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
