Trump just exposed how irrelevant the Europeans have now become

Telegraph

7 days ago

Time was when Britain and France's words carried weight. During the pomp and power of empire, when they declared their intentions for Palestine, or the rest of the Middle East, or for the Indian subcontinent, or Africa, for that matter, the world straightened its back and listened.
The Balfour Declaration mattered. The Slavery Abolition Act mattered. The Napoleonic Code left a potent legacy, as did the Sykes-Picot Agreement. For better or worse, Europeans shaped the world.
No longer.
Have Emmanuel Macron and Sir Keir Starmer failed to get the memo? Or are they continuing to strut their stuff out of domestic political concerns? Or out of vanity? Either way, these small men are determined to keep invoking former glories even though their moment has passed.
Before flying to Scotland on Friday, Donald Trump subjected the preening French president to his worst humiliation: that of irrelevance. Macron's geopolitically illiterate announcement on recognising Palestine 'doesn't matter', Trump said.
'He's a very good guy. I like him, but that statement doesn't carry weight,' he added, bringing to mind Jon Snow's observation in season seven of Game of Thrones that 'everything before the word 'but' is horse s—'.
As if that wasn't bad enough, then came the real twist of the knife. 'Here's the good news,' Trump concluded. 'What he says doesn't matter. It's not going to change anything.'
You could almost hear the Élysée Palace rock on its foundations.
Sir Keir at least appears instinctively to understand his own irrelevance. His body language at the Trump press conference in Scotland on Monday told its own story; his pathetic attempt to defend London's mayor Sadiq Khan – 'he's a friend of mine' – was the bleating of a eunuch.
When Israel and America so magnificently bombed Iran last month, Starmer took care to pay lip service to supporting the campaign while also appearing to condemn it. Hardly the decisiveness of an assured leader.
It is in this spirit that he continues to keen over a Palestinian state without committing to recognise one. Both betrayal and the betrayal of that betrayal, in one inconsequential prime minister.
The Jupiterian Macron, by contrast, has been expending much energy upon drumming up support for a state of Palestine, based on the most fallacious of arguments. His motivation has been opaque, given that he has previously been eloquent in insisting that 'we don't recognise a state based on indignation'. Given the Israelophobic climate, however, nobody has worried about that.
The United States, meanwhile, has been substituting words for actions. While the world united in a propaganda campaign, accusing Israel of starving Gaza based on a wilful misreading of the facts, the US and Israel pulled out of talks in Qatar and began to form a new plan.
What that will constitute remains to be seen. But the virtue-signalling Europeans are blind to the fact that the only effect of the pressure they have been so unjustly heaping upon Israel may have been to embolden Hamas, causing it to harden its negotiating position and blow up the talks.
In other words, the act of vilifying Israel might well have ripped up the very prospects of a ceasefire for which the Europeans claim to be desperate. This was the only way in which Macron's empty words could have exerted any influence on the region, by achieving the precise opposite of their goals.
What will be the result? Over the weekend, Senator Lindsey Graham told NBC News that Hamas had effectively signed its own death warrant, arguing that 'there's no way you're going to negotiate an end of this war with Hamas'. 'They're going to do in Gaza what we did in Tokyo and Berlin, take the place by force and start over again, presenting a better future for the Palestinians, hopefully having the Arabs take over the West Bank and Gaza,' Senator Graham added.
So there we have it. The depravity of the thing. In seeking for so long to demonise Israel and undermine a democratic ally in favour of the forces of jihad, Europeans are likely to have prolonged the war. Slow. Hand. Clap.
It is true that France has joined with Saudi Arabia, a far more consequential power, in convening a conference at the United Nations in New York this week to push for a two-state solution. But the Saudis are adept at playing a multi-level game.
In the Middle East, what you say publicly, what you say privately, and what you really think are usually three different things. Saudi leaders have little real concern for the Palestinians; their interests remain aligned with a closer alliance with Israel.
After a diet of Al Jazeera propaganda, however, their subjects are in no mood to accept the expansion of the Abraham Accords, at least until the Gaza conflict ends. That, perhaps, is the context in which to view the Saudi participation in Macron's vanity project.
Either way, there will be no Palestinian state unless the Americans and Israelis agree to one. And that ain't going to happen while the Palestinians are led by regimes that support terrorism and refuse to recognise Israel's existence.
The Palestinian leadership don't even want a state themselves, for heaven's sake. They have rejected one on numerous occasions, not least in 2008 when they were offered almost all of what they claimed to want. Or rather: they want a state of their own, but only if it replaces Israel rather than sits alongside it.
There is a silver lining, I suppose. Perhaps it's a good thing that Macron and Starmer have far less power than they seem to think. Imagine how the world would look if they were really as influential as they imagined.