Same Day Settlement

New at Reason: Jonathan Rauch puzzles out what America's fattest ally is up to with his new policy.

Comments

[Warren]

"Initiating such a process in bad faith, while expecting never to deliver, would be the surest way to alienate President Bush, which Sharon cannot afford to do."

No sale. Israel has never balked at bad faith agreements with the Palestinians. There is always an available pretext for not honoring past promises. Leaving the likelihood of whether Bush will still be in office by the time the ruse becomes apparent, Israel knows that no matter what it does it will never actually 'alienate' the US. US pols. may wag their finger at Israeli misbehavior, but they will never cut off the flow of weapons and cash.

[Steve in CO]

It is all so very fucking depressing.

🙁

[Gil]

Fattest ally?

What is that supposed to mean? Is there a reference I'm missing that renders this comment inoffensive?

[P. Rabby]

Phattest?

"Gimme the loot! Gimme the loot!
(I'm a bad boy)."

[dj of raleigh]

1) Distraction
2) Deal-breaking
3) Delay.
4) Demographics.
5) Despair
6) Digging in.

Add 7) Outside pressure (USA)
add 8) Challenge --
What will the Palestinians do with Gaza?
What can be done with that strip of land?

[kwais]

I think fattest ally is in reference to the fact that we give Israel the most money. It is not in reference to the fact that Sharon is a lardass.

[Rick Barton]

Jonathan Rauch wrote:

the single most plausible...Sharon aim (is)
digging in. Sharon is a general, and when a general decides he is in for a long siege, he consolidates his lines....By getting out of Gaza, Sharon can firm up his lines and redeploy his resources

Yeah, this seems to be Sharon's motivation.
In his most recent Letter from Israel column, Ran HaCohen does a really interesting and compelling analyisis: "Sharon's Escape from Alcatraz"

Almost all the Gaza settlements where created by Sharon following the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai in 1982; many settlers moved there from Sinai. Now they should be moved elsewhere; they were informed about it exclusively by the Israeli media.

It's the same Israeli media, by the way, which is already shedding tears about the poor Gaza settlers to be "uprooted" for generous compensations, totally blind to the fact that they live amongst 1,5 million Palestinians, 70% of whom are refugees who were violently uprooted from their land within Israel, and trapped in the most densely populated region on earth with not a cent of compensation.

Note that Sharon has been talking all along of "moving" settlements, not dismantling them. The difference is now becoming clear: Sharon's plan is to move whole settlements from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.

In return for pulling out the settlements from the Gaza Strip, but keeping its strangulation from the outside, Sharon now asks for American support for massive extension of the West Bank settlements, and, according to some reports, even for a formal annexation of large parts of the West Bank to Israel.

He also wants American consent to the route of the Apartheid Wall, which means annexing de facto some 20% of the West Bank to Israel, as well as breaking the Palestinian population of the West Bank into numerous isolated enclaves, many of which are economically totally unviable so that their inhabitants will be forced to move elsewhere.

Don't err in illusions: no one intends to make Gaza a Palestinian State, no one even claims to. Gaza has a very different function. As senior Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea wrote a few years ago, Gaza is Israel's penal colony, its "devil island, Alcatraz" (quoted by Tanya Reinhart). Even now, alleged "terrorists" and their relatives from the West Bank are regularly deported to Gaza, which is surrounded with electric fences, its access to the sea blocked by the Israeli navy, and is thus completely sealed off the outside world. Sharon intends to keep a 100 meter strip along the Egyptian border (where the army has been systematically destroying all Palestinian houses), to make sure Alcatraz is fully contained.

There is thus no reason for Israel to sit inside Alcatraz, with its endless poverty and water shortage, unemployment and hopelessness: let the prisoners run their own lives, while we sit safely all around it and watch the prisoners perish.

Strategically, then, Sharon's "disengagement" plan is just another name for occupation, and should be rejected as such. Tactically, however, the plan does have advantages. For my part, I support any Israeli withdrawal, any eviction of any settlement anywhere. If Sharon is ready to give back a third of the Gaza Strip now occupied by 7,500 settlers, let him do that, and the sooner the better.

But at the same time, one must remember that Sharon has not changed, and one must resist his true intentions: to perpetuate the occupation, and consequently the armed conflict, by a seemingly generous "gift."

Read the whole article at: http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/

[kwais]

"Israel seems to be #3, well behind Egypt and Russia"

I think that information is incomplete. We give Israel 3 Billion dollars each year unconditionally. Then we give them additional money in military grants, I think up to 10 Billion. Then we also give them guaranteed loans, which they then invest in the US and make money on the profit. That is what I gathered from reading a Time magazine article a few years back.

I think we Russia peanuts in comparison, but Egypt comes in at a close second.

[Gil]

Also, Tim said "what America's fattest ally is up to with his new policy."

So the fat ally in question seems to be the man, not the country.

I'm not in favor of the foreign aid, nor of all of Israel's policies. But, calling Sharon "America's fattest ally" just seems like a stupid comment to me.

[Rick Barton]

Israel is easily the world?s largest recipient of US tax dollars. The chart that Gil linked to is only ODA/OA aid, which is only a fraction of total economic aid, and does not even count the military aid. Israel usually receives roughly one third of the entire foreign aid budget, despite the fact that Israel comprises less than .001 of the world's population and has one of the world's higher per capita incomes; on par with much of Western Europe. (a little behind Britton, about equal to Ireland)

Sharon is asking the Bush administration for $4 billion in grants, in addition to $8 billion in commercial-loan guarantees. This would be in addition to the nearly $3 billion that Israel already receives each year. Plus, $3 Billion in indirect aid.

http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/18700.pdf

http://www.wrmea.com/html/usaidtoisrael0001.htm

These people are trying to do something about it:

http://www.sustaincampaign.org/index.htm

[kwais]

Israel gets a full third of foreign aid huh? So I am guessing that Egypt and Israel together get about half of US foreign aid.

That seems ridiculous to me. Both countries could do without the money. You would think that Iraq, Afganistan, and Colombia would be the major recipients of foreign aid. Specially Iraq, given what is at stake.

I guess once the Palestinians figure out how to lobby, then they might do better.

[kwais]

I wonder who our 3 fattest ally's are?

[dj of raleigh]

> I think fattest ally is in reference to the fact that we give Israel the most money. It is not in reference to the fact that Sharon is a lardass.

[Gil]

The most recent data I could find is here:

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/42/30/1860571.gif

Israel seems to be #3, well behind Egypt and Russia.

[hey]

huh.. so how did pat buchanan write all of these comments on reason? or was it taki, that famous philosemite?

interesting to see what concerns you all...

when are you going to auto da fe sharon?

[naive]

uh, you guys all have good points regarding the "fattest ally" quote, but I think it refers to the picture of Sharon.

To quote Luke Skywalker: "Look at the size of that thing!"

[Rick Barton]

hev,

In case you think we're being unfair, maybe it will make you feel better to know that Shimon Peres wants a pull out from the whole West Bank.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_27-2-2004_pg4_12

But, the thresh hold for opposing Sharon really should be no more than just having a decent bone in one's body. After all, we're talking about a racist who actually supported "Jews Only" housing area laws on government land, in open discrimination against the 15% to 20% Arab citizens population of Israel!

http://www.eto.home.att.net/jewsonly.html

and:http://www.newsfrombabylon.com/article.php?sid=1779

Here is a piece concerning Sharon by Pat Buchanan, since you asked:

Stand Up to Sharon
http://www.amconmag.com/12_15_03/buchanan.html

And, one by a well know libertarian writing in his Mag. concerning the WB settlements.

West Bank settlements force an existential question.
By Doug Bandow
http://www.amconmag.com/11_3_03/feature.html