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
The Real Purpose Behind the "Liberation" of
Mosul?
When Mosul falls, Isis will flee to the
safety of Syria. But what then?
The entire Isis caliphate army could be
directed against the Assad government and
its allies – a scenario which might cause
some satisfaction in Washington
By Robert Fisk
October 18, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"The
Independent"-
Syria’s army and
Hezbollah and Iranian allies are
preparing for a massive invasion by
thousands of
Isis fighters who will be driven out of
Iraq when
Mosul falls. The real purpose behind the
much-trumpeted US-planned "liberation" of
the Iraqi city, the Syrian military suspect,
is to swamp
Syria with the hordes of Isis fighters
who will flee their Iraqi capital in favour
of their "mini-capital" of
Raqqa inside Syria itself.
For
weeks now, Western media and the
American experts it likes to quote have been
predicting a Stalingrad-style battle to the
death by Isis inside Mosul – or a swift
victory over Isis followed by
inter-sectarian Iraqi battles for the city.
The UN is warning of massive refugee columns
streaming from a besieged city. But the
Syrians – after witnessing the sudden
collapse and evacuation of Palmyra when
their own army retook the ancient Syrian
city earlier this year – suspect that Isis
will simply abandon Mosul and try to reach
safety in the areas of Syria which it still
controls.
Already, Syrian army intelligence has heard
disturbing reports of a demand by Isis in
towns and villages south of Hasaka – a
Syrian city held by regime forces and Kurds
in the north of the country – for new
electricity and water supplies to be
installed for an influx of Isis fighters
from Mosul. In other words, if Mosul falls,
the entire Isis caliphate army could be
directed against the Assad government and
its allies – a scenario which might cause
some satisfaction in Washington. When the
Iraqi city of Fallujah fell to Iraqi army
and militia forces earlier this year, many
Isis fighters fled at once to Syria.
Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader
who sent thousands of his men to fight (and
die) in the struggle against Isis and
Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, said in a
speech marking the Ashura commemorations
last week that the Americans “intend to
repeat the Fallujah plot when they opened a
way for Isis to escape towards eastern
Syria” and warned that “the same deceitful
plan may be carried out in Mosul.” In other
words, an Isis defeat in Mosul would
encourage Isis to head west to try to defeat
the Assad regime in Syria.
These suspicions have scarcely been allayed
by a series of comments from American
generals and US military sources over the
past few weeks. The newly appointed US
commander in the region, Lt Gen Stephen
Townsend – heading what the US has
presumptiously called ‘Operation Inherent
Resolve’ – has said that not only Mosul but
the Syrian city of Raqqa would be captured
“on my watch”. But who exactly does he think
will capture Raqqa? The Syrian army still
intends to fight on to Raqqa from its base
on the the Damascus-Aleppo military road
west of the city after an attempt earlier
this year which was abandoned for political
rather than military reasons. Russia
apparently preferred to concentrate its
firepower on other militias, especially
Nusra/al-Qaeda, which both Moscow and
Damascus now regard as being far more
dangerous than Isis.
Both have noticed how Nusra – which changed
its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the
"Support Front for the People of the
Levant", in the hope of escaping its
al-Qaeda roots – is increasingly
referred to by both Western politicians and
journalists as “the rebels”, along with a
plethora of other militia outfits fighting
the Syrian regime. An unidentified US
general was quoted last month expressing his
concern that Iraqi Shia forces might seize
the town of Tal Afar on the Iraqi-Syrian
border in order to trap Isis fighters inside
Iraq – and thus prevent their flight into
Syria. Isis itself is reported to have
abandoned Tal Afar several days ago.
The
US-based Military Times online
magazine (which, as the saying goes, is
"close" to the Pentagon) has argued that
General Townsend, who has a mere 5,000 US
troops on the ground in both Iraq and the
far north of Syria, must “pursue Isis into
Syria, where the US has few allies on the
ground” – which is quite an understatement –
while Townsend himself is talking of “a
long, difficult fight” for Mosul. He has
also referred to a “siege” of Mosul. These
are the dire predictions in which the
Syrians do not believe
Assad’s own army, with its 65,000 fatalities
in a battle that has now lasted five years,
has already been bombed by the Americans at
Deir Ezzor at a cost of at least 60 dead –
Washington described this as a mistake – and
is now preparing to challenge the huge
influx of Isis fighters which could cross
the border after the collapse of Mosul. Nasrallah
himself made an intriguing allusion to this
in his speech. He suggested that if Isis
forces are not defeated by the Iraqis
themselves in Mosul then the Iraqis –
presumably the Iraqi Shia militia which are
one of the spearheads of the government army
– “will be obliged to move to eastern Syria
in order to fight the terrorist group”
Given
the possibility that Syrian troops and their
Russian allies may have to confront this
same group, it’s little wonder that they are
trying to conclude their capture of eastern
Aleppo – whatever the cost in lives – before
the fall of Mosul. |
