The Budget's Foreign Policy Handcuffs

Hopes that a Democratic administration with an expanded Democratic
Congressional majority might lead to a more ethical, rational, and
progressive foreign policy were challenged with last week's passage of
the 2009 omnibus budget

bill, which included many troubling provisions regarding the State
Department and related diplomatic functions.

In the House of Representatives, all but two dozen Democrats
supported and all but 20 Republicans opposed the bill. It passed the
Senate by voice vote, believed to have been mostly divided by strict
party lines.

While the Obama administration had little to do with putting the bill
together and seemed willing to wait to put its imprint on the budget for
the 2010 fiscal year, it was nevertheless disturbing that the new
president didn't challenge the inclusion of segments of the legislation
that seemed to be designed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority
leader Harry Reid, and other Democratic congressional leaders to undercut
his authority to pursue a different Middle East policy than his
predecessor.

Most notably, Pelosi and other Democratic leaders refused calls for
conditioning U.S. military aid to Israel, Egypt, and other countries in
the region on their adherence to internationally recognized human rights
standards. In addition, in reaction to the United Nations Human Rights
Council raising concerns about human rights abuses by Israel and other
U.S. allies in the region, Pelosi's bill bars the use of any U.S. funds
to be appropriated as part of the annual contribution of UN member states
to support the Council's work.

Also problematic is that while Congressional Democrats formally dropped
their longstanding opposition to Palestinian statehood in the 1990s (in
contrast to President Barack Obama, who has supported Palestinian
statehood since his days as a student activist in the early 1980s) the
Democratic-sponsored appropriations bill contains a series of measures
which appear to be designed to prevent the emergence of a viable
Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Fueling the Arms Race

Challenging the widespread consensus
by arms control specialists and other observers that the Middle East
already has too many armaments, Pelosi and the Democrats have clearly
determined that, in their view, the region doesn't have enough armaments
and that the United States must continue its role as supplier of most of
the region's weaponry. As teachers, librarians, social workers, health
care professionals, and other Americans are losing their jobs due to a
lack of public funding, the Democrats' appropriation bill pours billions
of dollars' worth of taxpayer funding into sophisticated weapons for both
Israel and neighboring Arab states. And, with his signature, it appears
Obama agrees with these distorted priorities.

Pelosi and the Democrats made clear their outright rejection of recent
calls by Amnesty International and other human rights groups to suspend
U.S. military aid to Israel in response to the use of U.S. weapons in war
crimes during the assault on the Gaza Strip in January, instead siding
with the former Bush administration in allocating $2.5 billion of
unconditional military aid to the Israeli government this fiscal
year.

Rather than being directed toward counterterrorism or other defensive
measures, the bill stipulates that funds will be used for the procurement
of advanced weapons systems, roughly three-quarters of which will be
purchased from American arms manufacturers.

An additional $1.3 billion in foreign military financing is earmarked for
the Egyptian dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, $235 million for the
autocratic monarchy in Jordan, $58 million for Lebanon, and $12 million
for the repressive regime in Tunisia. (The only other country
specifically targeted for military aid in this legislation is Colombia,
which will receive $53 million.)

While last year's appropriations bill blocked Egypt from access to part
of its military aid until it had taken clear and measurable steps to
"adopt and implement judicial reforms that protect the independence
of the judiciary" and "review criminal procedures and train
police leadership in modern policing to curb police abuses," such
provisions were removed from this year's bill, yet another indication of
the Democratic majority's lack of concern for human rights.

Sabotaging a Palestinian Unity Government

As European
governments and others, recognizing that some kind of government of
national unity between Fatah and the more moderate elements of Hamas is
necessary for the peace process to move forward, Pelosi and her
colleagues are attempting to sabotage such efforts. This year's
appropriations bill prohibits any support for "any power-sharing
government" in Palestine "of which Hamas is a member,"
unless Hamas unilaterally agrees to "recognize Israel, renounce
violence, disarm, and accept prior agreements, including the
Roadmap."

By contrast, there are no such provisions restricting the billions of
dollars of aid to the emerging coalition government in Israel, which
includes far right parties that have likewise refused to recognize
Palestine, renounce violence, support the disarming of allied settler
militias, or accept prior agreements, including the roadmap.

In short, to Pelosi and other Democratic congressional leaders,
Palestinians simply do not have equal rights to Israelis in terms of
statehood, security, or international obligations. The Democrats are
willing to sabotage any Palestinian government that dares include even
as a minority in a broad coalition any hard-line anti-Israeli party,
yet they have no problems whatsoever in pouring billions of taxpayer
dollars into supporting an Israeli government dominated by hard-line
anti-Palestinian parties.

There's a word for such double-standards: racism.

Other Anti-Palestinian Provisions

Migration and refugee
assistance are other areas where the anti-Palestinian bias of Pelosi and
other Democratic leaders becomes apparent. There are dozens of countries
in which the United Nations, assisted in part through U.S. aid, is
involved in relief operations, including those dealing with Rwandans,
Kurds, Congolese, Afghans, Iraqis, Somalis, and other refugee populations
from which terrorist groups operate or have operated in the recent past.
However, Pelosi and the Democratic leadership have determined that it's
among Palestinian refugees alone that the State Department is required to
work with the UN and host governments "to develop a strategy for
identifying individuals known to have engaged in terrorist
activities."

Pelosi's bill stipulates that not less than $30 million in funds for
migration and refugee assistance should be made available for refugee
resettlement in Israel. None of the other 192 recognized states in the
world are specifically earmarked to receive this kind of funding, which
is normally made available on assessment of humanitarian need. In recent
years, successive Israeli governments have encouraged immigrants to live
in subsidized Jewish-only settlements, illegally constructed on
confiscated land in the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights, in
violation of a series of UN Security Council resolutions and a landmark
advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice. The inclusion of
this funding is widely interpreted as an effort by Pelosi and other
Democratic lawmakers to encourage further Israeli colonization in
occupied Palestinian and Syrian territory so as to decrease the
likelihood of a peace settlement.

Only $75 million in aid is allocated to the West Bank and none of it is
allocated to the Palestinian Authority itself. In contrast, annual U.S.
economic assistance to Israel (which doesn't include the billions in
military aid) goes directly to the Israeli government and has usually
totaled more than 15 times that amount, even though the per-capita income
of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is less than
one-twentieth that of Israeli Jews.

Pelosi's bill contains lengthy and detailed conditions and restrictions
on programs in the West Bank, with extensive vetting, reporting, and
auditing requirements required for no other place in the world. This
year's bill adds requirements that all funds are subjected to the regular
notification procedures, also an unprecedented requirement. There are
also a number of other stipulations not found for any other nations, such
as the provision banning any assistance to the Palestinian Broadcasting
Corporation.

Despite all the additional administrative costs such restrictions
require, the bill caps administrative expenses at $2 million; no such
limitations exist involving aid to any other nation.

The Democrats' goal appears to be to make it all the more difficult for
Palestinians already suffering under U.S.-backed Israeli sieges to
meet even their most basic needs for health care, education, housing, and
economic development.

Roadblocks for Palestinian Statehood

Though the United
States remains the world's number one military, economic, and diplomatic
supporter of repressive Middle Eastern governments including absolute
monarchies, military juntas, and occupation armies the appropriations
bill includes language insisting that the "governing entity" of
Palestine "should enact a constitution assuring the rule of law, an
independent judiciary, and respect for human rights for its citizens, and
should enact other laws and regulations assuring transparent and
accountable governance." No such language exists in regard to any
other nation.

There are also provisions blocking U.S. support for a Palestinian state
unless it meets a long list of criteria regarding perceived Israeli
security needs. Again, no such conditions exist for any other nation in
terms of its right to exist.

One target of Pelosi and other Democratic leaders is the Palestinians'
desire to regain the Arab-populated sections of East Jerusalem, which
have been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. In addition to
its religious significance for both Palestinian Christians and
Palestinian Muslims, Jerusalem has long been the most important cultural,
commercial, political, and educational center for Palestinians and has
the largest Palestinian population of any city in the world. Given the
city's significance to both populations, any sustainable peace agreement
would need to recognize Jerusalem as the capital city for both Israel and
Palestine.

In an apparent effort to delegitimize any Palestinian claims to their
occupied capital, however, Pelosi's bill prohibits any "meetings
between officers and employees of the United States and officials of the
Palestinian Authority, or any successor Palestinian governing entity" in
Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem "for the purpose of conducting official
United States Government business with such authority." Even if the
Israelis do agree to end their occupation of Arab East Jerusalem, Pelosi
and the Democrats have inserted language that no funds could be used to
create any new U.S. government offices in Jerusalem that would interact
with the Palestinian Authority or any successor Palestinian government
entity.

Nuclear Nonproliferation

Pelosi and her Democratic
colleagues continue to pursue nonproliferation based on ideological
litmus tests rather than universal law-based principles. For example, the
bill requires that any assistance to Russia be withheld until the Russian
government has "terminated implementation of arrangements to provide
Iran with technical expertise, training, technology, or equipment
necessary to develop a nuclear reactor, related nuclear research
facilities or programs, or ballistic missile capability." However,
there are no such restrictions on the United States itself continuing its
nuclear cooperation with India, despite India's maintaining and expanding
its nuclear weapons arsenal in violation of UN Security Council
Resolution 1172, nor are there any objections included regarding ongoing
U.S. ballistic missile development with Israel, despite Israel's nuclear
weapons arsenal and its ongoing violation of UN Security Council
Resolution 487.

The appropriations bill stipulates that the United States will support
the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency which successfully
dismantled Iraq's nuclear program in the early 1990s "only if the
Secretary of State determines (and so reports to the Congress) that
Israel is not being denied its right to participate in the activities of
that Agency." This appears to be an effort to prevent one of the
means by which the United Nations could conceivably pressure Israel into
ending its ongoing violation of Resolution 487, which calls on Israel to
place its nuclear facilities under the trusteeship of the IAEA. There are
no other countries whose potential exclusion from the IAEA would
jeopardize U.S. funding.

Moving Forward

It should also be noted that there were a
number of positive changes to the FY2009 budget impacting the Middle
East. Language that required the State Department to designate the
birthplace of U.S. citizens born in Israeli-occupied parts of greater
East Jerusalem as "Israel" thereby effectively recognizing
Israel's illegal annexation of Palestinian territory was dropped. There
was also a new segment in the bill directing the Secretary of State to
report on Moroccan suppression of human rights in the occupied Western
Sahara.

Most significant is a provision banning nearly all cluster-bomb exports
to Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, an initiative which had
been defeated during the last session of Congress thanks to
near-unanimous Republican opposition, as well as negative votes from such
leading Democratic senators as Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. Obama
who, in contrast, voted in favor of the resolution apparently helped to
insure the inclusion of this provision in the bill, which has been
applauded
by human rights groups.

Meanwhile, a number of additional anti-Palestinian amendments introduced
from the floor by Senator John Kyl (R-AZ) were voted down after vigorous
lobbying by Americans for Peace Now and other liberal groups.

Nevertheless, it is disappointing that so many other right-wing
provisions involving the Middle East were included in the omnibus
spending bill, particularly since this year's appropriations were put
together by a Congress with the largest Democratic majority in
decades.

It will be President Obama, and not the Democratic-controlled Congress,
who will ultimately determine the direction of U.S. foreign policy in the
Middle East and elsewhere in the coming years. Unfortunately, even
assuming the best of intentions by a president who came to office in
large part due to popular dissatisfaction with the direction of U.S.
policy in the region, he won't be able to fundamentally change the
direction of that policy if Congress continues to pursue policies
supporting militarization, occupation, and repression.