"The United States is completely isolated on the issues of the Middle East," Freeman, who also served as US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said on Friday. "The eternally unproductive ‘peace process’ played a role in this isolation. It has been unmasked as a pious fraud."
On Thursday, the UN General Assembly defied massive US diplomatic pressure and threats of major cuts in US aid to many nations and voted by a margin of 128 nations to nine to condemn the planned move. Apart from Israel, only seven other countries, four of them tiny Pacific islands, backed the United States.
Freeman noted the controversy ended by discrediting US diplomacy.
"The UN General Assembly vote is a reminder that there is an international community and that it, not the United States, makes international law," Freeman said.
Freeman said the global criticisms of the United States administered in both bodies confirmed the total collapse and failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process after 40 years of empty maneuvers.
"When even the pretense that there was a peace process finally sputtered out, it became apparent that nothing had been accomplished in 40-years than aiding and abetting… dispossession of Palestinian Arabs by distracting the international community and deceiving the Palestinians," Freeman said.
Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem had finally convinced the world that the United States backed Israel completely and had no interest in advancing any genuine peace process, Freeman explained.
"The unilateral recognition of Jerusalem just capped a long history of pro-Israel American diplomacy. No one is now fooled by American attempts to pose as a peacemaker between Israel, the Palestinians, and Israel's Arab neighbors. The votes in the UN have made that clear," he said.
"The combative and contemptuous posture toward the world that this represents will make it very hard, if not impossible, for the United States to gain the cooperation of other countries on diplomatic issues throughout the world, not just the Middle East," he said.
Trump’s policy on the Jerusalem embassy had dealt a major and lasting blow to US diplomatic credibility on other issues to major nations around the world, Freeman observed.
"Others now doubt America's sincerity, seriousness of purpose and fidelity to the principles it professes. The threats of retaliation uttered by the embarrassing [US Ambassador to the United Nations] Nikki Haley and then repeated by President Trump amounted to a demonstration of a belief in Washington that might makes right," he said.
The image of the United States was now vastly different from the ones that the world had largely accepted and admired over the past century, Freeman noted.
"This is not the America the world once knew and admired. This is an America that looks like a deceitful bully. Others will not follow such an America," he said.
"The likelihood that aid to Egypt and Jordan will be curtailed is not great, as it would risk further isolating an already increasingly isolated Israel," he said.
Chas Freeman is a lifetime director of the Atlantic Council and served as US Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’affaires at the US embassies in Beijing and Bangkok. Freeman also held several senior level positions at the US Department of Defense.
