PACE standpoint
The US is complicit to the criminal acts of Israel on the Palestinian.
The US Congress have recently approved another USD 2.775 billion in military aid to Israel for the Financial Year 2010, a move that is in direct violation of the US own Arms Export Control Act. This is in line with the Memorandum of Understanding signed with Israel in August 2007, obliging the US to dole out military aid in yearly increaments totaling USD 30 billion over the next decade. The grant must be given at the start of the fiscal year and in cash. In a period of financial turmoil, budget constraints and economic crises, where every American have to tighten their own belts and cut down on spending, a foreign government, infact a rogue state is given free handouts, the most outrageous bailout by any measure, most Americans citizens little understood or even aware of. The only condition Israel has to fulfill to claim their rights on this free gift is for them to spend 74% back on the US military goods and services… It is akin to being given free coupons and use them to buy weapons.
It is inconceivable that American hard earned tax-payer money is being given to Israel for no justification whatsoever, let alone accountability. To date Israel has been the largest recipient of American foreign aid. Since 1949, a total of USD 101 billion has been channeled, of which half, USD 53 billion in military aid. For the last 20 years Israel has been provided with an average aid of USD 3 billion annually. On the contrary, Egypt which has concluded a peace treaty with Israel in 1978, has since been given USD 2 billion a year in economic aid. The stark difference is, it is a loan and has to be repaid. Yet Egypt has become a hostage to the peace treaty, and ironically has become a party to the international crime in laying siege on Gaza. Arab Saudi also has US made weapons in her arsenal but these are acquired through genuine business transactions paid for in petrodollars.
When Israel launched the Gaza onslaught on 27th December 2008, the world is a witness to the killing machines that Israel trained on the defenseless Gazan population. There was no mistake that the weapons Israel has used in the massacre has all the hallmark of the US. F-16’s, Apachee’s, missiles, assault guns, even the banned white phosphorous were unmistakebly US. Even the huge bulldozers that they use to raze Palestinian homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem were supplied by the Catterpillar, a US Company. The fuses that goes to detonate the bombs dropped on the Palestinians were supplied by Motorola, a US telecommunication Company.
If we have been pondering why every effort at peace in the middle east has failed miserably, this is the underlying reason. Negotiations after negotiations, agreements after agreements have been concluded since Oslo in 1987, yet none of the resolutions that came out were even observed by Israel. On countless occasion, Israel has agreed to cease settlement activities as stipulated in those peace accord, yet settlements continued unabated, and when reprimanded they hide behind the lame excuse of ‘natural growth’ for the expanding settler population. Time tables have been finalized for the declaration of an independent Palestinian state based on the ‘Two state solution’ but they keep pushing the dates and continue to put up demands for concessions after concessions, impossible for the Palestinian to fulfill. Then they sealed the fate of the occupied West Bank and East Jarusalem by cordoning large swath of land with the towering apartheid wall, ending all hopes of an independent sovereign Palestinian state. As long as Isreal can rest assured that they continue to receive annual grant in military aid, there is no need to fulfill any of the peace resolutions.
President Barrack Obama has appointed Senator George Mitchell as a peace mediator in the middle east. The arms package will undermine every US peace mediation initiatives. Senator George Mitchell will fail miserably. Even Barrack Obama’s ‘appeal’ for Netanyahu to cease settlement activities were not heed. Why bother, when the US even condemns the Goldstone report that was put up in the United Nation General Assembly with overwhelming support from member countries. Whereas the Goldstone report has removed all doubts that Israel has been clearly implicated in an act of war crimes for the wanton killing of defenseless civilians. The behavior of the US government contradicts every move it claims to have made to push for a workable peace in the middle east.
Every American citizen with conscience must start asking this fundamental question. For how much longer will they let their government become an accomplice to such heinuous crime against the Palestinians? How much longer can they bear to have Palestinian blood on their hands?
Dr Hafidzi Mohd Noor
Director
PACE Malaysia
(Palestine Centre of Excellence)
11 December 2009
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