Trump And Netanyahu Have A Lot In Common

Trump Welcomes Netanyahu

By Alan Dershowitz February 16, 2017 , 8:00 am

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Israel’s long time Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will soon be welcomed to the White House by newly elected President Donald Trump. What can we expect from this initial meeting between two strong willed national leaders?

I know them both– Netanyahu better than Trump– and I believe they will get along well.  They are both no nonsense pragmatists who understand the relationship between economic development and political progress. We all know of Trump’s business background and focus on jobs and trade. Less well known is Netanyahu’s business background. Like Trump, Netanyahu went to business school and began his career as a business man, working for Boston Consulting Group.  When he entered politics, he helped transform Israel from an agrarian based economy into “start-up nation,” which has become a technological superpower with a strong economy.  He is the Alexander Hamilton of Israel, to David Ben Gurion’s Jefferson. Trump has to admire that.

Trump will also admire Netanyahu’s strong nationalism and love of country.  He has made Israel great, militarily, technologically and economically.  He may soon become Israel’s longest serving Prime Minister, surpassing the legendary Ben Gurion.

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Each leader would like to be the one who succeeds in bringing a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  So many others – people of good will and considerable effort – have been unable to achieve this goal. There is no certainty that Trump and Netanyahu can succeed when so many others have come close but have never been able to close the deal.  Both are respected for their deal-making capabilities – Trump in business, Netanyahu in domestic politics.

But there are considerable barriers to achieving a peaceful resolution.  Netanyahu and his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, each have domestic constituencies that would oppose the compromise necessary to achieve a two state solution.  Some of Netanyahu’s right wing coalition partners oppose a two state solution in which Israel would turn over most of the West Bank to establish a Palestinian state.  And many West Bank Palestinians – not to mention Hamas in Gaza – oppose recognizing the legitimacy of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.  They also demand the “return” of four million Palestinian refugees to Israel, despite the reality that there are probably only a hundred thousand or so actual refugees who themselves left Israel in 1948, many voluntarily.

It must be remembered that Israel has twice in recent times offered the Palestinians a State on 95 percent of the West Bank.  In 2000-2001 then Prime Minister Ehud Barak and then President Bill Clinton made a generous offer. Yasser Arafat, who was being advised by Jimmy Carter, rejected it and started a violent Intifada in which more than 4000 people were killed.  Then in 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made an even more generous offer, to which Mahmoud Abbas did not respond.  And in 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unilaterally ended the military occupation and settlements in the Gaza strip only to be greeted with thousands of rocket attacks and terror tunnels from Hamas.

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Much has changed since these Israeli offers and actions.  The current Israel government is not likely to offer more than what was rejected by the Palestinians. So the pressure must now be placed on the Palestinian leadership to make good faith counter offers.  That pressure can only come from the United States.  This is so because the rest of the International community – the United Nations, the European Union, the Courts in the Hague, the BDS Movement – all disincentivise the Palestinians from making compromises by falsely telling them they can get a state without negotiating with Israel.

President Trump must make it crystal clear that unless the Palestinians negotiate a reasonable solution with Israel, they will never have a state. President Obama did not send that message with clarity, especially when he ordered his United Nations Representative to allow a one-sided anti-Israel Resolution to be passed by the Security Council.

President Trump must reassure Prime Minister Netanyahu that he will apply pressure – perhaps through our Sunni allies – on the Palestinian authority, and not only on Israel, as the Obama Administration did.  History shows that American administrations that really have Israel’s back – not to stab, but to support – are more likely to persuade Israel to offer compromises.

So I hope that Benjamin Netanyahu will emerge from the White House meeting with the confidence in American support to stand up to those in his cabinet who oppose the two state solution and who want to expand settlement activity.  And I hope the Palestinian leadership will understand that they have no option other than to accept the Netanyahu offer to negotiate anywhere, anytime, and with no preconditions.  Perhaps then we will finally see a reasonable resolution to the age-old conflict.

Reprinted with author’s permission from The Jerusalem Post

Read more at https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Dershowitzs-recipe-for-a-successful-Netanyahu-Trump-meeting-481523#tSOr3Ez7ixoaWClR.99

Detroit--A Boom Town For Chinese Money

Gordon G. Chang, Contributor

I write primarily on China, Asia, and nuclear proliferation.

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12/08/2013 @ 12:34PM |48,865 views

China's Newest City: We Call It 'Detroit'

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Detroit, broke with almost no prospects for recovery, is the fourth most popular U.S. destination for Chinese real estate investors.  In fact, it was bad news—the city’s July 18 bankruptcy filing—that triggered renewed interest. “While the bankruptcy is viewed as a bad thing elsewhere, it raised the exposure level of Detroit’s real estate market in China,” says Evonne Xu, a Michigan attorney catering to Chinese purchasers.  Middle Kingdom, meet Motown.

Chinese shoppers can’t resist a bargain.  Where else can you buy a two-story home in the U.S. for $39?  China Central Television, the state broadcaster, in March reported that two houses in Detroit cost the same as a pair of leather shoes.  No wonder a poster on Sina Weibo, the Twitter-like service, asked, “Seven-hundred thousand people, quiet, clean air, no pollution, democracy—what are you waiting for?”

Who says the Chinese are waiting?  Dongdu International Group of Shanghai bought, sight unseen, two downtown icons, the David Stott building for $4.2 million and the Detroit Free Press building for $9.4 million, both at auction this September. 

Moreover, Chinese purchasers are making bulk purchases of “inexpensive properties”—those selling for $25,000 or less—in the rings surrounding the city center.  “They’re banking on the downtown resurgence spiraling out into those rings,” explains Kelly Sweeney of Coldwell Banker Weir Manuel. Mainland parties often buy at tax and foreclosure sales, hold their property, and patiently wait for appreciation.

The Chinese certainly have made an impact on the locals in Detroit.  “I have people calling and saying, ‘I’m serious—I wanna buy 100, 200 properties,’ ”said Caroline Chen, a real estate broker in nearby Troy, Michigan, to Quartz.com.  “They say ‘We don’t need to see them.  Just pick the good ones.’ ”  Chen reports that one of her colleagues sold 30 properties to a Chinese investor.

The Chinese are coming, but what are they doing?  Dongdu International will make a big contribution to downtown by redeveloping the Detroit Free Press building, turning it into a retail and residential complex, but that ambitious plan appears to be the exception.  China’s rich are investing in the Motor City like they invest in their own country, where they buy multiple units at a time. In China, like here, they often keep their acquisitions vacant, treating new properties like stores of value. 

The Chinese buy-and-hold tactics in Detroit suggest patience, but that’s not the whole story.  The bigger story is that the parking of wealth offshore indicates capital flight.  The Chinese have only 13% of their wealth outside China, according to Oliver Williams of WealthInsight, while the global average is 20% to 30%, so some of transfers of wealth abroad are normal for a developing society. 

But it’s not just money that is fleeing.  A study conducted by Bank of Chinaand Hurun found that more than half of China’s millionaires have taken steps to emigrate or are considering doing so.  This statistic tells us the transfers of cash out of China are not just normal diversification.

There is substantial disagreement as to how much Chinese individuals have already stashed offshore.  Boston Consulting Group estimates they hold $450 billion in assets outside their country, and WealthInsight believes the number to be $658 billion. 

Yet everyone agrees that the figure, whatever it is, will go up fast.  Boston Consulting, for instance, predicts offshore assets will double in three years. CNBC late last month called the movement of Chinese capital “one of the largest and most rapid wealth migrations of our time: hundreds of billions of dollars, and waves of millionaires flowing out of China to overseas destinations.”  

So the Chinese buying up Detroit says less about the prospects of Motown than what they think of their own country.  It’s not like the Motor City is a good place to invest.  It has what is surely the worst housing market in the U.S.  “I’ve been in the Detroit area for 35 years,” says Chen, the broker from Troy.  “Thirty-five years ago downtown Detroit was like this, and it’s not getting better.” 

She’s right.  After all, who can love a city where the most powerful figure is a bankruptcy judge, the state has had to take over the local government, and creditors are about to cart off the art museum?

But as grim as the future is for Motown, it is evidently better than China’s, at least according to many Chinese.  They are pouring their cash into Detroit.