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
Ask Libyans About No-Fly Zones
'People say the situation in Syria can get
no worse, but they are wrong.'
By Chris Nineham
October 14, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"Stop
The War"
-
There
is a growing demand from government
politicians for a no-fly zone in Syria.
Those calling for it, led by Conservative MP
Andrew Mitchell, and echoed by Foreign
Secretary Boris Johnson, are either culpably
naive or more likely unconcerned about
taking Britain into direct conflict not just
with the Syrian military but with the
Russians too.
The
issue is not complicated. As today's leaks
show Hilary Clinton laid it out back in 2013
when she said, "To have a no-fly zone you
have to take out all of the air defenses,
many of which are located in populated
areas. So our missiles, even if they are
standoff missiles so we’re not putting our
pilots at risk— you’re going to kill a lot
of Syrians."
Or,
just last month, General Joseph Dunford,
chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff
admitted, "right now, for us to control all
of the air space in Syria would require us
to go to war against Syria and Russia;
that's a pretty fundamental decisio".
The
situation in Aleppo and other parts of Syria
is desperate. The idea of a no-fly zone can
seem attractive because people rightly want
there to be an effective humanitarian
response. But as these two quotes outline, a
no-fly zone would need to be secured by
Western forces against opposition from Syria
and Russia. Air defenses would have to be
taken out and Syrian and Russian planes shot
down. In the end a no-fly zone in Syria
would work the same as the no-fly zone in
Libya did, as a corridor for western
military bombing.
The end result in Libya was a huge increase
in the level of death and destruction in the
country, the decapitation of the regime and
the fragmentation of the country. In the
case of Syria the added problem is that it
would inevitably lead to confrontation with
Russia. Incredibly, Andrew Mitchell shrugged
off this risk on BBC's Today programme on
Tuesday by saying that Turkey had shot down
a Russian plane and nothing happened.
People say the situation in Syria can get no
worse, but they are wrong. As Emily
Thornberry, Shadow Foreign Secretary
explained today in parliament, "in a multi-playered,
multi-faceted civil war such as Syria, the
last thing we need is more parties bombing".
Such action will inflame and escalate an
already desperate situation leading not just
to more agony on the ground Syria, but
almost certainly to the break up of the
country.
It
is quite amazing that the views of MPs like
Boris Johnson and Andrew Mitchell are taken
seriously at all on issues of foreign
policy. Andrew Mitchell voted for the Iraq
War, for the intervention in Libya and twice
for bombing in Syria. Johnson too has voted
for every war he has been able to. If the
daily reports of carnage and chaos in the
news are not enough to convince people of
the catastrophic effects of these escapades,
they have been roundly condemned as chaotic
disasters in a series of official reports,
including Chilcot, the Select Committee
Report on Libya, and the House of Commons
Defence Committee report on the intervention
in Syria.
These reports and the whole bloody history
of the War on Terror are wilfully ignored in
efforts to push for more war and presumably
to try and undermine Jeremy Corbyn's
anti-war Labour leadership. Each time we are
told that this situation is different, that
this time we are fighting a war for other
peoples freedom. Each time the terrible
death toll of the War on Terror multiplies
and the anger against the West is further
inflamed.
How
many more innocent civilians are going to
die, how many more catastrophes have to
happen before the start the war coalition
finally accept reality and admit that
bombing foreign countries is not a path to
peace or progress? What is needed is
diametrically opposite; de-escalation and
the most urgent push for a political
solution.
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