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House Leaders to Palestine: Seek UN Recognition, Forget Foreign Aid
The top Republican and Democrat foreign aid leaders in the House of Representatives are warning the Palestinian Authority (PA) that U.S. aid will be withheld if the Palestinians seek recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations in September.
The United States has urged the Palestinian leadership against seeking unilaterally statehood recognition from the UN. Top Republican and Democrat foreign aid leaders in the House of Representatives are warning the Palestinian Authority (PA) that U.S. aid will be withheld if the Palestinians seek recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations in September. (AFP) "We write to reiterate our serious concerns about your intentions to pursue recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations," reads a July 11 letter sent to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas by the leaders of the House Appropriations State and Foreign Operations subcommittee Kay Granger (R-TX) and Nita Lowey (D-NY), obtained by The Cable.
"It has been the longstanding belief of the United States government that the path to a true and lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis will come only as a result of direct negotiations. We write to reaffirm that belief and warn of the severe consequences of abandoning it."
The Obama administration has been clear that it doesn't support the Palestinian plan to seek a vote on statehood at the United Nations in September, but it so far hasn't spelled out any consequences for the Palestinians if they should choose to do so. Congress, on the other hand, is doing a lot to make those consequences known. On July 7, the House passed a resolution opposing the statehood plan by a 407-6 vote. The Senate passed the same resolution unanimously.
In May, 29 senators promised to cut off all U.S. assistance to the PA if it formed a unity government with Hamas. The United States gave the PA about $550 million in aid in fiscal 2011, a mixture of project funding and direct cash to the government.
The head of the Palestine Liberation Organization mission in Washington, Maen Rashid Areikat, told The Cable in May that the plan to seek recognition at the United Nations was not final and could be scuttled if negotiations resume. He also said that the unity government would not change its policies regarding the peace process at least until Palestinian legislative and presidential elections, which are tentatively scheduled for May 2012.
The House plans to mark up its fiscal 2012 appropriations bill on July 27, and several foreign aid accounts are under scrutiny. And following the apparently fruitless meeting this week of the Quartet members here in Washington, the path back to direct negotiations remains unclear -- a fact that will only further endanger U.S. assistance to the PA.
Already, Congress has been taking a harder look at funding for the Palestinian territories. Multiple Hill sources said that a recent routine request for program funding for USAID staffers vetting Palestinian aid projects was held up by the House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) for weeks before finally getting approval.
"American assistance has always been predicated upon Palestinian leaders' commitment to resolve all outstanding issues through direct negotiations," the congresswomen wrote. "Current and future aid will be jeopardized if you abandon direct negotiations and continue your current efforts."
69 Comments so far
Show AllYou got it. But it gets better. The House of Reprehensibles is just warming up.
Soon you will be reading something like this:
House to American taxpayers: Demand Democracy and lose SS and Medicare "aid".
One wonders where it is written that the United States has the power to block a country's desire to gain freedom from their oppressors.
No telling how much Israel gets?
We won't allow anybody else to send aid...
Audacity of HOPE!
Actually it is the UN that gave Israel its Statehood, so the Palestinians should not have to beg Statehood from Israel since it has been Israel's long standing policy to deny it for Palestine and to steal all the land and crush the human rights of Palestinians.
The US aid to Palestine has been designed to deny Statehood so the best thing for Freedom for Palestine is refuse aid unless the US backs Statehood in the UN. They could get aid from other places too if they show they can be independent of US/Israel and join the United Nations as a Free State.
This could happen... We'll see.
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/usaid.html :
"Until 2003, Israel received approximately one-third of the annual US foreign aid budget. In 2005, the US gave Israel more than $2.6 billion in aid, a budget exceeded only by US aid to Iraq. By comparison, Jordan received $683.6 million, Rwanda received $77 million, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories received $348.2 million.":
http://windowintopalestine.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-much-money-did-ameri...
Way less than the private jet tax subsidy. Which is considered by republicans as too small to even consider as a cost cutting measure.:
Palestine your independence is worth more than that.
The USA is part and party to these shameful crimes against the Palestinian people. Not only is the US seen to be duplicitous to the terms under which the UN General Assembly brought Israel into existence 63 years ago, it now is devaluing the UN itself and usurping its power as a veto member of the security council if it is to prevent acquisition of statehood by Palestine, on the basis of UN and internationally recognised boundaries, to which Israel then must be held accountable.
The USA has procrastinated long enough at a negotiated settlement with their Zionist friends under its "special relationship". America is now just proving to be not part of the problem, but "the problem" in running defence for a fascist Zionist terror state. Between Bush and Obama the US foreign policy credibility has sunk below zero.
Unfortunately for many of its citizens the future of the United States of America is obvious.
Anyhow, it isn't easy to write crisp, clear text with AIPAC's hand up the slit in your back. In the case of these writers, it probably isn't easy to write at all...if at all. It's a good thing AIPAC is there to write it out for them.
Amerikka is an evil, terrorist nation whose only purpose is the profits of its corporate Plutocracy. Period. It tortures, it kills tens of thousands of people every year in half a dozen wars, it launches invasion after invasion in violation of laws and treaties, it assassinates at will, it oppresses the poor, it violates its own Constitution regularly, it screws its own citizens at the expense of the rich, it has the unique distinction of being the only nation to ever use atomic weapons against a civilian population in history, it props up tyrannical dictators that serve its capitalist interests while hypocritically destroying those who stand up to it. I could go on and on for a dozen pages. And what it is doing to the Palestinian people is simply par for the course.
I HATE Amerikka. Evil, wicked, corrupt, destructive, immoral. HATE it.
Sorry for the rant. Needed to get that out.
Just in case you missed the similarities Zionism is a nationalist political movement based on apartheid principals and segregation on ethnic/race/genetic/religion, in short a Jewish state, that has been fostered and promoted on a myth of a "chosen people" inhabiting a "god given" land.... it does not differ significantly to the Nazi myth of the "homeland" and the Aryan "ubermenschen", and the colonialist expansion since the establishment of Israel can be simply paralleled to Nazi "lebensraum".
Unfortunately most people and especially the Jews themselves have been hoodwinked and used by Zionists and their propaganda to political ends and through means which differ little from those aspired to and used by Hitler and his National Socialist party, the Nazis, in the 1930s.
It does not take much to see the equivalence between Warsaw ghettos and Gaza, both open prisons surrounded by lies and very superiorly armed jailers who called the inhabitants dangerous terrorists that could not be trusted and pretending that they, the jailers, were not methodically committing genocide.
Zionist = Nazi
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdn3O6aaMNc
The horse has bolted. There is nothing left, but hey, if you like you can close the door and switch off the lights on your way out. I doubt even Hillary Clinton or Avigdor Lieberman try too fool themselves any longer that they or the countries they represent have any prestige left to loose.
It is difficult to ignore a country armed to the gills with and using every horror in weaponry especially when its limited and short sighted political policy is one of fascist domination, bigotry, exploitation, and control, with little to no popular balance to hold back the extremes of the corporate, financial, and military elite. So looking at the world arena you may well find fear; maybe, wariness ; absolutely, like dealing with the criminally insane, but respect as in prestige; how can there be? ..... absolutely you must be joking.