nations, solidarity
with Palestine seemed a most urgent priority following
the toppling of corrupt regimes. Aside from the fact
that Palestinian flags accompanied national flags of
rebelling Arab nations in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt,
Yemen and elsewhere, delegations of Arab youth from
some of these countries <a
href="https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqiyu7"><span>attempted</span></a> to
break the siege on Gaza soon after the launch of their
popular revolts. In Tunisia alone, several caravans of
activists representing many civil society
organizations <a
href="https://www.tunisienumerique.com/la-caravane-tunisienne-de-la-dignite-arrive-a-gaza/"><span>tried</span></a> to
break the siege on Gaza, some succeeding and others
getting turned back at the Rafah border.</span></p>
<p><span>Egyptians who were not allowed to display
solidarity in such a way turned their anger at Israel
into <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/10/cairo-israeli-embassy-attack"><span>protests</span></a> against
the Israeli embassy in Cairo. They were met with
violence, of course, but remained committed to their
demand that their government must sever diplomatic
ties with Israel.</span></p>
<p><span>Most meaningful of all such solidarity is the
fact that tens of thousands of Yemenis continue to <a
href="https://www.presstv.com/DetailFr/2019/02/17/588831/Yemen-Mass-proPalestine-rally-denounces-Warsaw-Conference"><span>protest</span></a> in
solidarity with Palestine despite the fact that their
country is struggling against a Saudi-led war,
economic collapse and mass hunger. The fact that
Yemenis under the harshest of conditions still see
Palestine as a national priority tells volumes about
the importance of Palestine to the Arab nation
everywhere.</span></p>
<p><span>As occasional leaks and statements convey how the
Deal of the Century is meant to marginalize Palestine
and the aspirations of the Palestinian people, tens of
thousands of Jordanians <a
href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190426-jordanians-stage-pro-palestine-rally-near-dead-sea/"><span>launched</span></a> numerous
protests throughout the country in recent weeks. The
protesters chanted for Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque,
and vowed to fight the US-Israel plot which aims, as
Trump himself has <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-trump-netanyahu-meet-in-davos-1.5766434"><span>asserted</span></a>,
to “take Jerusalem off the table.”</span></p>
<p><span>But Jerusalem cannot be taken off the table, nor
will the Palestinian people and their historic rights
as enshrined in international law. What the Deal of
the Century, however, is likely to achieve is widening
the gap between humiliated Arab peoples and their
undemocratic rulers who are mainly interested in
survival, even if that entails the very destruction of
the collective values embraced by all Arabs.</span></p>
<p><i><span>– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and
editor of Palestine Chronicle. His last book is ‘The
Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press,
London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies
from the University of Exeter and was a Non-Resident
Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and
International Studies, University of California
Santa Barbara. His website is </span></i><a
href="http://www.ramzybaroud.net/"><i><span>www.ramzybaroud.net</span></i></a></p>
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