Loading ...Skipping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
The popular American phrase “all politics is local” assured me that US President Barack Obama would not dwell on American foreign policy during his last “State of the Union” address, delivered at a joint session of the US Congress Tuesday night.
But about 40 minutes into his impressive speech, he touched upon some foreign policy issues, even in the Middle East, Syria and Iraq.
However, to the surprise of many Americans and Arab Americans, he did not focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has descended to its worst levels since Israel illegally occupied the West Bank in 1967.
To this day Israel has not taken any step to evacuate the Palestinian areas, which total nearly 20 per cent of historic Palestine, despite the worldwide denunciation of the Israeli takeover of the region where more than 500,000 Israeli settlers are now illegally established.
Secretary of State John Kerry, who spent nearly nine months in an unsuccessful attempt last year to end the Israeli occupation, declared that he would not initiate further sessions until the two parties declare their willingness to resume negotiations.
As a matter of fact, Israel then failed to release a few Palestinian prisoners, a step agreed upon in the last session of the first phase of the negotiations.
In response, the Palestinian ambassador to the US, Maen Areikat, had this to say about the American inaction: “One would have expected President Obama in his final State of the Union speech to mention one of the most important issues in the world, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the larger Arab-Israeli conflict.
Not only because this issue represents a direct threat to world peace and stability but also because it has a direct impact on US policies and objectives in the region. Without solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and ending the occupation, the region will remain unstable and the prospects of conflict will continue.”
The troubling American silence is bewildering, since the US has all the power to bring the two sides to the table.
For example, US security assistance to Israel is reportedly expected to jump over the $3 billion level a year to possibly $5 billion under an agreement expected anytime soon, since the 10-year agreement will expire next year.
Obama’s National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes once told the Israeli liberal daily Haaretz that the illegal Israeli settlements are an obstacle to the two-state solution that is not going away by being ignored.
Furthermore, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine reported recently, in a column by Tom Malthan, that since 1949, the US has given Israel a total of $83.205 billion, adding that the interest costs borne by US taxpayers on behalf of Israel are $49.937 billion, thus making the total amount of aid since 1949 given to Israel amount to $133.132 billion.
“This may mean,” he wrote, “that the US government has given more federal aid to the average Israeli citizen in a given year than it has given to the average American citizen”.
He continued: “I am angry when I see Israeli settlers from Hebron destroy improvements made to the Shuhada Street with my tax money. Also, it angers me that my government is giving over $10 billion to a country that is more prosperous than most of the other countries in the world and uses much of its money for strengthening its military and oppression of the Palestinian people.”
More Americans are becoming more critical of Israeli policies.
The pension board of the United Methodist Church, described by The Washington Post as one of the largest Protestant denominations in the US, with more than 7 million members, placed five Israeli banks on a list of companies that it will not invest in for human rights reasons.
This first-ever step regarding these five Israeli banks which have helped finance Israeli settlement construction in what most of the world considers illegally occupied Palestinian territories was described by Palestinian advocates, both in and outside the church, as an important advance in the boycott, divest and sanctions (BDS) campaign.
The BDS is an international effort to pressure Israel economically over the Palestinian question.
Additionally, last July, the United Church of Christ, with about 1 million members, voted overwhelmingly for a resolution to divest from companies that profit from the occupation and boycott products from Israeli settlements.
Another group of Americans is reportedly suing the US Treasury because, they say, the agency is allowing billions of dollars of tax-exempt charitable donations to flow to the Israeli army and support the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The report on this, which appeared in The Electronic Intifada, explained that the lawsuit filed recently in a federal court in Washington DC alleged that around 150 US non-profit organisations send about $1 billion a year “to fund the forcible expulsion of all non-Jews” and expand settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Martin McMahon, believes that the organisations are violating eight federal criminal statutes and up to six Treasury regulations.
One of the three plaintiffs is a Palestinian American author, Susan Abulhawa, who explained: “I want a court, somewhere, somehow, to hold accountable those who have financed my pain of dispossession and exile; to hold accountable the financiers of Israel’s wholesale theft of another people’s historic, material, spiritual and emotional presence in the world.”
Hopefully, in his remaining year at the White House, Obama will react positively.
The writer is a Washington-based columnist.
Source: www.jordantimes.com