US To Offer Nearly $1 bn. for Gaza Reconstruction
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will announce at the Gaza donor's conference next week that the US will give $900 million to help rebuild the Gaza Strip. That is about a billion dollars.
It is obvious why Clinton is making this gesture. The United States's name is mud in much of the Muslim world because Washington supported to the hilt Ehud Olmert's brutal assault on the people and civilian infrastructure of the Gaza Strip. Gaza was already a blockaded and abused slum before the war, where 15% of the children were undernourished. Bush urged Olmert on, and Obama has been silent.
So at least the US can spend some money to restore to the Gazans the basic prerequisites for a decent life.
Moreover, the US has increasing competition for influence in the area. The Gulf oil states are planning out the rebuilding of Gaza, and Saudi Arabia and Qatar have already pledged $1.25 billion. Qatar stole thunder in Lebanon last spring when it negotiated a peace deal between Hizbullah and the Lebanese government that brought Hizbullah into the government. The Saudis have been trying to bring Fatah and Hamas together. The US has been irrelevant, because under Bush Washington was just a ventriloquist dummy for the Israeli Rightwing. You can only have leverage as a good faith broker if you aren't completely identified with one side of a dispute.
So people are asking where the US government is going to get a billion dollars to give to the Gazans. That's easy. The US should take it out of the over $3 billion a year it gives to Israel. Israel aggressively launched that war, which it planned out for six months beforehand, even while Olmert was ostensibly indirectly negotiating a truce with Hamas. The war was fruitless and accomplished none of its goals. There is no reason for the US government to be giving the Israelis, who have a per capita income of $17,000 a year, money in the first place. But it certainly makes no sense to reward them for bad behavior, especially given that we are living through the great crash and incipient depression of 2009.
Amnesty International is going further and urging that the UN institute a weapons ban on both Israel and the militant Palestinian factions.
Aljazeera English reports on the psychological damage to Gaza children of the war:
The Gaza War was so clearly an unequal contest that involved total war on Palestinian civilians that Canada's biggest union of public employees has called for a boycott of Israel.
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 2/24/2009 12:29:00 AM
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20 Comments:
how do the US propose getting the building materials and essential supplies into Gaza, when the Israelis are deliberately blocking all such shipments? Through the tunnels? Maybe if the US invests in Palestine they will be less sanguine when the next Israeli massacre and delliberate destruction of infrastructure takes place, as it indubitably will. But you are right - the US should give all the money it currently gives to Israel to Palestine, as well as barring all arms shipments. This would have the undoubted benefit of making the callous murdering Israelis think again.
A weapons ban on both HAMAS and Israel? The Palestinians have a right to defend themselves; they are the ones under occupation. Maybe the west should supply them with better rockets so that their attacks are les indiscriminate. You can't equate Paletinian efforts to defend themselves with the treatment they have received from the occupying power over the last 40 years.
Another ridiculous attempt to be balanced.
Give with one hand, take away with the other. Dennis Ross has just been appointed a special ambassador to Iran and Southwest Asia. The nuclear power plants are coming out or else the bombs will start to fall.
There are no bounds to the cynicism involved. If on the one hand the US is going to pay to rebuild Gaza, it makes absolutely no sense for it - on the other - to finance the future destruction of Gaza by feeding weapons to the Israelis. Although this may sound disingenuous, if I were the Gazans, I would refuse the US aid unless they either suspended all military aid to Israel or somehow impressed upon the Israelis that destructive behavior bordering on genocide is completely unacceptable. Actually, all paths lead to one and only one solution - end the blasted occupation once and for all.
The israelis must replace the hundreds (thousands?) of iron bombs, guided munitions and other ordnance and matériel they expended in Gaza. I'd be curious to know under what terms the israeli arsenal is going to be replenished by the USA.
Will the israelis pay cash money to restock their inventory?
Will the Americans put any conditions on the sale or donation of war matériel to israel, i.e. if you use our weaponry to complicate American foreign policy we might rethink our armaments transfers to israel?
Will the Americans tell the israelis that this is the last Middle East war zone that the Americans will help pay to rebuild, and that includes israel itself?
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Now is the time for Obama to show real courage. Be the first US president to say no to Israel. Supporting Israel does NOT mean supporting everything Israel does.
Thank you for this post. If you total the annual direct US aid to Israel with the indirect contribution to her economy through numerous corporate ties(it is one of the top five US economic partners) in addition to the joint military machinery expenditure through some of the very same corporate interests, you will arrive at a simple yet shocking truth: Both overtly and covertly, the average American taxpayer is linked more to the state of Israel than to the state of Oklahoma, Maine, or Kentucky(and a few more red states, perhaps combined)! So while here we have federal and state constitutions that guide and regulate intra- and inter- state commercial, judicial, and political transactions, we do not seem to have a mutually positive working relationship with one of our most dependent and favored states! One can wistfully reminisce at multiple historical points(starting really with Balfour, the beginning of the end for the British and the middle of the beginning for the American one) where and when our post American civil war patriotic interests could have been better served and protected were it not for a shortsightedness that prevails more than ever today in Washington D.C.(how ironic to be geographically but not ideologically co-located with our founding father's profound caution against foreign alliances of this very kind!). Once again, we watched an already devastated, isolated, and sanctioned Gaza go down in flames with weapons we made, sold, and paid our bills with, and wonder why is this going on?
Absolutely! I had this idea a while back too . . . the U.S. should help rebuild Gaza and take the fund for that out of what we give Israel.
How much do you want to bet this Gaza money is distributed by the Israeli government?
I would like to see how the U.S. aid is spent in Gaza.
Who will get the contracts, Israelis or Palestinians?
What will be the "administrative" costs?
Will the construction items be of benefit to Palestinians or benefit Israelis?
I'm thinking security projects like walls, checkpoints, sea walls, etc.
Maybe they will rebuild schools and staff them with the "right kind" of instructors, so the right kind of lessons are taught.
Whatever it is spent on, you can bet they will get as much PR value as they can from it.
When the USA sends two Pro-Israeli Envoys like Mitchell and Ross, you can be sure of U.S. intentions.
The amount the United States owes the Palestinians would total hundreds of billions of dollars if a true accounting were held. So the amount bruited is miniscual; the proposal no more than a PR device. Whatever monies do arrive in Palestine/Gaza will be used for political purposes regardless of who does the dispensing. And if the monies are withheld from the "normal" billions given Israel, I'm very confident that Israel will find a way to get its pound of flesh.
How about asking AIPAC to raise the money? It would be an excellent gesture on their part that they are ready to change and work toward peace in the region.
Dr. Mathews is right. If the U.S. would just stop to think about what it is doing. It makes no sense to give weapons to Israel that are used to kill Palestinians and then pay for the damage. I also like the comment about the Gazans refusing to take the U.S. money. That would be dignified and a slap in the face for the U.S. which richly deserves it.
Gazan money - to whom?
It is really hard to imagine that Hillary is going to hand the Gazan reconstruction money to Hamas. There is little doubt that the idea is to use them to stimulate Fatah.
It is also clear that Israeli doves will demand the closest control over the distribution of relief funds - putting it simple, spying. As for Israeli hawks, they are likely to reject the idea immediately.
Hamas understands all this very clearly, and I will be very surprised if they will not reject the funds. Basically, this is it for Hillary's Gazan billion.
Maybe we're spending that money to rebuild Gaza so that it'll be nice for the Israelis when they move back into it?
How magnanimous of us to help rebuild that what we had encouraged Israel to destroy.
A member of the peanut gallery worries as follows: "How much do you want to bet this Gaza money is distributed by the Israeli government?
I am not inclined to wager, but it would do no harm to make sure that Sec. Clinton is cognizant of this concern. Let her also be aware of the equal-but-opposite concern expressed by Neocomrade Herr Prof. Dr. M. Peretz of Harvard and The New Republic , viz.,
Hillary Clinton is going to Egypt to meet with our Quartet partners in cohort with a conference especially convened to plan assistance for the Strip and its people. Now, $900 million is a lot of money for Gaza to absorb. But first there will be the usual rake-off to the slimy middle men in the bazaar and among the sanctimonious relief NGOs. The bigger the appropriation the bigger the take. The real issue is: where will the cash go? The administration is assuring us that it will not go to Hamas, as if anyone can assure that materiel and money can be siphoned off just to the desired parties. This, frankly, is a joke...and Mrs. Clinton knows it. So should President Obama.
But God knows best.
Happy days.
An offer of aid from Shrillary to the Gazans would be about as Kosher as one from Tony Blair, Bibi or Lord Balfour.
Wasn't the power station hit in 2006 built through (in part) American contributions?
It does not change anything to send aid. Professor Lynch at FP commented on the need for policy change in his recent posts. This was absolutely correct. We have given aid before. They are not likely to overlook the fact that they would not need the aid, if the Occupation were not in large part financed through the USA and the West.
Concur - it's too depressing to watch outside parties fund positive construction efforts in Gaza/WB, such as the Gaza airport, only to watch them razed. Perhaps a positive use of the $900M would be to directly fund salaries/infrastructure for neutrally-monitored inspection stations that could facilitate a free flow of goods... the only way a sustainable and humane Palestinian economy will ever recover (olive oil, flowers, citrus...etc.). Possibly EU-manned inspection stations that could allow cargo flow through a reopened Gaza port and airport? (as well as WB land-crossings)
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