Bullying the Palestinians

For Palestinians, Israeli settlements are the very crux of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
It appears that US dealings with the Palestinians have entered a new phase: Bullying.

On Thursday, President Barack Obama telephoned Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to urge him to block a UN Security Council resolution condemning settlements. Obama pressed very hard during the 50 minute call, so hard that Abbas felt constrained to agree to take Obama’s request to the PLO executive committee (which, not surprisingly, agreed that Abbas should not accede to Obama’s request).

But what a request it is!

For Palestinians, Israeli settlements are the very crux of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After all, it is the gobbling up of the land by settlements that is likely to prevent a Palestinian state from ever coming into being.

Asking the Palestinian leader to agree to oppose a resolution condemning them is like asking the Israeli prime minister to agree to drop Israel’s claim to the Israeli parts of Jerusalem.

In fact, the mere US request for a 90-day settlement freeze (a request sweetened with an offer of $3.5bn in extra aid) outraged the Netanyahu government. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu could not even bring himself to respond (probably figuring that he will get the extra money whenever he wants it anyway). The administration then acted as if it never made the request at all, so eager is it to not offend Netanyahu in any way.

But it is a different story with Palestinians for obvious reasons (they have no political clout in Washington). Even when they ask the UN to support them on settlements, the administration applies heavy pressure on them.

But why so much pressure? After all, it is a big deal when the president calls a foreign leader and, to be honest, the head of the Palestinian Authority is not exactly the president of France or prime minister of Canada.

The reason Obama made that call is that he was almost desperate to avoid vetoing the United Nations Security Council Resolution condemning illegal Israel settlements. And it is not hard to see why.

Given the turbulence in the Middle East, and the universal and strong opposition in the Arab and Muslim world to US shilly-shallying on settlements, the last thing the administration wants to do is veto a resolution condemning them.

That is especially true with this resolution, sponsored by 122 nations, and which embodies long-stated US policies. All US interests dictate either support for the resolution or at least abstention.

But the administration rejected that approach, knowing that if it supported the resolution, AIPAC would go ballistic, along with its House and Senate (mostly House) cutouts. (Here are some of them issuing warnings already).

Then the calls would start coming in from AIPAC-connected donors who would warn that they will not support the president’s re-election if he does not veto. And Netanyahu would do to Obama what he did to former President Clinton - work with the Republicans (his favourite is former speaker Newt Gingrich) to bring Obama down.

What was an administration to do? It did not want to veto but was afraid not to.

Earlier in the week, it floated a plan which would have the Security Council mildly criticise settlements in a statement (not a resolution). According to Foreign Policy, the statement: "Expresses its strong opposition to any unilateral actions by any party, which cannot prejudge the outcome of negotiations and will not be recognised by the international community, and reaffirms, that it does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity, which is a serious obstacle to the peace process." The statement also condemns "all forms of violence, including rocket fire from Gaza, and stresses the need for calm and security for both peoples".

Did you notice where settlements are mentioned? Read slowly. It is there.

Reading the language, it is not hard to guess where the statement was drafted. Rather than simply address settlements, it throws in such AIPAC pleasing irrelevancies (in this context) as "rocket fire from Gaza" which has absolutely nothing to do with West Bank settlements. In other words, it reads like an AIPAC-drafted House resolution, although it does leave out the "hooray for Israel" boilerplate which is standard in Congress but which the Security Council is unlikely to go for.

All this to avoid vetoing a resolution which expresses US policy. Needless to say, the US plan went nowhere. Hypocrisy only carries the day when it is not transparent.

As I wrote earlier this week, this is what happens when donors and not diplomats are driving US policy. It is too bad that they do not care that they are making the US look like Netanyahu's puppet in front of the entire world.

MJ Rosenberg is a senior foreign policy fellow at Media Matters Action Network. The above article first appeared in Foreign Policy Matters, a part of the Media Matters Action Network.

Follow MJ's work on Facebook or on Twitter.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy

Why is Israel aid exempt?

As US fiscal conservatives cut food programmes for poor children, military aid for Israel is left untouched.

MJ Rosenberg Last Modified: 05 Mar 2011 13:05 GMT

US military aid should be conditional on Israel stopping settlement expansion, writer says [GALLO/GETTY]

Once upon a time, social security was considered the "third rail" of American politics. The "third rail" is the train track that carries the high-voltage power; touching it means instant death.

The "third rail" metaphor has for decades been applied to social security, a government program so popular with the American public that proposing any changes in it would mean political death to the politician.

No more. Although social security is as popular as ever, politicians routinely propose changes in the program — including privatisation and means testing. While the proposals usually go nowhere, and rightly so, the politicians who support them live to fight another day. Today, with those massive deficits and the astronomical national debt, not even social security is sacrosanct.

Few, if any, government programs are.

But US aid to Israel is. In fact, the $3bn Israel aid package is the new third rail of American politics: touch it and die. It is also the one program that liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans and tea partiers all agree should not sustain even a dollar in cuts.

Actually, that is something of a mis-statement. These various parties and factions do not agree that the $3bn Israel aid package is sacred. They just say that they do because a powerful lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), makes clear to them that touching the aid package will mean big trouble for them in the next election.

Cuts to social programmes

It no longer comes as much of a surprise that the average Democrat or Republican will rule that Israel aid cuts are off the table — while supporting cuts in programs like head start, which educates poor children, or WIC, which provides nutrition assistance to disadvantaged women and their infants.

It is not a surprise because everyone knows that the Democratic and Republican campaign finance committees warn their members of the dire consequences that might ensue if they dare to stand up to the lobby.

That is why even the most liberal members of congress never point out the absurdity of supporting full funding of military aid to Israel while slashing vital domestic programs. In fact, the only members of congress who have suggested that Israel share some of the sacrifice are Reresentative Ron Paul (R-TX) and his son, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) who would pretty much cut every program in the budget, including Israel aid.

But the two Pauls, all by themselves, put enough of a scare into AIPAC that it immediately got to work to make sure that other like-minded Republicans (the "cut everything" caucus) did not go off and follow them in the name of, say, logic and consistency.

Fiscal conservatives?

AIPAC was most concerned about the Republican first-termers, most of whom were elected with the support of tea partiers, who are generally extreme fiscal conservatives and tend not to favor any exemptions from the budget axe.

Almost immediately, AIPAC produced a letter for the Republican first-termers to sign in which they pledged that, no matter what else they cut, Israel would be exempt. And almost immediately, 65 of the 87 Republican freshmen signed on, with more signing on later.

Among the signatories are some of the most vehement supporters of cutting virtually every domestic program. These are people who support programs that cut jobs in their own districts and proudly point to their devotion to the principle that shared sacrifice means everyone.

But not Israel.

The AIPAC letter seems to recognise that virtually every other program is sustaining cuts. It refers to "runaway spending and trillion dollar deficits." It even concedes that "tough choices must be made to control federal spending" and that "we must do a better job of prioritising appropriations". Those priorities can be seen in this list of draconian budget cuts the freshmen support.

But then this: "Therefore, as this congress considers the upcoming continuing resolution, we strongly urge you [the House leadership] to include America's full $3bn commitment for Fiscal Year 2011 under the 10-year US-Israel Memorandum of Understanding.

And that is where fiscal hawks become the most docile of doves: when it comes to Israel.

Conditional aid

This is not to say that the United States should eliminate military aid to Israel. Much of the aid package can be justified on the grounds that Israel is an ally, one that still has enemies bent on its destruction.

But how can anyone justify picking this one program out of the entire federal budget and saying, without discussion, that it merits full funding, without scrutiny, while virtually every other program is cut?

The simple fact is that both the United States and Israel would be better off if we attached strings to our aid, as we do with other foreign assistance programmes.

For instance, we might say that for every dollar Israel spends on expanding settlements, we will subtract one dollar from the aid package. Or we can put some of the package on hold until Israel agrees to freeze settlements, thereby enabling negotiations with the Palestinians to resume.

Or we can simply examine the aid budget, item by item, to make sure that each program in it supports US policy goals. Do those US -provided cluster bombs that are still exploding in Lebanon serve our interests?

But we do none of that. Israel prepares a shopping list and congressional appropriators provide the goods. Shop 'til you drop.

This is wrong. Congress should treat the Israel aid package the same way it deals with programs that directly benefit Americans. Those who support it should be forced to defend it, line by line.

But the sad fact is that special interests like AIPAC, the Chamber of Commerce and the Club for Growth intimidate Congress into exempting their favorite projects even from discussion. Aid to Israel will not even be discussed this year, except for members of Congress informing AIPAC of their unquestioning devotion to it.

If only infants, working Americans, and the poor were somebody's special interest. Maybe then, someday, they too could intimidate congress. As the old Jewish expression goes: we should all live so long.

MJ Rosenberg is a senior foreign policy fellow at Media Matters Action Network. The above article first appeared in Foreign Policy Matters, a part of the Media Matters Action Network.

Follow MJ's work on Facebook or on Twitter.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

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