Have Trump and Adelson cut a deal on annexation of West Bank?

As back as May 2019, I had written a blog and its title was “Sheldon Adelson: Jackpot for Israel”. Its opening paragraph was, “A bet on Donald Trump for president may have seemed risky two years ago, but for billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson the payout has been spectacular. Adelson (85-year old) and his wife Miriam gave around US$82 million to Republicans and candidate Trump in 2016 and within two years his two major asks were met: moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and withdrawing of US from Iran nuclear deal”. Today I have managed to gather some details, which are worth reading.

Sheldon Adelson, the Israel-loving, Iran-war-craving casino baron, talks to Donald Trump all the time, and for good reason, he and wife Miriam are the biggest Republican donors, poised to give as much as US$200 million this year. Now that the White House appears to be lying down for the Israeli government as it moves to annex portions of the West Bank despite a growing chorus of international condemnation, the focus should be on Adelson. He has always been a strong supporter of Israeli expansion, a man who says, “There’s no such thing as a Palestinian.”

Adelsons have gotten everything they wanted from US President: tearing up the Iran deal, moving the embassy to Jerusalem, defunding Palestinians, recognizing the Golan annexation, treating settlement expansion as legitimate, even a presidential medal of freedom for Miriam, etc. Right up to yesterday — a Trump attack on the ICC in the name of Israel. As Trump once said when a Republican rival was getting Adelson’s money, Adelson wanted a “perfect little puppet.”

Most important, the Adelsons got the Trump “peace plan,” which paves the way for annexation of the West Bank. When Trump announced his “vision,” there they were in the front row. Especially if Trump loses in November, as appears more and more likely — this is the Adelsons’ last chance to get annexation. They speak to Trump all the time.

Look at it from Trump’s point of view. He doesn’t care about peace in the Middle East or Palestinian human rights. He wants one thing, to win in November, and he needs money. Why would the Adelsons risk US$200 million on a loser? Well, because it’s not a losing cause; they get their payback now. They figure that Israeli annexation is permanent no matter what happens to Trump. “Facts on the ground” is the Israeli way of expansion. The embassy move will never be reversed by a Joe Biden. So let’s annex.

Sheldon’s Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom is promoting annexation. He believes, annexation is Israel’s right, and it poses no threat to the interests of either the United States or the Jewish state. The paper is an important rightwing voice in Israel, and the Adelsons have been big supporters of Benjamin Netanyahu. So they may also play a role in Netanyahu’s zeal to annex, when he had a lot of opportunities to dismiss that policy.

The Guardian said in February that insiders expect the Adelsons to donate between US$100 and US$200 million to Trump’s reelection hopes this year. If that seems like a big lift, look at their track record: The Adelsons gave more than US$100 million to Republican causes in 2016 and another US$123 million during the 2018 election.

McClatchy reported last year that the Adelsons were putting off their big donations in 2020 until as late as possible, so as not to excite negative publicity. Adelson is a funder and board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition that calls Trump the most pro-Israel president ever and, big coincidence, the RJC “is launching a lobbying effort on Capitol Hill to rally support for Israeli annexation.

The RJC is chaired by the ex-senator Norm Coleman. . . who is said to have strong ties to Adelson that benefit the RJC and other Super Pacs and dark money outfits where Coleman is a big player.

Coleman helps lead fundraising for a Super Pac, the Congressional Leadership Fund, and a dark money outfit, the American Action Network, that respectively back Republican House members and their policies and have received seven-figure checks from the Adelsons in recent elections.

The Adelsons have seemed to have their way on annexation so far. Annexation of large parts of the West Bank is green lighted in Trump’s deal of the century. Adelsons wanted the plan out well ahead of the election, Dan Raviv of i24 said, so that Israel would be freed to set its own border this year before November comes and possibly limits its autonomy. Adelsons may be the most important actors in this entire foreign policy discussion. Maybe the media should be telling us more about them now. . .

Sheldon Adelson: Jackpot for Israel

A bet on Donald Trump for president may have seemed risky two years ago, but for billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the payout has been spectacular. Adelson (85-year old) and his wife Miriam gave around US$82 million to Republicans and candidate Trump in 2016, and within two years his two major asks were met: moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and withdrawing of US from Iran nuclear deal.

This was accomplished in consultation with Adelson comprador John Bolton, who in December 2016 promised members of the American Friends of Beit El that Trump would not only move the embassy by declaring Jerusalem the true capital of Israel, but he would not oppose any Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank territories. Adelson is also credited with opening the door for Bolton’s appointment to national security adviser in March

Adelson has enjoyed a direct line to Trump, speaking with him in person and on the phone at least once a month. Most recently, he was able to convince the president to cut off US aid to Palestinian refugees living in crowded, dirty, and unrelentingly hopeless refugee camps outside Israel. Around the same time, Trump withdrew US$25 million in assistance from impoverished East Jerusalem hospitals that also serve Palestinian cancer patients allowed in from the West Bank and Gaza for treatment.

Of course, Adelson’s pro Zionist agenda, which includes expanding the settlements as far as they can go most recently, is pouring his money into a huge new Israeli medical university on one of those settlements, in sync with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party. It’s been a great year for all involved.

For the first time in recent presidential history, there is no pretense of peace with the Arabs. Trump’s endorsement of a two-state solution at the recent United Nations General Assembly in September may have appeared hopeful, but it was as lame as it was patronizing. “I like two state solutions,” Trump offered spontaneously, posing for smiling photographs with Netanyahu. “That’s what I think works best. That’s my feeling.”

For someone who supposedly has a “peace plan” but hasn’t announced it after two years in office, his “feelings” are as worthless as poker chips outside a casino. Maybe that’s why Bibi didn’t offer much of a response. After declaring he would consider Trump’s non-existent plan “with a keen and open mind,” Netanyahu reiterated that any Palestinian state endorsed by Israel will be an unarmed one, not really a state at all.

Not long after Adelson, Netanyahu also encouraged Trump to stop all funding (an estimated US$300 million allocated in 2018) from a UN agency tasked since 1950 with providing aid for Palestinian refugees, Trump abruptly closed the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) offices in Washington, the only diplomatic conduit between the US and the Palestinian National Authority. The reason given was “PLO leadership has condemned a US peace plan they have not yet seen and refused to engage with the US government with respect to peace efforts and otherwise.”

Trump’s point man for the peace plan is none other than his son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose family has generously supported the aforementioned Beit El settlement and is old friends with Netanyahu. Kushner was the primary agitator behind yanking the refugee funding, calling the aid entitlement program and withholding of it a punishment for Palestinian leaders who vilify the administration.

More cynically, reports indicate he is merely helping Israel end right of return for Palestinians and their kin displaced during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Similarly, the embassy move was designed to take the contested issue of Jerusalem off the table. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s government just passed a nation-state law that declares Israel a Jewish state, one that affirms Jewish settlements and the right to self-determination for Israeli Jews only, codifying, in essence, that 1.8 million Arabs living there are second-class citizens. This loads the dice before the games even begin.

Only people like Kushner and Adelson, who at a net worth of US$42.5 billion is the 16th richest man on the planet, would see withholding food, education, and healthcare as way of disappearing a problem to gain leverage in future negotiations. Only Trump would consider that the art of the deal.