Newswire

Update 28 July 2009

The British Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee has repeated its call for the British government to enter into talks with Hamas.

British policy is to have dialogue with Hizbollah, the Islamic group which is represented in the Lebanese parliament, but not with Hamas, the Palestinian political group with won the Palestinian elections in the Occupied Territories in 2006.

The US and Israel describe both organisations as terrorist and refuse to have any contacts with them.

The British Foreign Affairs Committee acknowledged that both Hizbollah and Hamas represent significant numbers of people, and believe that they both should be included in a peace process, rather than be kept outside of it.

Meanwhile a high level US delegation, including US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, is in the Middle East, for the first time for the US, publicly critical of the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The Israeli government is conducting a public relations campaign against US President Barak Obama, condemning his demand that Israel cease building settlements in the West Bank, and claiming that any cutting back on settlement building could not possibly apply to East Jerusalem.

Israel has annexed East Jerusalem, but no other country in the world recognises this annexation, and the International Court of Justice ruled that it was occupied territory in 2004.

Netanyahu presents flaming olive branch

The long awaited 'peace speech' by Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu was rich in smoke and mirrors, but can hardly constitute a step towards any peace.

Netanyahu was responding to increasing pressure from US president Barak Obama to accept a micro Palestinian state alongside Israel. Obama has also called for Israel to stop expanding its illegal settlements on the West Bank.

Successive US presidents have tried to be the one to deliver an historical accord that will bring a lasting peace to the region after a conflict that goes back 80 years. All have failed miserably, mostly because Israel has always been given the right to veto any outcome that it did not agree with.

Netanyahu has shown the way for a Palestinian state by mentioning it, but has guaranteed the doors are shut to it ever being achieved.

He first of all, in common with all his predecessors, has never defined where such a state's borders will be. Though Jerusalem is occupied territory, he makes it clear that it will all remain in Israel.

Directly challenging Obama, the settlements will stay, and grow.

A Palestinian state will be demilitarised as a condition for it coming into being. As such, it would be the only state in the world without the sovereign right to decide whether it would have armed forces. Netanyahu nevertheless demands that the Palestine Authority use force to destroy groups that threaten Israel before negotiations will begin.

The Palestinian state will never have a government with Hamas in it. Again, Israel asserts a veto that trumps Palestinian elections.

The Palestinians must unambiguously accept Israel's right to exist as the 'nation state of the Jewish people', according to Netanyahu. But no country in the world recognises Israel through this racist formula. It is a demand that goes well beyond previously agreed formulas of recognition, and amounts to endorsing the right of Israel to expel Israeli Palestinians if Israel felt that their mere numbers ever threatened Israel's Jewish hegemony. He has accordingly also rejected the long standing legal right of Palestinian refugees to return.

All these demands Netanyahu made. Yet he claimed there were no preconditions to negotiations - only things that Israel would never negotiate. Hardly a path to peace that Obama should, or the Palestinians will, welcome.

$30 Billion For Israel's Military.

By Haitham Sabbah, Mar 13th, 2009 at 17:32

Same old story, new president

U.S. President Barack Obama will not cut the billions of dollars in military aid promised to Israel, a senior U.S. administration official said Wednesday. The $30 billion in aid promised to Israel over the next decade will not be harmed by the world financial crisis, the official told Israel Radio. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. military aid to Israel was increased in a decade-long deal agreed to by Bush in 2007. OTOH, U.S. will pay close to $1 billion for rebuilding the wreckage in Gaza mostly caused by armaments paid for by the U.S.! To add insult to injury, there is a condition on that money:

Clinton: Some $900 million pledged by the United States to the Palestinians will be withdrawn if the expected Palestinian Authority coalition government between Fatah and Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist, Western and Israeli diplomats said Wednesday.

Key Facts

• Total direct aid to Israel, 1948-2003, $89.9 billion (uncorrected for inflation).
• Since 1976 Israel has been the largest annual recipient of US aid. It is the largest cumulative recipient since World War II.
• Direct U.S. aid for each Israeli citizen in 2001 (per capita annual income of Israel = $16,710) — over $500.
• Direct U.S. Aid for each Ethiopian citizen in 2001 (per capita annual income of Ethiopia = $100) — about $.45.
• REGULAR US GRANT AID in FY 2003: 1. $2.76 billion military aid grant; 2. $2.1 billion economic support funds; 3. $600 million refugee resettlement grant.
• COMMERCIAL LOAN GUARANTEES IN FY 2003, $2 billion.
• BUSH ADMINISTRATION SUPPLEMENTAL REQUEST FOR FY 2003: 1. Military aid grant $1 billion; 2. Commercial loan guarantees $9 billion; 3. Arrow missile development $60 million

• TOTAL AID FOR FY 2003 $14.82 billion
• Percentage of U.S. foreign aid that goes to Israel — 30%.
• Israel's population as a percentage of world population — .01%.
• Section 116 of the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) states, "No assistance may be provided under this part to the government of any country which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights." 22 U.S.C. 2304(a)
• Section 4 of the Arms Export Control Act prohibits selling military equipment to countries that use them for non-self-defense purposes.
• The U.S. State Department determined in February 2001 that Israel has committed each of the acts that the law defines as "gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, prolonged detention without charges and trial, causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons, and other flagrant denials of the right to life, liberty, or the security of person." It described Israeli army use of live ammunition against Palestinians when soldiers were not in impending danger as "excessive use of force."

SOURCES: Clyde R. Mark, Israel: U.S. Foreign Assistance, Congressional Research Service, updated April 1, 2003; Clyde R. Mark, Middle East: U.S. Foreign Assistance, FY 2001, FY 2002, FY 2003 Congressional Research Service, March 28, 2002