Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead
Kushner at the Royal Court Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 20, 2017
The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and now Morocco. Countries that have signed accords with Israel share a common factor: They’re all monarchies and, almost by definition, do not represent the will of their people. They have few qualms about jailing political dissidents or snuffing out press coverage that criticizes their unpopular deal-making with Israel.
Amid all of this quid-pro-quo diplomacy, what is the U.S. doing to advance human rights? The White House convened a press briefing yesterday morning to roll out Morocco’s normalization of relations with Israel, and I took the opportunity to pose this question to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and Middle East envoy.
“Some of these countries share our values more than other countries do,” said Kushner. “We focused on pursuing America’s interests in the region.”
His answer suggests that human rights are not compatible with the Trump administration’s approach to the Middle East. One could have surmised this from Kushner’s muted response to the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Egypt’s brazen crackdown on the press and human rights watchdogs, and the United Arab Emirates’ jailing of dissidents, to name a few. Now, Kushner has made clear that American “interests” can be extricated from the values of democracy and human rights.
Kushner appeared to cut the conference call short after muddling through an answer to my question.
It sounded like Kushner’s interpretation of America’s interests related only to assisting Israel in establishing new relations with Arab countries. Kushner called Israel’s normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia “an inevitability.” But he didn’t comment on Saudi Arabia’s assassination of Khashoggi, which I had also noted in my question to him. “In areas where we have disagreements, having a good relationship has enabled us to push for greater progress on some of these issues,” said Kushner.
He had no positive message to offer. Kushner could have said, for example, that the United States continues to advocate for human rights far and wide. Instead Kushner said that the administration has done plenty to thwart ISIS and Iran. “You know, ISIS was not too good with regards to human rights,” he said. “[Iran is] also not great with human rights.” Kushner’s evasions reflect how the U.S. has abdicated its commitments to freedom.
Thankfully, the State Department continues to monitor each country, including the Moroccan government’s poor track record in jailing journalists, among other human rights abuses. Moroccan authorities have stifled organizers, activists, and online critics; they have allegedly tortured Western Saharan political prisoners. But the State Department’s monitoring is of little use if the president and secretary of state fail to convey the seriousness of such violations. The Trump administration has studiously avoided public criticisms of partners, as if the deals perpetuated with these monarchies are so shaky that pointing out the obvious would make them teeter.
Overall, Trump’s entire approach to Middle East policy has been transactional. “The Trump bazaar is still open,” said the Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab. “What other wheeling and dealing can we expect before January 20th?” The UAE will get F-35s and arms; Sudan will be removed from the terror watch list; and now Morocco gets U.S. recognition for its occupation of the Western Sahara. Morocco has occupied the territory since 1975 and aggressively cracked down on all activism related to it. For Saharawis and Algerians, this is as aggravating and as controversial as Trump’s moving of the American embassy to Jerusalem.
Kushner appeared to cut the conference call short after muddling through an answer to my question. “I think that’s enough for now,” he said. “And just congratulations to all of us.” It’s a self-congratulatory message that will set back press freedom and human rights for decades to come.
Mercifully, Kushner’s tenure is ending in a bit more than a month. We will soon have a mainstream administration. But where the Mideast is concerned, the mainstream has been none too reassuring. What will the Biden administration do to repair Trump’s damage? One analyst told me that some damage is unfixable: It’s almost impossible to imagine Biden moving the American embassy back to Tel Aviv.
So Biden’s team must go further in other respects to show leadership. It’s a positive sign that Secretary of State–designate Tony Blinken has expressed “concern” about Egypt’s recent jailing of human rights advocates, but it’s yet to be seen whether Biden would be willing to halt arms sales to President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and other brutal regimes. Biden’s national-security adviser Jake Sullivan, while praising the UAE-Israel accord, has not gone far enough in explaining how Biden, in his words, “would put values, human rights and human dignity on the agenda in this relationship in a way that has been completely taken off the table by Trump.”
