The Don strikes again

WHEN the European leadership and their Canadian counterparts had settled into the notion that the US is their best friend forever, it is difficult to imagine how they are feeling right now.

They had come to expect that every newly elected President of the United States would, as perfunctory custom, dedicate his first overseas visit to any one of their countries, especially the United Kingdom.

President Donald Trump, however, resorted to a different instinct and so struck out an unfamiliar comportment. He didn’t even invite them to his inauguration as the 47th President of the US. He quickly set out to commence negotiations aimed at resolving the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia without the Europeans.

Despite the vociferous protestations from the Europeans still yearning for more war with Russia, convened in a toothless contraption called the Coalition of the Willing, President Trump cowed them to embarrassing submission. Unbeknownst to most, he was warming up to a routine, which would have far-reaching consequences as it would become apparent in his later diplomatic manoeuvres.

It would be hypocritical to the extreme to claim ignorance that this US President re-assumed the reins of power with a pronounced disdain for senseless forever wars. In his estimation, wars consume so much of the creative energies of the sovereign, its blood and its treasure, and tend to illumine the most odious streak among the worst of them. And in the meanwhile, business suffers tremendously as a consequence, the singular most important value that the Donald reveres the most as first among equals.

It is an oddity that beguiles reason, how Benjamin Netanyahu’s overzealousness tricked him into such an unpardonable miscalculation. Credited for having coined the phrase “never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity”, he did not miss an opportunity to misread Trump, with devastating consequences.

In their historic agony, however, the people of Palestine revel in a timeless aphorism. Somehow, it had occurred to them that, notwithstanding the peacemaker overtures, real ducks do not waddle nor quack in copy. They have learnt that what quacks like a duck and waddles like a duck is a platypus. And they are watching this strange peace-making phenomenon with an admixture of trepidation and anticipation. Who knows, it could just as well be a Donald Duck!

The effervescent US President, even before assuming office, had despatched his plenipotentiary Steve Witkoff to force a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Netanyahu was certain that he could rein Trump in and bend all Americans’ will to his bidding. Ron Dermer, the Israeli Strategic Minister, had assured him that Mike Waltz was their mole in the White House and would provide reliable back-channel feedback undetected. After all, in his first term in the Oval Office, Trump scrapped the Iranian nuclear deal, sanctioned the assassination of the Iranian General, Qassem Suleimani, engineered the signing of the Abrahamic Accords, and somewhat gleefully moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem.

Even in his first 100 days as POTUS 47, he had Netanyahu deliriously exhilarated when he removed sanctions on some violent settlers in the occupied West Bank. He also lifted Biden’s ban on the supply of 2000-pound bombs against Israel.

But something went horribly off script. The Israel Hayom reported that the relations between the two countries, or to be fair, between Trump and Netanyahu, had reached a low point. Netanyahu’s plan to attack Iran’s nuclear sites and their oil and gas assets was rejected. As a consequence, Mike Waltz, the erstwhile National Security Advisor, was fired for texting with Netanyahu in an Oval Office cabinet meeting.

He was texting on TM Signal, an Israeli modified Signal chat version with archiving features, destined to store and relay classified information. Waltz and Netanyahu were coordinating plans of war against Iran, despite Trump’s inclinations to the contrary!

And for his ultimate humiliation, Waltz will be appointed US ambassador to the UN, where he may possibly end up tabling before that august body the resolution to recognise the state of Palestine. Or put differently, Mike Waltz will be President Donald Trump’s facilitator to garner the Nobel Laureate nomination.

The sequence of events has been dizzyingly rapid. The US signed a truce with the Ansar Allah fighters in Yemen, what they insensitively refer to as Houthis, not to bomb American ships in the Suez, a feat accomplished without Israel’s input.

The US negotiations with Iran at the persuasion of Qatar are sensitively advanced, and there too, without the involvement of the regime in Tel Aviv. The US 52 Bombers, which were stationed in the Al Udeid Air base in Qatar, have been flown back to base in San Diego, to the chagrin of the war hawks both in the US and in Israel.

What has triggered the latest umbrage of the Zionists is the successful negotiation between the US and Hamas, of the release of the last remaining American-Israeli prisoner of war, the 22-year-old Eden Alexander from New Jersey, conveniently termed “a hostage”, all without consultation or tacit acquiescence of the Israelis.

The memory of the global commons is still brimming with vivid images of an Israeli official who was fired for revelations about the Hannibal Directive. It seems to suggest, according to the Haaretz of May 2025, that the hostages or hatufim in Hebrew must first be degraded or replaced by a lesser politically charged term, b’nai aruba! In fact, the Israeli Army places returning hostages at the bottom of its Gaza war goals, despite promises to families.

The release of Eden Alexander, therefore, has denied Netanyahu his last American bargaining leverage that would have kept the Americans engaged in the siege of Gaza, in pursuance of elusive objectives where Israel does not want any hostages released in the first place.

Trump has also agreed with Hamas to facilitate the lifting of the blockade and permit the supply of humanitarian aid to the devastated enclave. Rounding up his West Asia charm offensive, he visited the countries of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE in quick succession. He did not, however, visit what has been coined as America’s ally in West Asia, to the consternation of the Tel Aviv administration. The Israelis watched in bewilderment as the Don struck again!

Israel is not so sure about all these unilateral actions. They are seething with incandescent rage, and not for the first time. Dangerous rage!

In August of 1963, President JF Kennedy warned Israeli leaders, David Ben-Gurion and Levi Eshkol, that the US commitment and support for Israel could be seriously jeopardised absent of the right of the US to inspect the Israeli Dimona Nuclear reactor.

Three months later, the beloved JFK died violently in a pool of blood from an assassin’s bullet in a motorcade in Texas. That assassin also died from another assassin’s bullet in a twisted plot that remains shrouded in mystery.

* Ambassador Bheki Gila is a Barrister-at-Law.

** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL.