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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSenators: Take Gaza Away From Hamas
Over the summer, the Obama administration supported a draft cease-fire plan that would have strengthened the Hamas position in Gaza. Now 88 senators are urging the Obama administration to take a very different approach to the group: gradual regime change. Over time, they want to hand Gaza over to the more moderate Palestinian Authority, which oversees the West Bank today.
In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry obtained by The Daily Beast, the 88 senators write, we must support efforts to enable the Palestinian Authority to exercise real power in Gaza. Hamas has demonstrated conclusively both that it has no interest in peace with Israel and that it has no concern for the well-being of Gaza residents.
Support for a gradual regime change in Gaza is very different than the State Departments position this summer during the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas. The first draft of the ceasefire plan from Kerry would have delivered reconstruction assistance to Hamas before the group began disarmament, a key Israeli precondition for rebuilding Gaza after its war. That war killed at least 2,000 Gazans, at least 495 of whom were children. By contrast 66 Israeli soldiers and five Israeli civilians were killed in the war.
The letter to Kerry was circulated in the senate by Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican and Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/22/senators-take-gaza-away-from-hamas.html
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)hobbit709
(41,694 posts)madokie
(51,076 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)So Congress is just getting tired of using the middlemen to oppress Palestinians, and wants to pull the strings more directly.
Or, if you actually were saying 'what moral right', then, obviously, none.
hack89
(39,171 posts)we are also the largest single state donor to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/paaid12.html
cali
(114,904 posts)and what does Israel keep doing? Why expanding illegal settlements and stealing land.
hack89
(39,171 posts)oberliner
(58,724 posts)Isn't that, in theory, the way we approach things over there?
cali
(114,904 posts)oberliner
(58,724 posts)I think Obama would love to see that regime changed as well.
Good thing they have elections.
Hamas has not allowed such an endeavor such they kicked Fatah out of Gaza going on eight years ago.
cali
(114,904 posts)this is not a flash in the pan trend.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)My thought is that things will swing left in the next elections.
We shall see.
cali
(114,904 posts)and b) I see no indications that Israel is moving in any direction but the right. After a while, trends become deeply entrenched, if only do to actions taken.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)I think a lot depends on actions external to Israel - so there is always that wildcard.