WINCHESTER, VA (BBN) – White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner’s USD 50bn “Peace to Prosperity” Middle East peace plan appears to be an unwitting appropriation of American civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., vision for Israeli-Palestinian co-existence.
[Dr. Vicken V Kalbian speaks to Capitol Intelligence/BBN using CI Glass on how treating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and wife Coretta Scott King in Jerusalem became the framework for the Peace to Prosperity Middle East peace plan of White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner. in Winchester, Virginia. November 22, 2019]
The genesis of Dr. King’s vision — only by addressing the Arab world’s poverty and social inequity through economic development can Jews and Palestinians live peaceably in a two-state solution – fortuitously came about after Dr. King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, both fell ill in East Jerusalem in the spring of 1959 and necessitated an emergency house call by Armenian-Palestinian Dr. Vicken V. Kalbian, MD.
When asked recently by this reporter regarding the similarity between “Peace to Prosperity and Dr. King’s Middle East peace plan, Ivanka Trump‘s husband and presidential son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said he is totally unaware of the similarities between his “Peace to Prosperity” and Dr. King vision for Middle East peace.
Dr. Kalbian, who now lives in Winchester, Virginia after immigrating to the United States in the late 60s and will celebrate his 94th birthday next month, said Dr. King had never visited Palestine nor spoken with Palestinians before falling sick at the East Jerusalem YMCA.
After treating Dr. King and his wife Coretta, King asked him to stay and talk about Palestine and Palestinians as he had only spoken with Israelis during his past visit to the Holy Land. Kalbian said Dr. King asked him to arrange a meeting with other Palestinian representatives and Dr. Kalbian immediately set-up a dinner at the National Hotel in East Jerusalem under Jordanian rule.
It at this dinner with Palestinian notables such as East Jerusalem mayor Ruhi al-Khatib; Filastin newspaper editor/publisher Raja El-Issa; Birzeit University co-founder Musa Nasir; and Transjordanian statesman Anwar Nusseibeh that Dr. King garnered firsthand knowledge of the fate and condition of the Palestinians and Arab world.
King’s Arab prosperity for peace vision — much based on the economic equities of African-Americans in the inner city and rural America – was also influenced by Pope John XXIII “Pacem in Terris” conference in New York and a proposed Marshall plan by Gordon Clapp, a New York City Deputy Administrator and UN official, Randolph-Macon College historian Michael R. Fischbach said.
When asked recently by this reporter regarding the similarity between “Peace to Prosperity and Dr. King’s Middle East peace plan, Kushner said he was totally unaware of the Dr. King plan.
“Whatever he may have thought about the intricacies of the Arab-Israel conflict, King clearly believed that Israel had a right to exist as a state,” writes Fischbach in his book “Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color”, adding: “King therefore chose to balance his public assertion of Israel’s right to exist with an indirect acknowledgement of the Arab point of view – but in economic, not political terms. He chose to speak out about how poverty and the lack of economic development in the Arab world kept the pot of violence and war boiling, and he eschewed any overt discussion of the political bases of Arab grievances.”
[Randolph-Macon College History Professor, Michael R. Fischbach speaks to Capitol Intelligence/BBN using CI Glass on how the White House Adviser Jared Kushner proposed USD 50bn “Peace to Prosperity” Middle East Peace plan copies Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr,at the Investcorp funded Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service in Washington, DC. November 18, 2019.]
In fact, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law “Peace to Prosperity” plan with its pledged USD 50bn investment fund for the West Bank, Gaza and areas of Palestinian refugees can go along way to rectify the fatal flaw of the 1995 Oslo Accords shepherded by Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin, PLO leader Yasser Arafat and King Hussein bin Talal of Jordan.
While Rabin, Hussein and Arafat strived for political, diplomatic and military solutions during the Oslo peace talks, they completely ignored the precipitous decline in Palestinian economic well-being and living standards all during the Oslo process.
In fact, Palestinian saw a circa 80% decline during the Oslo talks as PLO leader Arafat demanded economic “self-sufficiency” for Palestinians while Rabin and King Hussein focused on land for peace, right of return and security issues rather than the macro-economic realities facing individual Palestinians and their families.
The economic situation of the Palestinian territories, exacerbated by the walling of the West Bank and Gaza and severe restriction on the free movement of goods and people, has never been worse in decades.
The stark difference between booming Tel Aviv and economically depressed West Bank could not have been greater, or in fact, more troubling. In what should be vibrant economic area of Bethlehem is marked by closed factories and countless unemployed while Tel Aviv residents bitterly complain they can no longer live in Israel’s financial capital as real estate now costs two to three times that of Manhattan and salaries are a 1/3 of New Yorkers.
Kurshner unwitting adaptation of the King’s peace plan – with its USD 50bn investment fund including contribution from the sovereign wealth funds of Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia led by US Fortune 100 companies — can overnight create a new atmosphere of goodwill wholly independent of vagaries of politicians in Washington, Israel or the Arab world as hundreds of thousands new private sector jobs create an independent, and prosperous Palestinian middle class.
No matter how he stumbled on the Dr. King’s peace plan, Kushner’s plan economically empowers Palestinians as business equals to their Israeli cousins and than subsequently, political equals. .
Kushner may even want to rejig the White House’s peace plan from Peace to Prosperity” to “Prosperity to Peace.”
By PK Semler in Winchester, Virginia with additional reporting by Rocco Semler in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Bethlehem. For more information please call +1-202-549-3399 or email: pks@capitolintelgroup.com
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