If Pigs could Fly ! Trumps Flirtation with Qatar !

It was reported on Monday that President Donald Trump expressed his willingness to accept a gift of a US$400 million Boeing 747-8 aeroplane from Qatar to replace Air Force One. Trump cited the saving of millions of dollars to the American taxpayer and went on to say it would be ”stupid” for him to refuse Qatar’s offer.

Trump’s willingness to accept the Qatari gift raises questions about his judgment and suggests a level of naivety when dealing with state affairs. Surely, he must understand the implications of accepting Qatar’s most generous offer. This comes on the heels of sensitive negotiations sponsored by Qatar to release the remaining October 7 hostages. Qatar is no honest broker and plays a double game on the one hand, doing their master’s bidding in Tehran while presenting themselves as a moderating force for good in the Middle East to the Americans. The Qataris are masters at transforming the angle of vision from which negotiations appeared to be heading and altering the nature of the goals themselves. Thereby not so much solving the problems but rather affecting in this case, the Americans to see things in a ‘very different light’, in which what had been a puzzle and a question before no longer arose, or at any rate did not arise with quite such urgency. And if the terms of reference are modified, the solutions no longer seem to be required. The Qataris thereby dismantle the very categories, with the framework, through which the Americans see things. This approach can be destabilising and cast a negative perception of the Jewish State and its self-interest.

This brings us back to the US$400 million jet, which has one purpose and one purpose alone: to penetrate the man in the oval office to a level where it affects the Trump administration in a way that transforms the President’s vision for the Middle East, transforming his policy regarding Israel as if Trump had undergone a religious conversion. The danger of accepting the Qatar gift would place the President in a different relationship from that in which they were previously, ultimately undermining the Israel-US relationship.