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Let’s start with what Clinton has said over the past week. She’s announced that the US will provide $900 million in aid and there are multiple reports that she and her staff have been “pressing Israel to stop blocking aid to the besieged Gaza Strip and will raise the issue during her visit next week” with “envoy George Mitchell expected to issue a strongly-worded statement on the situation” to Israel prior to Clinton’s arrival.”
These statements seem to have sent some earlier supporters of Clinton into a vitriolic tailspin (see the youtube above):
"I don’t believe that we should be in a position at this point to do anything to strengthen Hamas," Zuckerman said. "We surely know what Hamas stands for as I say they are the forward battalions of Iran." …
"Hillary had Mrs. Arafat here and she invited Mrs. Arafat for lunch when she was the first lady," added Babak Chafe of Great Neck. "She is pro-Palestinian 100 percent, really. Of course, we always knew it."
Yet at the same time Clinton and her staff were telling Israel that it is:
not making enough efforts to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza," the paper quoted US officials as telling their Israeli counterparts last week. "The US expects Israel to meet its commitments on this matter."
there are reports that Clinton “suggested” delivery of the aid package:
depends on how well the Palestinians meet the conditions of the quartet.
"I will be announcing a commitment to a significant aid package, but it will only be spent if we determine that our goals can be furthered rather than undermined or subverted," she told Voice of America.
And of course that aid must be delivered through non-Hamas channels.
Clinton also signaled support for a rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas to form a unified Palestinian Authority – but again there’s a “but”:
"I believe that it’s important, if there is some reconciliation and a move toward a unified authority, that it’s very clear that Hamas knows the conditions that have been set forth by the quartet, by the Arab summit," she said.
Clinton reiterated those conditions, saying: "They must renounce violence, recognize Israel, and abide by previous commitments," such as the Oslo peace accords.
"Otherwise, I don’t think it will result in the kind of positive step forward either for the Palestinian people or as a vehicle for a reinvigorated effort to obtain peace that leads to a Palestinian state," Clinton said.
In the current state of US politics, Clinton’s demand that Israel allow more aid, more quickly into Gaza is an important and very positive step. Yet stepping back a bit, I also wonder if Sec. Clinton will ask Israel to renounce violence, recognize the right of the Palestinians to self-governance and abide by previous commitments even as Bibi Netanyahu — who does not support a two-state solution but does support expanding settlements in the West Bank — is forming the next Israeli government.
This inherent contradiction in our foreign policy towards Israel and Palestine inevitably undermines progress. One of the clearest examples of this schizophrenia can be seen in recent actions by the House of Representatives:
Sixty US lawmakers have urged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to give emergency funds to the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees to help rebuild the Gaza Strip after its war with Israel…
"With the ceasefire now in effect, it is critical that the United States play a leading role in alleviating the suffering of civilians in Gaza and we respectfully urge your assistance in this task," they said.
Yet it should be remembered that Congress overwhelmingly supported HR 34 “Recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza, reaffirming the United States’ strong support for Israel, and supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” (only 4 Democrats (Kucinich, Waters, Moore and Rahall along with Ron Paul voted No, 22 voted present) in middle of the very actions which led to the suffering.
Representatives Ellison (who voted present) and Baird (who was not voting) have since shown considerably more sense. They visited Gaza last week and, upon seeing the devastation and need, made some of the clearest statements ever by US officials. Baird, noting the absurdity of Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid said:
"When have lentil bombs been going off lately? Is someone going to kill you with a piece of macaroni?" asked Rep. Brian Baird (D-Washington).
The ban on lentils and pasta was symbolic of a policy that was "idiosyncratic and arbitrary. You look stupid and petty and over-controlling when you this," Baird said.
This kind of action only fostered extremism, he said.
"What you are doing now is going to create more rockets in the long run," he said.
Ellison added, "When people have been deprived and feel beat down long enough, you cannot make them do what you want by beating on them more. They are used to that. They know that. They have been without and they can be without," he said.
Ellison went on to say:
"Israel has legitimate security concerns, but we have to find a way [to make a change]. We all have to run some risks here. And that means the US, too," Ellison said.
Let’s hope that Sec. Clinton takes even more risks during her upcoming meetings and speaks as clearly as Ellison and Baird.
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Does it look like the Obama administration is moving to a more evenhanded approach to you? It’s starting to look a little better to me.
via email, public listserve:
Good for him. For years, I’ve wanted a government just like that here.
This might be as fine a tightrope as any that Obama and Clinton have to walk. If they aren’t perceived as more evenhanded than their predecessor, they won’t have any credibility or goodwill in the larger Muslim world. At the same time they have to tread lightly lest they get the Zionist supporters in this country too riled up.
Having said that, the situation in Gaza has been SO bad of late that any improvement in addressing humanitarian concerns is welcome.
I don’t think the USA should work with an Israeli government that fails to meet those parameters, either. Even-handed, steady as she goes.
I was about to say something like that!
sounds good to me.
me too
It’s past time to let the Israel-can-do-no-wrong lobby get as worked up as their hardened arteries will let them get.
I certainly want to help the Gazans but it bugs me that Israel did this and yet the US is paying the cleanup bill.
We should take the nine hundred billion aid to Gaza out of our bottomless pit of aid to Israel.
The US has also been paying to provide half the food to the Gazans for many years.
There are layers to these things. Israel has been going further and further to the right until even “centrist” parties like Labor and Kadima are quite extreme(Remember they are the ones who attacked Gaza). Now with a government of Netanyahu and Lieberman, we are talking outright fascists. The AIPAC lobby supports this tendency as well as quite a few kneejerk Congress members.
Against this is another pro-Israel but less extreme element that is represented by Hillary Clinton and her husband’s old foreign policy staff. These are the ones still wedded to the idea of a two state solution. They are willing to help the Palestinians while still giving Israel almost all of what it wants. They are going to have a lot of problems with Netanyahu because he torpedoed the Oslo process back when Bill Clinton was President. And Netanyahu remains as intransigent as ever.
The problem with all these groups is that Israel has engineered a viable two state solution out of existence. That leaves the choices between an apartheid state which is what Israel has constructed or a democratic and unified Israeli-Palestinian state. This last would be the best solution but tellingly it is no even on the table.
Rush at CPAC on cspan.
i’m not convinced that the clinton gang are all that wedded to a two state solution because of how the westbank settlements grew unremarked during the clinton era.
not saying that i think they are not for a two-state solution… just that i have my doubts.
Jimmy Carter says the unified state is not in the Jewish leaders’ best interests, since in 20 years Israel would be majority-Arab.
:0===|
Digby sez he was on CNN live, uninterrupted by commercials, for the entire 90-minute rant. Damn librul media!
no can do. i’m out of advil. *g*
Get OUT! [Elaine Bennis push]
.
probably going to happen anyway – will just take longer and be more unpleasant if non-jewish citizens of the occupied territories are not enfranchised.
Does that mean there’s actually such a thing as a wingnut with a 90-minute attention span? Good God, I can’t imagine putting up with Limbaugh’s sheeplike bleating for a full 90 seconds.
I’m gonna have to give up soon. I just got back from eating dinner to listen to his rant about how the rich are so deserving.
i should add that’s absent mass expulsion or worse.
I think Israeli policy is slomo genecide. Wars are getting more brutal, conditions for survivors worse, encouraging emmigration. Besides, who the hell knows what will happen in a decade or more. Israeli has ignored the demographics for 60 years and is better off for having done so.
I listened for a few minutes before the bile started rising in my throat! What a fracking ASSHOLE! He should be tried as a traitor for what he spews!
It depends on how you define best interests. If Israel had been interested in a two state solution it had 40 years to make it happen. Instead it consistently pursued a course of settlement building and denial of Palestinian economic development and political rights which has created the current apartheid state. I would ask Carter looking at conditions now what realistically alternative is there. I sort of get the idea that Carter is unwilling to face the conclusions of his own arguments. This puts him surprisingly in line with most of Washington.
If you believe the MSM is librul I have a country for sale.. It is going through some financial problems so I will sell to ya it cheap along with all those Reich wingnuts that hate it so!! They will help ya run it into the ground so you can reap maximum profits!
What table could it realisticly be on?
i’ve called it slow motion ethnic cleansing – for me (not going by the legal def) genocide describes something worse where killing is used not only as a threat or to make life unbearable so as to facilitate “transfer” but as a way to affect demographics.
and i don’t think israelis are better off. just the opposite. but i suppose it depends on what “better off” means.
Siun, did you see this?:
Al Giordano / The Field
New post–>>
i should also say that i’ve thought for a while that mass expulsion (slow or fast) was the more likely than either a binational state or a real two state solution. apartheid state is the status quo, and while i suppose it can go on for a long time, i can’t see it as sustainable in the long term.
but the only thing i’m even semi-confident of is that a real two state solution (with something like the green line as a border) is dead.
One where human and social justice have a place.
Begging your pardon, despite my agreement with your statement, I was asking if you could see any way that it was workable any time soon.
that was perfect.
selise, I read the Greider-Rubin interview. Rubin comes across as a free trader. He believes in growth first and that everything else will just sort itself out. He downplays problems with the weakness of labor here and abroad and accepts the dominance of capital in the way globalization occurs. This last has been blown out of the water by the meltdown. When questioned on any of this he just says it is complicated or that he hasn’t thought about it much.
I did not see in the interview much of the flexibility I was led to believe was there.
thanks! i’ve only read the first page (was distracted by a telephone call). might go back to it tomorrow though because i’m kinda interested not just in what rubin says but also in greider’s views (i just got his book on the fed).
Eli is upstairs!
The Santelli Doctrine
Weakest part of the Obama team. I can only hope he wises up shortly or we are going to be Japanified in short order (or worse)
As for Clinton, stick to your principles! Why we give one of the richest nations in the world (Israel)aid, is beyond me. They quickly saw a HHS gap after 911 and filled it quickly for state surveillance systems of populations. They have trade fairs for it.
I think it’s in Klein’s Shock Doctrine. they DO NOT need our $$$$$
Clinton asks Israel to “speed up aid to Gaza” and everyone takes it as an affront to Israel? What am I missing?
Should she say to them, bomb away Zion on those Hamas gravy sucking pigs and the civilians they walk among??
There must be more that Hillary said.
Either way, Israel is not the 51st state. They are an important ally and we should be more strict with them about how they use the $30 Billion in military aid we GIVE them every year.
Thirty?
” Hamas, the militant Palestinian organisation, attempted to conduct secret talks with the Israeli leadership in the protracted run-up to the recent war in Gaza – with messages being passed from the group at one stage through a member of prime minister Ehud Olmert’s family.
Confirmation of attempts to establish a direct line of communication between Hamas and Israel – and the willingness of senior figures in Hamas to contemplate direct negotiations – fundamentally alters the narrative of the build-up to the war in Gaza which claimed more than 1,300 Palestinian lives and led to about a dozen Israeli deaths. “
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…..ine-shalit
“In an interview on Friday with Voice of America, Clinton said she would emphasize her country’s commitment to a two-state solution.
. In an interview in the Washington Post on Saturday, Netanyahu did not confirm or deny a belief in the two-state solution. “Substantively, there is broad agreement inside Israel and outside that the Palestinians should have the ability to govern their lives but not to threaten ours,” he said. “
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1067563.html
” Trade union officials, Palestinian representatives, thousands of ordinary Libyans showed up and waited from the early hours to see their heroes.
According to the Libyan press, the Libyan Government has prepared a program full of activities for the convoy throughout its journey across the country lasting 5 days. “
http://www.vivapalestina.org/home.htm
Amen. We have supported Israel too long, the result of which has been that Israel has turned the whole area into a Palestinian prison camp where even children and women have been imprisoned in Isael’s jails. As their last “military action’ has shown Israel is no different than any other power that has the upper hand.Gaza is a Jewish run prison camp; it is a holocaust in slow motion. And we in the US have supported Israel in this since 1946, when we helped “create” the “nation” of “Israel”. That’s when the Palestinians became “terrorists” for objecting to having “Israel” take their land. That’s it in a nutshell, but then again I’m not an officeholder who has to worry about the jewish lobby slandering me for talking the truth.