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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsUS Bill Threatens To Cut PA Funding If UN Grants Statehood
Security money for Israel remains intact under House appropriations bill, but strings attached to Palestinian and Egyptian aidBy ILAN BEN ZION and AP July 18, 2013, 8:03 pm
House Republicans will seek billions of dollars in cuts to US foreign operations, but a spending bill published Thursday maintains security money for Israel and Jordan.
A section of the bill mandates the termination of economic assistance to the Palestinian Authority should it obtain full membership to the United Nations or UN agencies without Israeli agreement.
Moreover, US Secretary of State John Kerry can limit American funding if the PA doesnt demonstrate a firm commitment to peaceful co-existence with the State of Israel or is not taking appropriate measures to counter terrorism and terrorist financing in the West Bank and Gaza, including the dismantling of terrorist infrastructures, and is cooperating with appropriate Israeli and other appropriate security organizations.
In addition, the bill puts new restrictions on aid if the Palestinians try to pursue actions against Israel at the International Criminal Court.
--CLIP
The draft budget will allocate $3.1 billion in military aid to Israel, and another $1.3 billion to Egypt.
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The move will likely spark oppo
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)We will equip and arm an oppressive monarchy (Jordan) through billions of dollars
We will equip and arm and subsidize the executors of a violent coup (Egypt) through billions of dollars
We will equip and arm Islamist cannibal terrorists (Syria) through hundreds of millions of dollars
We will equip and arm an aggressively expansionist state in standing violation of many international laws (Israel) through billions of dollars
But we will not provide money for civil affairs or reconstruction for Palestine (even though it's currently budgeted at only three million per annum)
The US is not an honest broker for peace - not just in terms of the Israel / Palestine conflict, but within the region as a whole. In fact evidence points very strongly towards the complete opposite
Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)kelliekat44
(7,759 posts)contractor fraud and other kinds of fraud. Enough to build a reasonable home for every Palestinian in Gaza and the West Bank.
Violet_Crumble
(35,977 posts)Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)tritsofme
(17,399 posts)If so, the WH would obviously exercise that right in such a situation, making the point moot.
typeviic
(61 posts)is for Palestine and Egypt to forget about the west and their bribe money, then ally themselves with Russia
LittleBlue
(10,362 posts)Everyone knows the US isn't serious about peace.
Get US influence out of the Middle East. We're like a cancerous tumor over there.
mick063
(2,424 posts)Bush actually persuaded the majority of America to buy in to the notion that we could implement American style Democracy (read corporate stranglehold) on Iraq.
Thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars later, we can conclude that we have simply deposed a Sunni dictatorship only to create a Shiite Iranian satellite. A country that innovates public policy through mosques, not state houses. Ironically, their "representation" may actually be more representative than our own "representation" regardless if you find theocracy disconcerting or not.
Remember, Iraq was going to relish their new found "freedom" and repay us with cheap oil, but our own corporate wolves couldn't get there quick enough to exploit the situation, soon to lose any semblance of goodwill with the infant "Democracy".
One must consider that we didn't just leave Iraq on our own free will. They literally booted us out the door by implementing policy declaring they would cease granting immunity to US troops for "collateral" damage.
Of course this may seem unrelated to Palestine, but it is related in a way. The entire region believes our interest isn't with helping their people in a genuine way. Certainly, in certain circumstances, the military worked hard to foster goodwill, but a few rogue incidents did much to destroy it. Ultimately, it was our profit-centric policy of corporate exploitation that perpetually alienates them as well as alienating much of the entire world, more recently, our own Southern Hemisphere.
The world was once sympathetic to our 9/11 tragedy. We have since worn out that initial good will with our brazen demands on almost every front, done over an extended period of time. Now, we just can't seem to mitigate our disproportionate 9/11 response because there is so much government infrastructure invested. The world is disliking us more with each passing day. To them, 9/11 has evolved into a convenient excuse for imposing our will upon the world.