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The congresswoman who oversees US aid to Israel told The Jerusalem Post Thursday that the ongoing dispute between the countries would in no way harm assistance to the Jewish state.
“There is no question in my mind that the 10-year memorandum of understanding is solid,” Nita Lowey, chairwoman of the US House appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, said of the decade-long US aid plan under which $3 billion will be going to Israel this year. “There is strong bipartisan support for Israel in the Congress that will not falter.”
The "military aid" to Israel is a two-sided treaty between the US and Israel that both nations are contracted on and benefit from to some degree.Whining about who is at fault is why the process never gets anywhere. What matters is simply using what power you have to influence the best outcome. The U.S. has a unique ability to influence Israel thanks to its military aid. Thus, strong arming Israel into doing something sensible like getting rid of settlements is something that can actually be accomplished. Ideally we could do the same for the Palestinians, but the U.S. lacks the influence. While it is probably unfair in some cosmic sense that Palestine can get away with worse behavior, that is no excuse for continuing to allow Israel to do stupid things.
The "military aid" to Israel is a two-sided treaty between the US and Israel that both nations are contracted on and benefit from to some degree.
Be it the money that allows Israel to purchase extra defense systems from the US, or the American arms market that benefits from the contract that forces Israel to buy a great percentage of its weapons from American contractors.
Doesn't contradict any of my points, I'm afraid.Israel is the only recipient of foreign military aid from the United States that does not have to use all the money on US military projects.
LOL. Strawman alert.Israel is the only recipient of foreign military aid from the United States that does not have to use all the money on US military projects. Every other country that receives aid from us is forced to invest it back into our own market.
".....Israel is bound by the agreement to use 75% of the aid to buy military hardware Made in the US: in the crisis-racked US economy, those military factories are critical to many towns.
For the first time the US is also providing $500 million to the Palestinian Authority, including $100 million to train security forces, under the strict proviso that the authority’s leadership recognises Israel.
For many years Israel has been the largest recipient of US foreign aid, followed by Egypt ($1.75 billion), which also receives Most of its assistance in tied military aid....
I wasn't trying to contradict any of your points. I read your post, and agreed with some of your comments (like paragraph three). However, I found your first paragraph misleading and responded to it.Doesn't contradict any of my points, I'm afraid.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/IB93087.pdfSecondly, please source up the claim that Egypt is forced to invest all of the military aid it receives from the US in US military projects.
Misleading means that my words were causing a false/partially false conclusion to be made.I wasn't trying to contradict any of your points. I read your post, and agreed with some of your comments (like paragraph three). However, I found your first paragraph misleading and responded to it.
I've just done a quick reading of the paragraphs relating to the American military aid to Egypt in both of your supplied sources.
Assuming the latest news accounts are accurate, I believe President Obama's current efforts to press Israel are badly misguided for a number of reasons:
1. They ignore the reality that it has been the Palestinians not Israel who have been boycotting negotiations. The Palestinians have been demanding an entrance price to indirect talks. Israel has repeatedly expressed its willingness and desire to immediately engage in unconditional direct negotiations.
2. Israel has demonstrated through credible actions its desire for peace. It accepted President Clinton's bridging proposal of December 2000. In late 2008, Prime Minister Olmert offered even more generous terms than President Clinton's proposal. In both instances, the Palestinians failed to seize the opportunity for peace. In the two cases where Arab states were serious about peace, Israel reached agreement.
3. Israel has repeatedly made good faith unilateral concessions. Those concessions have been pocketed by the Palestinians. They did not produce greater flexibility on the part of the Palestinians. In the case of the Gaza Strip and also Lebanon, the result was violence against Israel's people.
4. Indirect talks have not produced much progress. The successful negotiations between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Jordan were direct talks.
5. Israel is held responsible for a badly timed announcement by the Interior Minister. The Palestinians were not criticized for naming a public square in Ramallah after a terrorist who was responsible for a loss of Israeli lives.
6. Breaking an ally demonstrates a lack of reliability. Should Israel be forced to capitulate to U.S. demands, that will send a clear message to other U.S. allies that the alliance is based strictly on U.S. desires , not mutual interests, and can turn on a whim. It will demonstrate before the world that U.S. commitments are not reliable. That development would raise legitimate concerns down the road, both with economic and political partners. For example, given persistent U.S. trade deficits, countries running trade surpluses with the U.S. might well have reasons to expect that the U.S. will act in a protectionist fashion even if such trade imbalances are the result of comparative advantages not unfair trade practices. Given long-term fiscal imbalances, nations currently financing U.S. debt could have genuine reason to worry about a partial U.S. default via significant currency devaluation.
IMO, Israel should not capitulate to the current unreasonable demands being placed on it. Such a move would set a bad precedent and embolden the Palestinians to become even more intransigent in the belief that the U.S. would ultimately break Israel. Furthermore, I suspect that there is a limit to how far the Administration can push Israel before Congress constrains it.
I don't see what's wrong in asking Israel to stop doing something illegal. No one outside Israel recognizes the annexion of East Jerusalem.
Furthermore, even if we disagree on the legality of the colonization of East Jerusalem, there is still the legitimacy problem. Jerusalem is also the capital of the Palestinians, and that will be the capital of their future state. Asking for the freezing of the colonization is a step towards peace.
I don't see what's wrong in asking Israel to stop doing something illegal. No one outside Israel recognizes the annexion of East Jerusalem.
Furthermore, even if we disagree on the legality of the colonization of East Jerusalem, there is still the legitimacy problem. Jerusalem is also the capital of the Palestinians, and that will be the capital of their future state. Asking for the freezing of the colonization is a step towards peace.
Technically, from the international perspective, East Jerusalem is disputed.
It is not Palestinian territory. The idea that the Palestinians are automatically entitled to East Jerusalem would, in effect, grant possession to the Palestinians based on Jordanian aggression (an offensive war in 1948 that led to Jordan's capturing that part of Jerusalem).
Ultimately, it will be negotiations that resolve the final status of that part of the city. Both sides have some needs with respect to East Jerusalem and those needs will have to be addressed at the negotiating table. However, the Palestinians have deliberately chosen a strategy of avoiding negotiations and finding just about any pretext to do so.
All said, rather than trying to undermine the wellbeing of Jerusalem's residents (as would happen if a growing population cannot have its basic needs accommodated) to fit the circumstances created by Palestinian intransigence and if the international community truly believes that a negotiated settlement is key to resolving the historic dispute, the international community would do far better to demand that the Palestinians return to negotiations immediately and unconditionally.
Furthermore, demands that Prime Minister Netanyahu intervene in municipal activities are also not very reasonable. Does President Sarkozy determine day-to-day building in Paris? Does President Obama sign off before an apartment complex is to be constructed in Los Angeles? Of course not.
If the Palestinians want the best possible outcome from their perspective, they should be at the negotiating table right now. Instead, they have squandered many months in their self-imposed boycott of negotiations. They should not be rewarded for their intransigence. Such an outcome would only produce additional incentives for intransigence. Jerusalem's residents should not have their lives and wellbeing put on hold to reward that continuing intransigence nor to nourish additional intransigence.
Had Israel not agreed to do this?
Many in the United States see Netanyahu as a hard-liner who isn't serious about peace. But seen from Israel, a perhaps more-important issue is the incompetence of some of his advisors. Netanyahu's government makes unnecessary blunders (such as the recent pointless insults to the Turkish ambassador in Tel Aviv) on an almost weekly basis, though usually the consequences aren't always so far-reaching.
For Netanyahu, the current disorganized construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is a feature, not a bug. Israeli governments, as a rule, find it useful to leave such district planning commissions with no supervision. "A righteous person's work is done by others," goes the old Jewish saying. Why should a minister bother to interrupt? If the construction goes unnoticed, Israel has succeeded in creating "facts on the ground" in a disputed area. If the plan is exposed, better not to be involved. East Jerusalem is not officially included in Netanyahu's pledge to freeze construction in the settlements for 10 months. But a close look at the situation in the West Bank will show that even there, the government and the settlers have found diverse ways to bypass the official decision. Settlers were granted permission to build hundreds of housing units just before the freeze was announced, and they are also allowed to complete houses for which the foundations have already been laid.
I don't see what's wrong in asking Israel to stop doing something illegal. No one outside Israel recognizes the annexion of East Jerusalem.
No, they didn't say they would stop colonizing the palestinian part of Jerusalem.
Every western country recognizes Israel's claim to Jerusalem, they simply do not recognize Israel's sovereignty over East Jerusalem.No western country will ever recognise Israel's claim to Jerusalem. No matter how many houses they knock down and rebuild.
Disputed...according to Israel, not according to the rest of the world
Israel does the same with the Golan and West Bank, don't they?
But frankly, there is nothing to negociate about Jerusalem. There are Palestinians and Israeli, both want a part of it, it's fair to give one part to the Israeli and another part to the Palestinians. The idea that the Palestinians couldn't have their part is not acceptable.
And the Israeli governments always talks about negociations but in the mean time they keep on colonizing West Bank and East Jerusalem. That is a scandal.
You say that the Palestinians are intransigeant, but who would accept being colonized and blockaded??? Do you know that a blockade was the casus belli used by Israel to start two wars?
I don't talk about that, I just say that Israel should stay on its side of the border (the 1967 border, the one that the entire world recognises as the border of Israel)
You talk about intransigeance but aren't provocations like the ongoing colonization of West Bank and East Jerusalem also a way to make any discussion impossible?
Well in fact Israel has totally isolated itself on the international level because of the colonization, even their traditional ally is getting fed up.
Yes, the false conclusion is that the FMF to Israel gives mutual benefits to both sides. These "mutual benefits" are part of every arms trade with America (Arms Export Control Act). Reality is that Israel is the only country that can use FMF from the US on domestic military products, greatly expanding Israel's economy.Misleading means that my words were causing a false/partially false conclusion to be made.
That is of course not the case here, as I have never argued about other military aid receivers, but about Israel specifically.
I've just done a quick reading of the paragraphs relating to the American military aid to Egypt in both of your supplied sources.
I am afraid that I was unable to find the statement that relates to the Egyptian commitment to use 100% of the military aid it receives from the US on American military projects.
Your aid in finding those particular statements would be appreciated.
what makes East Jerusalem Palestinian? on which bases do you make this claim?
It's full of Palestinians, it's not under Israeli sovereignty according to the entire world, and it's the only city that could be their capital
Um al Fahem is also full of Palestinians, is it a part of Palestine too?
Are Jaffa an Acre part of Palestine?? What about the lower city of Haifa?
Why can't Ramalla be their capital? are there any terms a city must follow inorder to be a capital?
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