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The announcement last week by the United States of the largest military aid package in its history – to Israel – was a win for both sides.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu could boast that his lobbying had boosted aid from $3.1 billion a year to $3.8bn – a 22 per cent increase – for a decade starting in 2019.

Mr Netanyahu has presented this as a rebuff to those who accuse him of jeopardising Israeli security interests with his government’s repeated affronts to the White House.

In the past weeks alone, defence minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared last year’s nuclear deal between Washington and Iran with the 1938 Munich pact, which bolstered Hitler; and Mr Netanyahu has implied that US opposition to settlement expansion is the same as support for the “ethnic cleansing” of Jews.

American president Barack Obama, meanwhile, hopes to stifle his own critics who insinuate that he is anti-Israel. The deal should serve as a fillip too for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic party’s candidate to succeed Mr Obama in November’s election.

In reality, however, the Obama administration has quietly punished Mr Netanyahu for his misbehaviour. Israeli expectations of a $4.5bn-a-year deal were whittled down after Mr Netanyahu stalled negotiations last year as he sought to recruit Congress to his battle against the Iran deal.

In fact, Israel already receives roughly $3.8bn – if Congress’s assistance on developing missile defence programmes is factored in. Notably, Israel has been forced to promise not to approach Congress for extra funds.

The deal takes into account neither inflation nor the dollar’s depreciation against the shekel.

A bigger blow still is the White House’s demand to phase out a special exemption that allowed Israel to spend nearly 40 per cent of aid locally on weapon and fuel purchases. Israel will soon have to buy all its armaments from the US, ending what amounted to a subsidy to its own arms industry.

Nonetheless, Washington’s renewed military largesse – in the face of almost continual insults – inevitably fuels claims that the Israeli tail is wagging the US dog. Even The New York Times has described the aid package as “too big”.

Since the 1973 war, Israel has received at least $100bn in military aid, with more assistance hidden from view. Back in the 1970s, Washington paid half of Israel’s military budget. Today it still foots a fifth of the bill, despite Israel’s economic success.

But the US expects a return on its massive investment. As the late Israeli politician-general Ariel Sharon once observed, ­Israel has been a US “aircraft carrier” in the Middle East, acting as the regional bully and carrying out operations that benefit Washington.

Almost no one blames the US for Israeli attacks that wiped out Iraq’s and Syria’s nuclear programmes. A nuclear-armed Iraq or Syria would have deterred later US-backed moves at regime overthrow, as well as countering the strategic advantage Israel derives from its own nuclear arsenal.

In addition, Israel’s US-sponsored military prowess is a triple boon to the US weapons industry, the country’s most powerful lobby. Public funds are siphoned off to let Israel buy goodies from American arms makers. That, in turn, serves as a shop window for other customers and spurs an endless and lucrative game of catch-up in the rest of the Middle East.

The first F-35 fighter jets to arrive in Israel in December – their various components produced in 46 US states – will increase the clamour for the cutting-edge warplane.

Israel is also a “front-line laboratory”, as former Israeli army negotiator Eival Gilady admitted at the weekend, that develops and field-tests new technology Washington can later use itself.

The US is planning to buy back the missile interception system Iron Dome – which neutralises battlefield threats of retaliation – it largely paid for. Israel works closely too with the US in developing cyber­warfare, such as the Stuxnet worm that damaged Iran’s civilian nuclear programme.

But the clearest message from Israel’s new aid package is one delivered to the Palestinians: Washington sees no pressing strategic interest in ending the occupation. It stood up to Mr Netanyahu over the Iran deal but will not risk a damaging clash over Palestinian statehood.

Some believe that Mr Obama signed the aid package to win the credibility necessary to overcome his domestic Israel lobby and pull a rabbit from the hat: an initiative, unveiled shortly before he leaves office, that corners Mr Netanyahu into making peace.

Hopes have been raised by an expected meeting at the United Nations in New York on Wednesday. But their first talks in 10 months are planned only to demonstrate unity to confound critics of the aid deal.

If Mr Obama really wanted to pressure Mr Netanyahu, he would have used the aid agreement as leverage. Now Mr Netanyahu need not fear US financial retaliation, even as he intensifies effective annexation of the West Bank.

Mr Netanyahu has drawn the right lesson from the aid deal – he can act against the Palestinians with continuing US impunity.

- See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2016-09-19/palestinians-lose-in-us-military-aid-deal-with-israel/#sthash.fL4Eq28N.dpuf

US Holds World Hostage to Political ‘Reality Show’

By RT

September 29, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "RT" -  Washington’s foreign policy is driven by hysteria and resembles a “reality show” in which nobody cares about facts and resorts to old cliches and attacks on Russia to gain international and domestic political capital, said Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman.

The political process driven by Moscow and Washington aimed at establishing a long-lasting peace in Syria is hanging by a thread after a series of events this month led to severe mistrust between the leading nations involved in the peace process.

While US-Russian relations steadily deteriorated after the February 2014 coup in Ukraine, both states found the political will to cooperate on a number of important international issues ranging from Iran’s nuclear program to the Syrian armed conflict.

Months-long diplomatic efforts on behalf of Russia and the US almost produced results, when US-led coalition jets bombed Syrian government forces’ positions near the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor, killing 62 troops and “paving the way”, according to the Syrian Army General Command, for Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorists to storm the city before Russia intervened on Saturday, September 17.

Two days later on Monday, an attack on a UN aid convoy which killed more than 20 people near Aleppo saw the US-Russian brokered cease-fire crumble. The US held Syria and Russia responsible for the strike on the convoy delivering food relief to a rebel-held area. However, Moscow denied the accusations, and blamed Washington for not honoring agreements on Syria.

As the violence in Syria gathers new momentum, all efforts to cease hostilities have failed. At the UN Security Council, earlier this month, US envoy Samantha Power slated her Russian counterpart with regards to Moscow’s objectives in Syria, while Russia accused the US of not living up to its promises.

On Wednesday, top US and Russian diplomats exchanged mutual accusations as they shared their positions on peace prospects in the war-torn country. Washington is preparing to suspend the “bilateral engagement” on Syria with Moscow, including the establishment of the Joint Implementation Center, unless Russia immediately halts the attack on Aleppo and restores the ceasefire, John Kerry told Russia’s Sergey Lavrov. The Russian FM asked the US to live up to its obligation to separate US-backed opposition from terrorists.

When asked by a journalist from Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda what had happened in Syria that had erased the months-long diplomatic effort, Zakharova said that the context of current Russian-US relations should be examined through the prism of domestic US politics that impacts Washington’s behavior on the international stage.

The spokeswoman explained that US behavior in terms of its approach to Syria and Russia in general is influenced by two facts, the first of which is the inability of the outgoing US President Barack Obama to produce tangible results in terms of his stated foreign policy objectives which have not materialized after eight years in office.

“He [Obama] had received a credit [of trust] to perform a particular job as the head of the country, which declares itself an international leader,” Zakharova said. “[Obama] now needs to do everything possible to somehow influence something, and somehow inscribe himself in the history of international relations, as long as the international community has issued him with such a credit [of trust]. He needs to report but there is nothing to report. Almost everything that he stated on the foreign policy direction, did not play out.”

Now in order to secure his legacy in the international arena, the office of the Noble Peace Prize laureate is being “hysterical” and getting “impudent” in its foreign policies.

The second domestic process that impacts American diplomacy is the US presidential election race where both candidates, Democrat Hilary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, are manipulating foreign issues to secure their victory, especially when it comes to US relations with Moscow.

“Unfortunately, this is the trouble of the modern world, where the largest and most powerful empire uses international relations and international platforms for addressing internal issues, political processes and ambitions. It is our misfortune. We are all hostages to it,” Zakharova said.

Not diplomacy but “shaping public opinion” is what drives American behavior on international platforms such as the United Nations, Zakharova said, calling such an approach an “online reality show” demonstrated to audiences to influence their opinion of US politicians. Zhakharova called Power’s attack on Churkin following the American strike on Syrian army positions a “part of the show.”

The show is there to “distract attention” America’s inability to fulfill its obligations, Zakharova said. “You need to explain to the world why the Syrian settlement is not moving on, why the year-long efforts are now negated. Who’s to blame? Russia.”

Claiming that no one is buying this “wag the dog” approach, Zhakharova stressed that battling terrorism calls for an “adequate action,” namely combining efforts with Russia on Syria.

“Now it has come to this critical moment – either they fulfill their obligations, or the [peace] process can really slow down seriously,” the diplomat stressed, reiterating Lavrov’s comments to Kerry earlier in the day.

The US and its allies are using “cliches”, demanding that Russia must explain its actions Syria and prove the “seriousness” of its commitment to peace.

“But who are they that we have to prove something to them?” the diplomat wondered. “It is they who have to prove [their commitment], after destroying Iraq, Libya, walking all over the Middle East with their boots, breaking all conceivable laws of existence in the region.”

“It is they who have to prove the sincerity of their intentions with regard to Syria ...that they see this state as a state, not some colony or some kind of black hole,” she said.

 

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