12/18/17 Ramzy Baroud on the long-awaited death of the Two-State Solution

by | Dec 21, 2017 | Interviews | 1 comment

Editor-in-chief of the Palestine Chronicle Ramzy Baroud returns to the show to discuss his latest articles, “Towards a New Palestinian Beginning” and “The ‘Last Martyr’: Who Killed Kamal Al-Assar?” Baroud shares his memories from the First Intifada 30 years ago, explains how socialism and not Radical Islam drove the Palestinian struggle at the outset, and provides nuance for Israel’s role in Hamas’ rise to power in Palestine. Baroud then details the length to which the Israeli state has gone to deny Palestine a political peace process and argues that the last time a genuine resolution attempt was made by the United States was during the 2000 Camp David Summit. Trump’s declaration of Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel perversely removes the circus of the two-state solution lie—which, according to Baroud, has never been a serious option. The new fight for the Palestinians, Baroud argues, is to fight for equal rights within a single state.

Ramzy Baroud is a US-Arab journalist and is the editor-in-chief of the Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of“My Father Was A Freedom Fighter: The Untold Story of Gaza.” His latest digital project is “Palestine in Motion,” intended to give a holistic understanding of the lives of Palestinians as told in their own words. Follow Ramzy on Twitter @RamzyBaroud and read his work at RamzBaroud.net.

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All right, you guys.
Introducing our friend Ramzi Baroud from Palestine Chronicle.com.
And of course, we regularly run his essays at Antiwar.com as well.
His book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter.
That's one of his books anyway.
And we have here Towards a New Palestinian Beginning and The Last Martyr.
Who Killed Kamal al-Assar?
And well, I want to talk about all kinds of things with you.
There's all kinds of things going on, Ramzi.
But this is the one I want to start with here.
This great story of your experience in the first Intifada.
Welcome back to the show, sir.
How are you doing?
I'm well, and thank you for having me again, Scott.
Very happy to have you here and to hear your point of view, as always.
Tell me, who was Kamal al-Assar?
Kamal al-Assar was a friend of mine or a neighbor of mine, rather, in the refugee camp back in Gaza.
And Kamal was this socialist, you know, vibrant, young intellectual who, like thousands of Palestinian kids at the time.
We're looking here at the Intifada of 1987.
So that was almost exactly 30 years ago.
In fact, I wrote the article in commemoration of the Intifada 30 years ago.
It really was perhaps one of the very rare and special moments in which the Palestinian people mobilized and organized entirely independent from any leadership or, you know, without acting on the behest of any call made by any leader or by any individual or faction.
It's just this spontaneous anger of people just rushing to the street in their hundreds of thousands, protesting oppression, military occupation, and all kind of unifying in this, you know, again, spontaneous way around the same concepts of freedom and justice and liberation and all of that.
And Kamal was the kid in the neighborhood who organized this.
And he died a few years ago.
And it was really quite a sad thing to learn about his passing because he suffered from many, many wounds and injuries from the Israeli army during those years.
And he never fully recovered.
And eventually he died in his 40s.
And I just wanted to just say that in memory of Kamal, but also in memory of the thousands of young people who paid a heavy price for that call of freedom, freedom and justice and socialism.
But I thought all you guys are right wing Islamists.
Otherwise, you'd be very happy with your lot.
Not really, actually, the socialist movement was perhaps one of the first organizers and mobilizers of Palestinians.
The Islamic component of the struggle did not arrive until late, at least in a formal sort of way.
Prior to that, Islam served as or faith rather, not Islam per se, faith as in Christians and Muslims and their faith kind of allowed them to persist in and to withstand the pressures of everyday life and all of this.
But as far as the politics and the ideology, socialism really kind of defined the Palestinian struggle throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s.
And still, even though now it has dwindled as a movement, it's no longer the overriding movement behind Palestinian political aspirations.
It still really affects many of us in our thinking and our in our even in our political discourses is dotted with socialist references.
You know, well, you know, it's interesting because Richard Sale and UPI and Andrew Higgins in The Wall Street Journal have written that the Israeli Mossad helped to aid and abet the rise of Hamas during this time in order to be a right wing religious counter to divide and conquer Palestinians.
By providing this more right wing alternative to the PLO.
Well, although I can see where they're coming from, and I know that Chomsky as well, among other leading historians, kind of tackled this issue.
I refuted that in my in my last book.
My father was a freedom fighter, Gaza's untold story.
I refuted that based on two types of evidence.
You know, I used my position, you know, in academia, we call it positionality.
I was there at the time.
My father was very much involved in various political movements.
My father was a socialist.
And the leaders of Hamas actually do come from my refugee camp.
The the main political leaders, not the spiritual leader, but the main political leaders were actually from my refugee camp.
So based on that kind of evidence, but also my own research, it wasn't entirely that way.
What actually happened is that the Islamic movement was, in fact, arising, but it existed at a socialist, more at a rather at a social level.
You know, it was in universities and in mosques and, you know, they were they were omnipresent.
But they did not have as much of a political component.
When the Intifada started in 1987, the when the Islamic movement was there and they wanted to be part of it.
The argument here is that the Shin Bet, which is kind of the Israeli equivalent of the FBI, did not oppose them immediately, did not crush them as they usually do with other movements.
For example, if they ever learned of a socialist cell that exists anywhere, they would immediately move in and then they would arrest, torture, kill and do whatever so that they would eradicate it.
They actually allowed the Islamists to morph with very little pressure.
Yes, there was a lot of arrest amongst them, but it wasn't as common as with other movements.
They wanted them to create this counterbalance in order for them to busy the PLO with internal conflicts.
But it wasn't done based on a conspiracy as in you are working with us.
I'm going to give you money to do this.
This is your mission.
It really wasn't that way.
And it's not fair.
I think what you say is actually largely consistent with what Richard Sale writes.
I mean, Richard Sale has all these quotes from the CIA guys at the time, you know, who were involved or, you know, that under that their area of responsibility.
And that's basically what they say, too, is that, well, they were cracking down on everyone but them as they were rising up.
And it amounted to and I guess they talk about some coordination.
But I would say it's too overstated, like Mossad created these guys in a laboratory or something like that.
But then notice that the moment because Hamas kind of arrived to the Intifada about 40 days.
In fact, exactly 40 days after the launch of the Intifada in December 1987.
And and the moment they did and they wore masks and they kind of presented a militant facade.
It was the exact moment that they were treated like everybody else.
So that was kind of the end of this kind of semi honeymoon that happened.
And at that point, the Israelis went, oops, maybe shouldn't have done that.
Exactly.
Exactly what happened.
Well, and then fast forward to 2006 and 7 when Rice and Olmert hold this election in Gaza, which, again, I don't know.
I doubt it was a conspiracy, but the effect was they because the Israelis collect all the tax revenue at the border from all trade and all that.
They refused to give it to the Palestinian Authority to buy up all their votes and all their patronage.
And so instead, you know, gave the balance to Hamas.
But even then, it was a coalition government in the Gaza Strip that had been elected.
And it was only after and this is the article is the Gaza bombshell.
Only after the U.S., the Israelis and the Egyptians worked together to support this coup d'etat against Hamas, which failed.
Only then did they kick the PLA out of Gaza and take complete control of the Gaza Strip in 2006.
That's that's precisely what happened.
And it just really comes to show.
I mean, I'm glad that you kind of made the connection with those thousand six, seven, because it kind of really comes to show that the Israelis, the U.S., the CIA and the Egyptians and now the Saudis and the Emirates, amongst others, have really been kind of trying to constantly manipulate the Palestinian scene, the internal Palestinian political dynamics, you know, supporting this, withholding funds from this, allowing this faction to organize and mobilize while suppressing this faction to see how they can counterbalance each other.
So that's the sad reality of it.
And of course, the outcome is always devastating for Palestinians, always.
It's like as if Palestinians truly being part of this political experimentation and in which the price is always bloody for them.
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Thanks.
All right, so you know what?
I want to talk about the politics of the West Bank and Jerusalem with you here in a minute.
But let me go ahead and give you a minute to talk about the people of the Gaza Strip and the situation that they're in.
Recent Twitter Hasbara says that, nah, the siege is mostly lifted and they really have a big obesity problem there in the Gaza Strip.
Now everybody's doing so well.
So what about that?
Well, this is really kind of part of the media dehumanization of Palestinians.
I mean, just such terminology is just really infuriating when you think about it.
You know, just saying, oh, California, there are like big fires everywhere.
But, you know, Americans have this obesity problem.
It's just, you know, it's just sad, really.
The fact is there is no obesity problem in Gaza.
And the fact that, you know, there was this article that came out a while back about, you know, Gaza opens its first mall and therefore there is no siege and nobody is suffering because a group of rich business people in Gaza City had enough money to start open a mini mall somewhere in the Gaza Strip.
As if Palestinians would all have to, you know, be qualified to be in some sort of a late night commercial like the ones we play on about Africa every day here.
And, you know, just sitting completely despairing and hungry and malnourished and just looking at the cameras and saying, please help us and call this number to aid a Gaza child in order for their problem to be real and in order for their suffering to actually be understood for what it is.
This is a political crisis that has been created by Israel intentionally.
The advisor of Ariel Sharon at the time, the Israeli prime minister at the time when the siege started, he said, we're not planning to starve Palestinians in Gaza.
We just want to put them on a diet.
That's the term that he used.
And they were counting.
Keep them hungry, but not starving.
Exactly.
And in fact, there are articles in Israeli media, forget about Palestinian media for a minute, talking about, you know, leaked information, leaked reports, how they used to count the calories to actually achieve that.
So it wasn't, the statement was made by Gissen, the top Israeli advisor at the time.
So it wasn't really this random, hateful, insensitive statement made by some Israeli leader.
It was actually part of the political plan.
So they used to count the calories.
We are going to allow this much so that they are indeed on a diet, but not starving.
And this has kind of really took on a whole different dimension when the Egyptians became part of that siege.
And again, in the American media, there's a lot of reports about how the CIA got involved in ensuring that the Egyptian siege on Gaza is perfect.
So they got involved in the destruction of tunnels that Gazans dug under the Egyptian border in order for them to get food and other supplies from Egypt.
So they really tried their very, very best to perfect this siege.
So yes, Gaza is under siege.
The fact that cancer patients cannot get medicine or leave Gaza to go for treatment, it means that Gaza is under siege.
The fact that hospitals are under-equipped and people cannot leave for their schools or for their work or for their universities, it means that Gaza is under siege.
So it would be really extremely insensitive and completely unhelpful for those who come to prove that Palestinians are lying.
This whole siege thing is just something they manufactured for attention and to make such ridiculous claims as obesity problem and that sort of thing.
All right, well, so here's our segue to Jerusalem and the West Bank and the whole dang thing here.
The end of Oslo, if I can get ahead of myself here for a second.
You mentioned Ariel Sharon's aide, Dov Weissglass there.
I don't know if you mentioned him by name, but that's who you were referring to there who writes about keeping them hungry but not starving and on a diet and all that.
It's in the WikiLeaks, everybody.
But here's another thing that Dov Weissglass said.
He said, the significance of the disengagement plan, and he's talking about the so-called unilateral withdrawal of Israeli Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and the laying of the siege there in 2005.
The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process.
When you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem.
Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda.
And all this with a U.S. presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.
The disengagement is actually formaldehyde.
It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.
So that was 12 years ago.
That's right.
When he admitted what the game was.
But so now, finally, the ruse is over.
And with the presidential announcement that America recognizes all of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, then what that also means, and you tell me if I got this wrong, but I think that's not what you're going to say.
What that also means is it's never going to be the capital of an independent Palestinian state based in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
And so, therefore, all of what they've been promising since they passed the Oslo Accords back in 1993 to try to end all the uprising back then is now revealed to be admittedly, at least in effect after the fact, if not all along, a big hoax at the expense of the Palestinians as the Israelis have been steadily colonizing all of their private property this whole time.
That's right.
And, you know, to their credit, the Israelis have been really honest about this.
I mean, this statement that you just read by Dov Weissglass was not inconsistent with the general Israeli political discourse.
They don't promise a Palestinian state.
To the contrary, they are working openly and determinedly to achieve, you know, what they call the Greater Jerusalem, annexing settlements into so-called Israel proper, building the Apartheid Wall, doing everything in their power to make it clear verbally and in reality that there is no potential for any Palestinian political horizon that would meet the most minimal of Palestinian expectations.
But what kind of allowed this hoax, as you referred to, to carry on is the fact that the Americans kept feeding that political discourse.
They kept paying lip service to the peace process, to the negotiations table, to the land for peace formula.
They kept feeding on this nonsense and everybody, and I mean everybody, knew that we are actually just feeding a discourse that refers to a process that's dead.
And it has actually been dead since the Camp David in 2000, when, you know, the failed Camp David summit with Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and that's actually what instigated the second intifada.
We could, from a historical point of view, argue that that was perhaps the last genuine attempt at, you know, pushing the peace process forward.
And I say genuine, I don't mean fair or just.
I say genuine from an American political point of view.
They wanted to find a resolution that is in favor of Israel but actually something that is in conflict.
Since then, there has been zero real effort.
So for 17 years, they've been talking and getting paid and numerous organizations and think tanks and intellectuals and media pundits and politicians just feeding into a discourse that is completely contrary with reality.
What Trump has done, because it was already dead.
So as nasty as Trump's move is and as terrible the consequences would be in the long run, the good thing about it, it's really it removed the mask of the U.S. government and it's really kind of allowed the ugliness of all of this thing, of this entire peace process charade to be shown.
So that now, we have clarity.
We have been critical and I've been critical on your show many times of the Palestinian authority of playing along because they are benefiting.
They are making money.
They have this false prestige, this false sense of sovereignty.
They are getting a lot of money from the Americans and a lot of political validation as well.
And the mask has also fallen on the genuine attempt at building a Palestinian state.
There is nothing actually but occupation and apartheid walls and illegal settlements that are expanding and a city, a holy city of Jerusalem that is losing its holiness every single day and we have people getting killed and people under siege and this is the reality of it and I'm glad that we are, that has been going on for all these years and please, the media pundits need to go home now and find some other thing to do.
Let's deal with the reality the way it is and the reality is extremely ugly and it's extremely unfair for Palestinians.
Well, we're at a point too with the numbers, right?
This is the thing that I guess Ehud Barak and others have referred to a situation where if you include the Palestinian citizens of Israel as well as the occupied in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza Strip, etc.then that's half the population maybe even a little bit more than half the population of the people who are controlled under the authority of the Israeli government and yet they have, I mean the ones that live in the occupied territories have no political representation whatsoever so now here's the thing about it and I know that this is your position we've talked about at length in the past and we're about to talk about it more when this happened, when Trump made this announcement I saw a Palestinian leftist on Twitter immediately say good, now we have basically de facto annexation of the West Bank of all of it and now we can get down to equal rights for everybody in one state and I was thinking you know what, hell yeah, what a optimistic take and all that and I can see the silver linings on lies being cancelled when as you say the lie has been covered for getting away with bloody murder all this time but then man, you're my one state guy and Yuri Avnery is my two state guy and I run you both all the time and I think he makes some good points about man, if you think the Israeli Jews after all of what they've done are now about to just start passing out guns to everybody equally and have, like who's going to be the police force who's going to be this who's going to be that it can't work otherwise we're talking about civil war unending because they're just not going to give up their power but it's not going to happen and it will never ever happen and now I have a little bit of a leverage here because I remember we had this conversation on your show in the past and the argument was similar to the argument that others make like Yuri I remember having a conversation you know someone can't climb a small mountain and then you say well I can't climb this mountain I'm going to go and climb Everest next you can't achieve two states let's go and ask for something that's much more difficult and I think it's all about the framing of the question, Scott and I'll tell you why to begin with I don't think we were ever really dealing with a real discussion of two states to one state that's a fair point I mean if the whole thing has been not just in effect but come on really just a ruse all this time as facts on the ground are being established then you're right it's a false choice it's a false debate anyway to begin exactly and this is not something that goes back to the peace process it doesn't even go back we just commemorated the anniversary of the partition of historic Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state and that carrot has been dangling in front of the Arabs and the Palestinians for the last 70 years and we get really really close and we think oh wow independence is at hand and we get excited and we go marching behind the solution and that solution more settlements more Israeli Palestinian lands being annexed more this more that so I feel like just to even get involved in a discussion of how possible or not possible or practical or not practical two state solution that's the fallacy of it it's not on the table it never was on the table to begin with and to continue to play this game of everything at this point so to get us even engaged in that kind of political discourse is unfair when will Yuri reach the point where he's saying Ramzi you were right all along I'm sorry I don't know what I was thinking we need to stop this and we need to think of a different formulation that's number one number two why is it that Palestinians like Hanan Ashrawi the Palestinian leader in which the oppressed Palestinians would actually have to cater to the security needs of the oppressor the Israelis we are the only nation that's ever in history been told and demanded that we need to live up to the needs of the Israelis the security of the Israelis the demographic fears of the Israelis the Jewish identity of Israel and so forth and so on and here we have to actually jump all these obstacles as if we are actually trying to deal with Israel's problems if Israel has this racist obsession of being a pure race in the 21st century that's their problem they have to be confronted with that problem not us number three and I think that's even more important and here's the secret that a lot of people don't know Palestinians and Israelis have actually existed between the river Juden and the sea we've always lived there we've always shared that piece of land for the last 70 years we've actually shared that land even prior to that 70 years for a hundred years we lived there we coexisted but the kind of relationship we've had it was always unfair to us unfair laws targeting Palestinians and privileging Israeli Jews and so forth checkpoints and preventing Palestinians from getting to work and getting to school and getting the Palestinians being violently treated and imprisoned unfairly and so forth and so on so in reality we have always been there drinking the same water and breathing the same air but we have been in this whole different privileged world of theirs and what we are actually demanding is we need to bring the walls down remove the checkpoints and fix the laws in such a way that we are treated as equals before the law and in a democratic secular regime so I don't see understand why some people actually think that this is far more unachievable than actually slicing up this piece of land where you have a million and a half Palestinians living in Israel and you have half a million Jews living in the West Bank and you have two quarters of the or rather two thirds of the water of the West Bank being used by the Israelis and so forth and so on so in reality we are all living there we just need to live in a more equitable democratic system and that's why we are starting the day that Trump has kind of effectively agreed to Israel's annexation of Jerusalem is to say this is a fight for rights this is a fight for equal rights this is a fight for freedom as opposed to a fight for fake sovereignty that we know would never be achieved in its current formulation alright hang on just one second hey guys I'm doing a great job with the show notes there on the pages at libertarianinstitute.org and at scotthorton.org so check out the links for all the information we talk about in these interviews you guys have been asking for that for a long time well we got it now good show notes at scotthorton.org etc alright this show is sponsored by the War State and if you want to buy this device you want to go buy your medals from Roberts and Roberts brokerage Inc that's rrbi.co libertystickers.com for anti-government propaganda for the back of your truck and we got a brand new and improved site and brand new and improved sticker art coming up soon for you there at libertystickers.com and if you go to expanddesigns.com well it is great and you know who did that it was Harley Abbott at expanddesigns.com and if you go to expanddesigns.com you can save $500 on your brand new website well you know Stephen Cohen the great civil rights lawyer from New York he was on the show look man once you just start treating everybody equally under the same rule of law and everybody is going to start doing business and everybody is going to start getting intermarried and then everything is going to be fine in other words haven't you ever been to New York City or Los Angeles you know people get along just fine there's every kind of person you could imagine lives in LA and they all do business and they go to school together and work together and if a group of people in Los Angeles because of their ethnic or religious uniqueness decide to drive everybody out and take over their homes and deny them access to water and healthcare then Los Angeles will not be fine so that's what we want we want things to be fine as it is in Los Angeles and so it's really that's why I said earlier it's all about the framing if you put it that way well and you know it's funny because from the Israeli point of view speaking of framing it doesn't seem to make sense like on one hand okay yeah we're conquering this whole West Bank the river to the sea it's all greater Israel and Likud forever baby and all of that okay but what about the Palestinians and they really think I mean again the Nakba all morality aside they're a Jewish population so they can be a Jewish democracy if that's their formulation and they can do that but without another Nakba without driving all the Palestinians into the Jordan River or whatever which would be impossible we're talking about 5-6 million people or something right at this point that they can't do anything about well what is the plan to just I mean what are they supposed to do just lay down and die we're talking another 80 condos this week and we'll worry about that later that's right and I think at this point maybe then we need to stop thinking about Israel and its plans and its perceived sense of needs of security and actually start worrying about the Palestinians not the 80 condos but what's going to happen to the Palestinians who are losing their historic homeland I think there was something extremely telling that mainstream media in the US kind of perceived this whole conflict is when Trump made that announcement on December 6th granting Israel basically Jerusalem the same way that Lord Balfour 100 years ago granted Palestine to the Zionists it's like basically Palestinians don't exist in this whole framework basically they are just there their land is being handed to anybody and their capital is being promised on television as if we are non-existing beings we don't even belong into a discussion concerning our homeland but I think it was really interesting to see how the US mainstream media dealt with this when those who are critical of Trump's decision were not critical for the right reasons they were critical because they were warning that this is going to instigate Palestinian violence this is a people that is losing really the core of their struggle in the most humiliating fashion imaginable and yet the thing that really worries everybody is that the safety of Israelis as a result of Palestinian anger because they are going to lose their holy city so maybe it's just really time to kind of shift the narrative entirely and to actually start thinking of Palestine the other side of that debate where every country puts their capital I said on one show look this isn't a debate about whether we are going to have our capital in Philadelphia or in DC and I made some horrible San Antonio, Mexico analogy the easier one would have been whether we could just put our capital in Ottawa and say that this part of Canada belongs to us now that would be an invasion we start settling our people in their city and it's the American superpower that gives them the money the weapons and the diplomatic cover to be able to do this to put their capital in someone else's country Exactly All right well so you know Palestinian anger aside and the security of the Israeli conquerors here aside what about the consequences of this for the broader Middle East and America's relationship and I don't want to get into that kind of thing because you know you're an American I'm an American and neither of us take the side of the American empire and yet it seems like there could very well be consequences for the American people because of this as I don't know if you and I have talked about this before but everybody knows that this was Mohamed Atta's motive for joining Al Qaeda and suicide crashing Operation Grapes of Wrath there in 96 and so and there are lots of different examples but I wonder hell I saw Muqtada al-Sadr said you know the Saudis need to quit screwing around in Yemen and Qatar and Syria and we need to all join together to liberate Jerusalem and I'm not saying that's going to happen or what have you but it seems like that's what this means the third holiest site in Islam where Mohamed ascended to heaven and all of that right?
That's right I mean Trump's impulsive political needs you know trying to please his base and maybe kind of you know lower the pressure that's placed on him by the Congress because we know that the Congress loves Israel and it's the Congress that actually passed the resolution in 1995 granting Israel granting Jerusalem to Israel the relocation of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in the first place so he thought okay this is really going to serve me in the short run you know and I'm going to be everybody's darling for a little bit but the problem with that decision is that he really pushes his country into this new uncharted territory because we know that even though a lot of Arab leaders do pay lip service to Palestine and the liberation of Jerusalem of course that really kind of Arabs may disagree on a lot of things and everything but there is one thing that they don't disagree on and that is the centrality of Palestine and the centrality of Jerusalem to Palestine and to the overall notion of Muslim nation and Arab nation and by him kind of creating this situation he really destabilizes not only the American involvement in the two state solution and Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine or East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine has been kind of really the central component of American foreign policy in the peace process and all of that now he created this this whole new paradigm it's completely uncharted territory and we really many political analysts are now stunted by this because we really don't know what is to happen with the American allies and enemies radicals and moderates has also been based around this paradigm those who are pro the peace process are the moderates and those who are against it are the radicals so he even he destabilized his own camp the American so-called moderate camp in the Middle East are all scratching their head and they don't know what to do Mahmoud Abbas the king of Juden the Egyptian government now this is for sure going to create the kind of new rally cry that is going to bring Americans a lot of problems in the future and I'm even thinking from an empire's point of view because it's all about control but stabilizing of a region so even from that point of view this is going to create the kind of unintended consequences that will take months and years for us to actually fully realize the very dangerous decision that he has done and he has done it with absolutely no alternative plan whatsoever there's no plan B this is the first time that the U.S.'s involvement in the Middle East is operating with no plan whatsoever well and they're saying well he's not moving the embassy yet but that's not really the point it's the official recognition that already gets it done anyway yeah exactly so the president could say well you know we really consider I don't know I guess not it really is too late to take it back I guess at this point yes but the harm has been done because at the end of the day it's really Trump's decision is not going to reverse international law but now the U.S. has declared officially its position and there is no taking it back basically so no matter what happens the U.S. is not going to take it back yeah all right well listen I'm sorry I forgot in the introduction your new book which is just coming out here when does it come out?it's coming out in February but it's already available for pre-orders from Amazon and plutobooks.com the publisher Plutopress it's called The Last Earth a Palestinian story there's a link in his bio at the bottom of those articles as well and we'll link to it in the show notes on this interview of course at the Libertarian Institute and at scotthorton.org The Last Earth a Palestinian Story and I just ordered your last when my father was a freedom fighter while we were talking here I should have read it a long time ago but it's now in the mail so anyway thanks again for coming on the show Ramzi I really appreciate your time as always sir is running at antiwar.com and you know me I'm scotthorton.org libertarianinstitute.org antiwar.com foolserend.us for my book Fools Erend Timed and the War in Afghanistan and follow me on twitter at scotthortonshow thanks

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