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
President Obama: ‘Patron’ of the Israeli
Occupation
By Marjorie Cohn
September 30, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- President Barack Obama has agreed to give
Israel a record $38 billion in military aid
over the next 10 years, cementing his legacy
as the strongest financial supporter of
Israel ever to occupy the White House. Obama,
whom Israeli journalist Gideon Levy calls
“the patron of the occupation,” increased
the amount of money the U.S. provides Israel
each year from $3.1 to $3.8 billion.
Although the corporate media portray the
relationship between Obama and Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as chilly, Obama
put his money where his heart apparently is
with the unprecedented allocation of
military assistance to Israel.
Netanyahu, who described the increase in
U.S. monetary aid as “unprecedented” and
“historic,” characterized it as “the
greatest accomplishment since sliced bread,”
according to Aaron David Miller, vice
president of the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars. “The bond
between the United States and Israel is
unbreakable,” Obama declared on Sept. 21 as
he shook hands on the deal with Netanyahu.
The
annual $3.8 billion, more money than the
U.S. gives to any other country, will fund
the continuing Israeli military occupation
of Palestinian lands, now in its fifth
decade.
Israel exercises complete control over every
aspect of Palestinian life in the West Bank,
East Jerusalem and Gaza. That includes
borders, airspace, ingress and egress of
people and goods, and the seashore and
waters off the coast of Gaza. The occupation
violates fundamental human rights of the
Palestinians.
Two
years ago, 60 Israeli youths signed an open
letter to Netanyahu announcing their refusal
to serve in the Israeli military because of
the dehumanization of Palestinians living
under occupation. In the occupied
Palestinian territories, they wrote, “human
rights are violated, and acts defined under
international law as war-crimes are
perpetuated on a daily basis.” The
signatories cited “assassinations
(extrajudicial killings), the construction
of settlements on occupied lands,
administrative detentions, torture,
collective punishment and the unequal
allocation of resources such as electricity
and water.”
Flavia Pansieri, former United Nations
deputy high commissioner for human rights,said
last yearthat human rights violations
“fuel and shape the conflict” in the
occupied Palestinian territories, adding,
“[h]uman rights violations in the West Bank,
including East Jerusalem, are both cause and
consequence of the military occupation and
ongoing violence, in a bitter cyclical
process with wider implications for peace
and security in the region.”
Israel took over the West Bank and East
Jerusalem by military force in 1967 and has
held it under military occupation ever
since. U.N. Security Council Resolution 242,
passed in 1967, refers to “the
inadmissibility of the acquisition of
territory by war” and calls for “withdrawal
of Israel armed forces from territories
occupied in the recent conflict.” Yet Israel
continues to occupy the Palestinian
territories it acquired in the Six-Day War
between Israel and nearby Arab countries
that year.
Since 1967, Israel has transferred more than
half a million of its own citizens into the
Palestinian territories. It persists in
building Jewish settlements in the West
Bank, which is occupied Palestinian
territory.
But
a state that is occupying territory that is
not its own cannot build settlements on that
territory and transfer its own citizens into
them. Under Article 8.2(b)(viii) of the
International Criminal Court’s Rome
Statute, such action constitutes a war
crime.
In
criticizing Israel’s building of Jewish
settlements on Palestinian lands, Secretary
of State John Kerry said that since Obama
was inaugurated in 2009, the number of
Israelis in the West Bank and East Jerusalem
has grown by 95,000, including 15,000 during
the past year alone. Israel plans to build
2,400 new housing units in the settlements
as it demolishes more and more Palestinian
homes.
Kerry’s criticism rings hollow as the Obama
administration consistently uses its veto in
the Security Council to block the
Palestinians’ campaign to block illegal
Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Obama
is reportedly considering a council
resolution to set the parameters for an
Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement,
although the powerful pro-Israel lobby
opposes such a move.
As
this article is being written, the Women’s
Boat to Gaza, with 13 women aboard, is
sailing to Gaza to protest Israel’s blockade
of what is often called the world’s largest
“open-air prison.” In Gaza, 1.8 million
people live on a 140-square-mile strip of
land. It is one of the most densely
populated areas in the world. Gazans cannot
enter or leave without Israeli permission.
They cannot import or export goods without
Israeli permission. They cannot fish in
their own waters without Israeli permission.
In
July 2014, Israel invaded Gaza and killed
2,251 Palestinians, the majority of them
civilians. The number of Palestinians
wounded was 11,231, including 3,540 women
and 3,436 children. On the Israeli side, six
civilians and 67 soldiers were killed and
1,600 were injured. Tens of thousands of
Palestinians lost their homes, and the
infrastructure was severely damaged.
Numerous schools, U.N.-sanctioned places of
refuge, hospitals, ambulances and mosques
were intentionally targeted by Israel.
Israel used the “Dahiya doctrine” to apply
“disproportionate force” and cause “great
damage and destruction to civilian property
and infrastructure, and suffering to
civilian populations,” as defined in the
2009 U.N. Human Rights Council (Goldstone)
report. These acts constitute evidence of
war crimes under Article 8 (2)(a) of the
Rome Statute.
U.S. political leaders and the corporate
media portray a false equivalence of
firepower between Israelis and Palestinians
in Gaza. But Israel’s use of force greatly
exceeds that of the Palestinians.
The
White House and Congress condemn the rocket
fire into Israel by Hamas and the
“deliberate targeting of civilians.” But
Washington says Israel has a right to defend
itself, justifying Israel’s bombing campaign
in Gaza and blaming Hamas, while minimizing
Israel’s role in creating and escalating the
violence.
Israel’s overwhelming use of military force
constitutes collective punishment, which is
a war crime. The laws of war, also known as
international humanitarian law, are
primarily found in the Geneva
Conventions. Article 33 of the Fourth
Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a
party, specifically forbids collective
punishment. It says, “No protected person
[civilian] may be punished for an offense he
or she has not personally committed. …
Reprisals against protected persons and
their property are prohibited.”
The
U.N. secretary-general characterized
Israel’s blockade of Gaza as “a continuing
collective penalty against the population of
Gaza.”
“Israel is able to act with utter impunity
because of the military, economic and
political support it receives from
governments around the world,” according to
Zaid Shuaibi, a spokesman for the
Palestinian BDS (Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions) National Committee. Israel would
be unable to carry out its policies of
aggression in Gaza without the support of
the United States.
Actress Lisa Gay Hamilton, who is on the
Women’s Boat to Gaza, wrote, “I’m here
because I’m concerned about the effects of
war and blockade on the women, as schools,
hospitals, and homes have been periodically
destroyed and sources of power and water
compromised. … I’m here because my president
just increased U.S. military aid to Israel
from $3.1 to $3.8 billion per year over the
next 10 years, with … no mention of the
situation in Gaza.”
Fifty-seven percent of Democrats and 40
percent of Republicans think the increase in
military aid to Israel is too high.
Hundreds of Israeli officials, intellectuals
and artists signed an open letter to Jews
worldwide to oppose the occupation. The 470
signatories, including high-ranking officers
of the Israel Defense Forces, ambassadors,
ministers, high government officials and
members of the Knesset, wrote: “The
prolonged occupation is inherently
oppressive for Palestinians and fuels mutual
bloodshed. It undermines the moral and
democratic fabric of the state of Israel and
hurts its standing in the community of
nations.”
In
his Sept. 20 farewell speech to the U.N.
General Assembly, Obama appeared to oppose
Israel’s permanent occupation and
settlements, saying, “Surely Israelis and
Palestinians will be better off if
Palestinians reject incitement and recognize
the legitimacy of Israel … (and if) Israel
recognizes that it cannot permanently occupy
and settle Palestinian land.”
But
Obama’s actions speak louder than his words.
Although he has the power to condition U.S.
aid to Israel on ending the occupation and
ceasing construction of Jewish settlements
on Palestinian land, Obama has chosen
instead to serve as “patron of the
occupation.”
Marjorie Cohn is
professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School
of Law where she taught from 1991-2016, and
a former president of the National Lawyers
Guild. She lectures, writes, and provides
commentary for local, regional, national and
international media outlets.
http://marjoriecohn.com
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