In a speech to a pro-Israel lobbying group, Mr. Netanyahu reiterated that Israel had no plans to freeze housing in Jerusalem, the trigger for a recent dispute between Israel and the United States. He rejected the administration’s contention that Israel’s policies were impeding the peace process.Nor should anyone be surprised by this. The proponents of "American exceptionalism" in US foreign policy have one glaring blind spot, and that's letting Israel dictate to us what we can and cannot do. Hillary Clinton continues to try to talk to the Israelis, but it's clear that when it comes to action, Israel will do what it wants, US be damned.
“The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today,” Mr. Netanyahu said to the group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “Jerusalem is not a settlement; It’s our capital.”
Earlier Monday, Mr. Netanyahu met for 75 minutes with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the first of a series of meetings expected to reveal whether the United States sticks to its hard line with Israel on settlements. He later met with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and he was scheduled to meet President Obama on Tuesday.
The flurry of meetings is designed to calm the waters after nearly two weeks of tension between the United States and Israel, amid a diplomatic row that both countries have portrayed as the gravest in years. But judging by Mr. Netanyahu’s comments, it is far from clear that he plans to satisfy the demands that Mrs. Clinton made of him in a phone call 10 days ago.
On the other hand, there is some agreement between our two countries:
On one topic — Iran — Mr. Netanyahu and Mrs. Clinton seemed largely in agreement. “Iran’s brazen bid to develop nuclear weapons is first and foremost a threat to my country, Israel,” the prime minister said, “but it is also a grave threat to the region and to the world.” The Israeli people, he said, “always reserve the right of self-defense.”The trick of course is that Israel believes everything it is doing falls under the "right of Israeli self-defense", particular the parts that the Obama administration isn't fond of.
In making her own tough statements on Iran, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that the process of building support for sanctions in the United Nations was taking longer than expected. “Our aim is not incremental sanctions, but sanctions that will bite,” she said.
If this were Russia or China what would we be doing right now?
ReplyDeleteWe would be taking the stance of "Well we got shit to worry about internally, you do your thing."
And we should take this stance with Israel. Stop giving them military aid which will save us some cash and only work together on things we find agreements on like Iran. I'm all for finding allies in the world but hey if they want do their own thing which we don't agree with, why go through the headache at this point? We have so many other things to worry about just push it off our plate and not get involved. Make it clear to Israel as well though we will not be jumping in to assist peace talks down the line either when this blows up in your face.
Also for who's the dominant country, how can we be in a partnership where both sides say "We're in charge of this relationship!" That's by definition not a partnership.
A November 2008 Washington Report article “A Conservative Estimate of Total Direct U.S. Aid to Israel: $114 Billion,” by Shirl McArthur, puts the cumulative total even higher.
ReplyDeleteAccording to McArthur, “[T]he indirect or consequential costs to the American taxpayer as a result of Washington’s blind support for Israel exceed by many times the amount of direct U.S. aid to Israel. Some of these ‘indirect or consequential’ costs would include the costs to U.S. manufacturers of the Arab boycott, the costs to U.S. companies and consumers of the Arab oil embargo and consequent soaring oil prices as a result of U.S. support for Israel in the 1973 war, and the costs of U.S. unilateral economic sanctions on Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria. (For a discussion of these larger costs, see ‘The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: $3 Trillion,’ by the late Thomas R. Stauffer, June 2003 Washington Report,
Link to the article is helpful in supporting what you said.
ReplyDeleteBut yea if the don't want to even come to an agreement and it's going to be "Well we'll do what we want" then fine, but the US doesn't have to give aid.