The ending of the Jamal Khashoggi case has left a number of questions – but it was always going to

They get away with it, don’t they? The Israelis, of course, stealing more land, the cruel Arab dictators, the fraudulent Donald Trump with his absurd, childish, avaricious “peace plans” for the Middle East. But it was the Saudis again, this week, whose act of clemency to Jamal Khashoggi’s murderers – a lifting of the death sentences at the supposed request of his family – which somehow set a new template of mendacity. Other examples to follow.

I knew Khashoggi’s sons only as children and have no idea under what pressures they may have laboured for this singular act of breathtaking kindness. But it now seems that the story of the suffocation, chopping up, dismemberment and possibly chemically dissolved Khashoggi has reached its gruesome end. The murderers were medically trained, we should remember – did any of them take the Hippocratic oath? – and, according to the CIA and other worthy truthtellers, could only have been sent on their mission with the knowledge of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohamed bin Salman.

Now we all know that Bin Salman is a man of his word. May the light never fade from his kindly eyes and may the honour of his family live for all time and may his actions always be an inspiration to his people. He denies any role in the heinous murder of the Saudi journalist in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018. And he did, let us remember, take amorphous responsibility for Khashoggi’s fate on the grounds that it happened “on his watch”. Would that other world leaders shared a bit of blame for the slaughter of their citizens in such a way.

Because, of course, the original Khashoggi story was a bit different from the current version. After the Saudis had snuffed their dissident Washington Post-published journalist – and after the Saudi denials and the Saudi silence – we were all informed that his Saudi killers were a “rogue” squad. I’ve always been a little bemused by this term, beloved of fiction writers and journalists. We all know, of course, who these weird creatures are supposed to be.

“Rogue units” torture US prisoners in Iraq or murder innocent civilians in the Iraqi desert or attack minorities or chuck prisoners out of aircraft – or rub out inconvenient journalists. These “rogue units” perform these dastardly acts of their own volition and without orders – perhaps because they believe their commanders are too soft on their enemies. Or they think their masters would approve of their vile murders but could not instruct them to perform acts of torture and murder without damaging their status as generals, kings, princes, presidents, etc.

In other words “rogue units” think they are doing the “right thing” by their countries or leaders. They believe that their murder most foul is in the interests of their states or their princes or their religion. But over the past few weeks, the “rogue units” story has faded away. Khashoggi’s killers were turned in news reports this week into “agents”, or “individuals” or – most intriguingly of all – “negotiators”, presumably because their failure to persuade Jamal Khashoggi to travel home meant that they had no option but to saw him up and dispose of his corpse. Quite a negotiation.

Let us put aside for the moment the fact that the secret trial in Riyadh – the case has now been officially “closed”, of course – never revealed the current location of Jamal Khashoggi’s remains. I suppose that if he was dissolved in acid, this would be a bit difficult. If not, as I have asked before, was his corpse (in whatever parlous state) turned to face Mecca? Did such Islamic pieties count at the time of his extinction? Or is that outside the purview of “rogue units”?

But let us, as all politicians and murderers urge us to do, “move on”. It may be recalled – faintly, in the mists of past Trumpian evil – that the US president totally refused to condemn those who killed Khashoggi. Just as he has declined to condemn those behind the attempted murder of Alexei Navalny. Indeed, Trump – post-the late Khashoggi – vetoed an arms ban on Saudi Arabia. And Trump’s wretched son-in-law, Master Jared Kushner, is still a good buddy of the aforesaid Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman – and is even currently trying to persuade the Saudis to join their Emirati mates in opening up their best shopping malls to Israeli tourists. So far, we learn that Israeli aircraft can overfly Saudi territory on their way to peace-loving Abu Dhabi, Dubai or the other Emirates.

But if they can overfly Saudi Arabia, why not give the Israelis refuelling rights in the land of the Two Holy Mosques? Or, if joining the Emirates in full diplomatic relations with Israel is currently vetoed by King Salman – again, may he too last many years, even if that seems unlikely – surely the Saudis can arrange regular security-intelligence briefings in Europe (or the Emirates) with the Israelis? Not much point, I guess, since the very best intelligence “sources” in the Arab world say that this has been going on for years. After all, the Saudis managed to prevent the Arab League criticising the new Emirates “peace” with Israel this week.

And you can see how the pitiful leadership of the Palestinians, whose land will continue to be stolen for Israel’s colonial project, ask the question: how do they get away with it? Indeed, the whole Zionist expansion of the Jewish state – an act of nationalism, not religion – has long had the pre-Trump support of the United States. Who declared Jerusalem the sovereign capital of Israel? Who moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem? What won’t Trump and Kushner do for the further dispossession of the Palestinians?

And do we think the Democratic candidate is going to change any of this? Biden went along, by the way, with the Emirati “peace-in-return-for-nothing” deal, along with Blair (“momentous”) and his chum Sisi in Cairo (“a historic peace step”). And after decades of US prevarication over those totally illegal Jewish colonies on occupied Arab land – let alone Trump’s approval – does anyone really think Biden can prevent the continued and final annexation (however “legal”) of the West Bank? Who actually believed or believes, by the way, that when Israel halts or “freezes” or delays or “puts on ice” or suspends its colonial building east of Jerusalem – on behalf of the Emirates or anyone else - it ever means “ending”?

Indeed, the very words are losing their meaning. If Abu Dhabi is such a peace-loving nation, for example, why does it continue to participate in the murderous war in Yemen, along – a few bumps here, we know – with its Saudi allies? Because it now has Israel’s intelligence assistance, using US and British weapons, in this proxy war against the great Shiite Demon of Iran? And so it goes on, and on, and on.

And yes, they get away with it, don’t they? Is it therefore in the nature of this new century that those who might in the past have shown some modicum of morality or at least diplomacy in their political activities simply no longer bother to hide their duplicity? This is not just a Middle East disease. We have been signing treaties and making promises and uttering pledges in the Arab world for years with at least a vague intention of keeping our word. UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967, calling for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied Arab territory in return for full security of every state in the region, remained more or less sacrosanct until the post-Oslo Israeli-American-Palestinian talks began to eat into its guarantees.

Europeans, being civilised folk, gently acknowledge our sins in the Middle East but, until this week at least, tended to expect a little less economy of the truth between ourselves. Yet there was Britain this week – directly, baldly, openly and with malice not even aforethought – effectively tearing up its solemn Brexit treaty with the EU and admitting with a dictator’s candour that it was indeed breaking international law. I loved that line about how we were only doing so “in a very specific and limited way”.

It reminded me of that bit in The Wind in the Willows when Toad refuses to honour his word and express his continued remorse to Badger on the grounds that “I’d have said anything in there… But I’ve been searching my mind since, and going over things in it, and I find I’m not a bit sorry or repentant, so it’s no earthly good saying I am.” Toad’s dishonesty is thus covered by his own brand new integrity – founded on the perfectly reasonable assertion that he no longer believes what he originally said. In haste, no doubt. This is Boris Johnson and UK policy to the EU to a tee. The Brexit agreement was, it seems, a bit “rogue”, not quite what it seemed. A bit of a giggle, in fact.

In one way, this kind of dishonesty is worse than the whoppers of the 1930s. When the little man with the moustache said in September 1938 that the Sudetenland was “the last territorial demand which I intend to make in Europe,” he was lying, and millions knew he was lying, and yet it was easier to go along with the lie than to imagine the alternative. Nowadays – and let us make no other such parallels between the aforesaid Austrian and modern-day liars – we go along with lies because they have, especially over the past decade or two, become normal. In fact, I’d dare go so far as to say that lying in politics is today often more normal than telling the truth. You only have to announce “the deal of the century” for the Middle East and it immediately runs as a strap across the bottom of every television screen. It has become real. They get away with it.

Thus the Saudis’ breach of the laws of humanity – albeit in the murder of only one journalist and thus, I suppose, only “in a very specific and limited way” – has become a legal hitch, a forgettable slip, closed now that “justice” has been done, albeit unseen. Is dishonesty, like corruption, the cancer of the Middle East and our dealings with the region? Maybe all this goes back to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations and the western hegemony which they imposed on the Arabs under the guise of “protection”, a “sacred trust of civilisation”, as it was called.

Ah yes, “trust”; that’s the word, the very bedrock upon which international law is founded. Nothing “limited” about that. Talk about lies. I often wonder whether the Arabs have – so far – avoided the worst of Covid-19 because they suffered a far worse infection a hundred and one years ago: Versailles-19. How did we get away with it?