Chas Freeman: His wit and wisdom. By Scott Johnson
PowerLine Blog, Mar 15, 2009
Last weekend Martin Kramer compiled the statements of Saudi/Manchurian candidate Chas Freeman on al Qaeda and 9/11. Freeman is of course the former American ambassador to Saudi Arabia whom Obama administration DNI Dennis Blair appointed to chair the National Intelligence Council. In the spirit of Kramer's compilation, I thought it might be useful to collect in one place a few of the highlights of Freeman's keen analytical insight expressed over the years, grouped by subject with links to the sources.
Freeman on Tiananmen Square (May 2006):
I find the dominant view in China about this very plausible, i.e. that the truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud, rather than -- as would have been both wise and efficacious -- to intervene with force when all other measures had failed to restore domestic tranquility to Beijing and other major urban centers in China. In this optic, the Politburo's response to the mob scene at "Tian'anmen" stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action.
For myself, I side on this -- if not on numerous other issues -- with Gen. Douglas MacArthur. I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be. Such folk, whether they represent a veterans' "Bonus Army" or a "student uprising" on behalf of "the goddess of democracy" should expect to be displaced with despatch from the ground they occupy. I cannot conceive of any American government behaving with the ill-conceived restraint that the Zhao Ziyang administration did in China, allowing students to occupy zones that are the equivalent of the Washington National Mall and Times Square, combined. while shutting down much of the Chinese government's normal operations. I thus share the hope of the majority in China that no Chinese government will repeat the mistakes of Zhao Ziyang's dilatory tactics of appeasement in dealing with domestic protesters in China.
Freeman on Saudi education (December 2000):
It is widely charged in the United States that Saudi Arabian education teaches hateful and evil things. I do not think that is the case.
Freeman on Saudi Arabian King Abdullah (October 2008):
I believe King Abdullah is very rapidly becoming Abdullah the Great.
Freeman on 9/11 (October 2005):
I simply want to register what I think is an obvious point:; namely that what 9/11 showed is that if we bomb people, they bomb back.
Freeman revisits 9/11 (October 2006):
Americans need to be clear about the consequences of continuing our current counterproductive approaches to security in the Middle East. We have paid heavily and often in treasure in the past for our unflinching support and unstinting subsidies of Israel's approach to managing its relations with the Arabs. Five years ago we began to pay with the blood of our citizens here at home. We are now paying with the lives of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines on battlefields in several regions of the realm of Islam, with more said by our government's neoconservative mentors to be in prospect.
Freeman on the Arab-Israeli conflict (October 2006):
Demonstrably, Israel excels at war; sadly, it has shown no talent for peace.
Freeman on Israeli intransigence (May 2007):
Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them.
Freeman on Israel's harm to America (May 2007):
American identification with Israeli policy has also become total. Those in the region and beyond it who detest Israeli behavior, which is to say almost everyone, now naturally extend their loathing to Americans. This has had the effect of universalizing anti-Americanism, legitimizing radical Islamism, and gaining Iran a foothold among Sunni as well as Shiite Arabs. For its part, Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them. Palestinian retaliation against this policy is as likely to be directed against Israel's American backers as against Israel itself. Under the circumstances, such retaliation - whatever form it takes - will have the support or at least the sympathy of most people in the region and many outside it. This makes the long-term escalation of terrorism against the United States a certainty, not a matter of conjecture.
Freeman on the role of American Jews (October 2006):
[H]istory and the Israeli response to date both strongly suggest that without some tough love from Americans, including especially Israel's American coreligionists, Israel will not risk the uncertainties of peace.
Freeman on the withdrawal of his appointment (March 2009):
The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors....
I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government.
Freeman on his one regret regarding his withdrawal statement (March 2009):
The only thing I regret is that in my statement I embraced the term "Israel lobby." This isn't really a lobby by, for or about Israel. It's really, well, I've decided I'm going to call it from now on the [Avigdor] Lieberman lobby. It's the very right-wing Likud in Israel and its fanatic supporters here. And Avigdor Lieberman is really the guy that they really agree with. And I think they're doing Israel in.
In part via Andrew Bolt and The Blog (the Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb).
Showing posts with label israel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label israel. Show all posts
Sunday, March 15, 2009
John Bolton: Team Obama's Anti-Israel Turn
Team Obama's Anti-Israel Turn. By John R. Bolton
The Mideast "peace process" is the ultimate self-licking ice cream cone--its mere existence being its basic justification.
AEI, March 13, 2009
The Obama administration is increasingly fixed on resolving the "Arab-Israeli dispute," seeing it as the key to peace and stability in the Middle East. This is bad news for Israel--and for America.
In its purest form, this theory holds that, once Israel and its neighbors come to terms, all other regional conflicts can be duly resolved: Iran's nuclear-weapons program, fanatical anti-Western terrorism, Islam's Sunni-Shiite schism, Arab-Persian ethnic tensions.
Some advocates believe substantively that the overwhelming bulk of other Middle Eastern grievances, wholly or partly, stem from Israel's founding and continued existence. Others see it in process terms--how to "sequence" dispute resolutions, so that Arab-Israeli progress facilitates progress elsewhere.
Pursuing this talisman has long characterized many European leaders and their soulmates on the American left. The Mideast "peace process" is thus the ultimate self-licking ice cream cone--its mere existence being its basic justification.
And now the Obama administration has made it US policy. This is evidenced by two key developments: the appointment of former Sen. George Mitchell as special envoy for the region, and Secretary of State Hillary's Clinton's recent insistence on a "two-state solution" sooner rather than later.
Naming Mitchell as a high-level, single-issue envoy--rather than keeping the portfolio under Secretary Clinton's personal control--separates Israel from the broader conduct of US diplomacy. Mitchell's role underlines both the issue's priority in the president's eyes and the implicit idea it can be solved in the foreseeable future.
Obama and Mitchell have every incentive to strike a Middle East deal--both to vindicate themselves and, in their minds, to create a basis for further "progress." But there are few visible incentives for any particular substantive outcome--which is very troubling for Israel, since Mitchell's mission essentially replicates in high-profile form exactly the approach the State Department has followed for decades.
When appointed, Mitchell said confidently: "Conflicts are created, conducted and sustained by human beings. They can be ended by human beings." This is true, however, only if the conflict's substantive resolution is less important than the process point of "ending" it one way or another. Surrender, for example, is a guaranteed way to end conflict.
Here, Clinton's strident insistence on a "two-state solution" during her recent Mideast trip becomes important. She essentially argued predestination: the "inevitability" of moving toward two states is "inescapable," and "there is no time to waste." The political consequence is clear: Since the outcome is inevitable and time is short, there is no excuse for not making "progress." Delay is evidence of obstructionism and failure--something President Obama can't tolerate, for the sake of his policies and his political reputation.
In this very European view, failure on the Arab-Israeli front presages failure elsewhere. Accordingly, the Obama adminstration has created a negotiating dynamic that puts increasing pressure on Israel, Palestinians, Syria and others.
Almost invariably, Israel is the loser--because Israel is the party most dependent on the United States, most subject to US pressure and most susceptible to the inevitable chorus of received wisdom from Western diplomats, media and the intelligentsia demanding concessions. When pressure must be applied to make compromises, it's always easier to pressure the more reasonable side.
How will diplomatic pressure work to change Hamas or Hezbollah, where even military force has so far failed? If anything, one can predict coming pressure on Israel to acknowledge the legitimacy of these two terrorist groups, and to negotiate with them as equals (albeit perhaps under some artful camouflage). The pattern is so common that its reappearance in the Mitchell-led negotiations is what is really "inevitable" and "inescapable."
Why would America subject a close ally to this dynamic, playing with the security of an unvarying supporter in world affairs? For America, Israel's intelligence-sharing, military cooperation and significant bilateral economic ties, among many others, are important national-security assets that should not lightly be put at risk.
The only understandable answer is that the Obama administration believes that Israel is as much or more of a problem as it is an ally, at least until Israel's disagreements with its neighbors are resolved. Instead of seeing Israel as a national-security asset, the administration likely sees a relationship complicating its broader policy of diplomatic "outreach."
No one will say so publicly, but this is the root cause of Obama's "Arab-Israeli issues first" approach to the region.
This approach is exactly backward. All the other regional problems would still exist even if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got his fondest wish and Israel disappeared from the map: Iran's nuclear-weapons program, its role as the world's central banker for terrorism, the Sunni-Shiite conflict within Islam, Sunni terrorist groups like al Qaeda and other regional ethnic, national and political animosities would continue as threats and risks for decades to come.
Instead, the US focus should be on Iran and the manifold threats it poses to Israel, to Arab states friendly to Washington and to the United States itself--but that is not to be.
President Obama argues that he will deal comprehensively with the entire region. Rhetoric is certainly his specialty, but in the Middle East rhetoric only lasts so long. Performance is the real measure--and the administration's performance to date points in only one direction: pressuring Israel while wooing Iran.
Others in the world--friend and foe alike--will draw their own conclusions.
John R. Bolton is a senior fellow at AEI.
The Mideast "peace process" is the ultimate self-licking ice cream cone--its mere existence being its basic justification.
AEI, March 13, 2009
The Obama administration is increasingly fixed on resolving the "Arab-Israeli dispute," seeing it as the key to peace and stability in the Middle East. This is bad news for Israel--and for America.
In its purest form, this theory holds that, once Israel and its neighbors come to terms, all other regional conflicts can be duly resolved: Iran's nuclear-weapons program, fanatical anti-Western terrorism, Islam's Sunni-Shiite schism, Arab-Persian ethnic tensions.
Some advocates believe substantively that the overwhelming bulk of other Middle Eastern grievances, wholly or partly, stem from Israel's founding and continued existence. Others see it in process terms--how to "sequence" dispute resolutions, so that Arab-Israeli progress facilitates progress elsewhere.
Pursuing this talisman has long characterized many European leaders and their soulmates on the American left. The Mideast "peace process" is thus the ultimate self-licking ice cream cone--its mere existence being its basic justification.
And now the Obama administration has made it US policy. This is evidenced by two key developments: the appointment of former Sen. George Mitchell as special envoy for the region, and Secretary of State Hillary's Clinton's recent insistence on a "two-state solution" sooner rather than later.
Naming Mitchell as a high-level, single-issue envoy--rather than keeping the portfolio under Secretary Clinton's personal control--separates Israel from the broader conduct of US diplomacy. Mitchell's role underlines both the issue's priority in the president's eyes and the implicit idea it can be solved in the foreseeable future.
Obama and Mitchell have every incentive to strike a Middle East deal--both to vindicate themselves and, in their minds, to create a basis for further "progress." But there are few visible incentives for any particular substantive outcome--which is very troubling for Israel, since Mitchell's mission essentially replicates in high-profile form exactly the approach the State Department has followed for decades.
When appointed, Mitchell said confidently: "Conflicts are created, conducted and sustained by human beings. They can be ended by human beings." This is true, however, only if the conflict's substantive resolution is less important than the process point of "ending" it one way or another. Surrender, for example, is a guaranteed way to end conflict.
Here, Clinton's strident insistence on a "two-state solution" during her recent Mideast trip becomes important. She essentially argued predestination: the "inevitability" of moving toward two states is "inescapable," and "there is no time to waste." The political consequence is clear: Since the outcome is inevitable and time is short, there is no excuse for not making "progress." Delay is evidence of obstructionism and failure--something President Obama can't tolerate, for the sake of his policies and his political reputation.
In this very European view, failure on the Arab-Israeli front presages failure elsewhere. Accordingly, the Obama adminstration has created a negotiating dynamic that puts increasing pressure on Israel, Palestinians, Syria and others.
Almost invariably, Israel is the loser--because Israel is the party most dependent on the United States, most subject to US pressure and most susceptible to the inevitable chorus of received wisdom from Western diplomats, media and the intelligentsia demanding concessions. When pressure must be applied to make compromises, it's always easier to pressure the more reasonable side.
How will diplomatic pressure work to change Hamas or Hezbollah, where even military force has so far failed? If anything, one can predict coming pressure on Israel to acknowledge the legitimacy of these two terrorist groups, and to negotiate with them as equals (albeit perhaps under some artful camouflage). The pattern is so common that its reappearance in the Mitchell-led negotiations is what is really "inevitable" and "inescapable."
Why would America subject a close ally to this dynamic, playing with the security of an unvarying supporter in world affairs? For America, Israel's intelligence-sharing, military cooperation and significant bilateral economic ties, among many others, are important national-security assets that should not lightly be put at risk.
The only understandable answer is that the Obama administration believes that Israel is as much or more of a problem as it is an ally, at least until Israel's disagreements with its neighbors are resolved. Instead of seeing Israel as a national-security asset, the administration likely sees a relationship complicating its broader policy of diplomatic "outreach."
No one will say so publicly, but this is the root cause of Obama's "Arab-Israeli issues first" approach to the region.
This approach is exactly backward. All the other regional problems would still exist even if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got his fondest wish and Israel disappeared from the map: Iran's nuclear-weapons program, its role as the world's central banker for terrorism, the Sunni-Shiite conflict within Islam, Sunni terrorist groups like al Qaeda and other regional ethnic, national and political animosities would continue as threats and risks for decades to come.
Instead, the US focus should be on Iran and the manifold threats it poses to Israel, to Arab states friendly to Washington and to the United States itself--but that is not to be.
President Obama argues that he will deal comprehensively with the entire region. Rhetoric is certainly his specialty, but in the Middle East rhetoric only lasts so long. Performance is the real measure--and the administration's performance to date points in only one direction: pressuring Israel while wooing Iran.
Others in the world--friend and foe alike--will draw their own conclusions.
John R. Bolton is a senior fellow at AEI.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
WaPo on Chas Freeman: The Obama administration's latest failed nominee peddles a conspiracy theory
Blame the 'Lobby'. WaPo Editorial
The Obama administration's latest failed nominee peddles a conspiracy theory.
WaPo, Thursday, March 12, 2009; A18
FORMER ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. looked like a poor choice to chair the Obama administration's National Intelligence Council. A former envoy to Saudi Arabia and China, he suffered from an extreme case of clientitis on both accounts. In addition to chiding Beijing for not crushing the Tiananmen Square democracy protests sooner and offering sycophantic paeans to Saudi King "Abdullah the Great," Mr. Freeman headed a Saudi-funded Middle East advocacy group in Washington and served on the advisory board of a state-owned Chinese oil company. It was only reasonable to ask -- as numerous members of Congress had begun to do -- whether such an actor was the right person to oversee the preparation of National Intelligence Estimates.
It wasn't until Mr. Freeman withdrew from consideration for the job, however, that it became clear just how bad a selection Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair had made. Mr. Freeman issued a two-page screed on Tuesday in which he described himself as the victim of a shadowy and sinister "Lobby" whose "tactics plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency" and which is "intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government." Yes, Mr. Freeman was referring to Americans who support Israel -- and his statement was a grotesque libel.
For the record, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee says that it took no formal position on Mr. Freeman's appointment and undertook no lobbying against him. If there was a campaign, its leaders didn't bother to contact the Post editorial board. According to a report by Newsweek, Mr. Freeman's most formidable critic -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- was incensed by his position on dissent in China.
But let's consider the ambassador's broader charge: He describes "an inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for U.S. policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics." That will certainly be news to Israel's "ruling faction," which in the past few years alone has seen the U.S. government promote a Palestinian election that it opposed; refuse it weapons it might have used for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities; and adopt a policy of direct negotiations with a regime that denies the Holocaust and that promises to wipe Israel off the map. Two Israeli governments have been forced from office since the early 1990s after open clashes with Washington over matters such as settlement construction in the occupied territories.
What's striking about the charges by Mr. Freeman and like-minded conspiracy theorists is their blatant disregard for such established facts. Mr. Freeman darkly claims that "it is not permitted for anyone in the United States" to describe Israel's nefarious influence. But several of his allies have made themselves famous (and advanced their careers) by making such charges -- and no doubt Mr. Freeman himself will now win plenty of admiring attention. Crackpot tirades such as his have always had an eager audience here and around the world. The real question is why an administration that says it aims to depoliticize U.S. intelligence estimates would have chosen such a man to oversee them.
The Obama administration's latest failed nominee peddles a conspiracy theory.
WaPo, Thursday, March 12, 2009; A18
FORMER ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. looked like a poor choice to chair the Obama administration's National Intelligence Council. A former envoy to Saudi Arabia and China, he suffered from an extreme case of clientitis on both accounts. In addition to chiding Beijing for not crushing the Tiananmen Square democracy protests sooner and offering sycophantic paeans to Saudi King "Abdullah the Great," Mr. Freeman headed a Saudi-funded Middle East advocacy group in Washington and served on the advisory board of a state-owned Chinese oil company. It was only reasonable to ask -- as numerous members of Congress had begun to do -- whether such an actor was the right person to oversee the preparation of National Intelligence Estimates.
It wasn't until Mr. Freeman withdrew from consideration for the job, however, that it became clear just how bad a selection Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair had made. Mr. Freeman issued a two-page screed on Tuesday in which he described himself as the victim of a shadowy and sinister "Lobby" whose "tactics plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency" and which is "intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government." Yes, Mr. Freeman was referring to Americans who support Israel -- and his statement was a grotesque libel.
For the record, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee says that it took no formal position on Mr. Freeman's appointment and undertook no lobbying against him. If there was a campaign, its leaders didn't bother to contact the Post editorial board. According to a report by Newsweek, Mr. Freeman's most formidable critic -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- was incensed by his position on dissent in China.
But let's consider the ambassador's broader charge: He describes "an inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for U.S. policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics." That will certainly be news to Israel's "ruling faction," which in the past few years alone has seen the U.S. government promote a Palestinian election that it opposed; refuse it weapons it might have used for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities; and adopt a policy of direct negotiations with a regime that denies the Holocaust and that promises to wipe Israel off the map. Two Israeli governments have been forced from office since the early 1990s after open clashes with Washington over matters such as settlement construction in the occupied territories.
What's striking about the charges by Mr. Freeman and like-minded conspiracy theorists is their blatant disregard for such established facts. Mr. Freeman darkly claims that "it is not permitted for anyone in the United States" to describe Israel's nefarious influence. But several of his allies have made themselves famous (and advanced their careers) by making such charges -- and no doubt Mr. Freeman himself will now win plenty of admiring attention. Crackpot tirades such as his have always had an eager audience here and around the world. The real question is why an administration that says it aims to depoliticize U.S. intelligence estimates would have chosen such a man to oversee them.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
The Gaza Aid Package: Time to Rethink U.S. Foreign Assistance to the Palestinians
The Gaza Aid Package: Time to Rethink U.S. Foreign Assistance to the Palestinians. By James Phillips
Heritage, March 9, 2009
WebMemo #2333
Full article w/references here
The Obama Administration has announced a huge aid package of $900 million to help ease the humanitarian plight of Palestinians in Gaza and to shore up the bankrupt Palestinian Authority (PA). This surge of soft power is aimed at strengthening Palestinian moderates and helping to clear the way for revived Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. But as long as Hamas remains free to rain rockets down on Israel, these ambitions remain little more than wishful thinking.
Since the 1993 Oslo peace accords, the U.S. has showered $2.2 billion in bilateral aid on the Palestinians, in addition to more than $3.4 billion for humanitarian aid funneled to the Palestinians through dysfunctional U.N. organizations since 1950. This aid has:
Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the Obama Administration's pledge of $900 million in aid at an international donors conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. The aid package includes $300 million for humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, $200 million in budget support for the PA, and $400 million to support the PA's Palestinian Reform and Development Plan in the West Bank.
The Obama Administration maintains that this massive aid package will not end up in the pockets of Hamas and other terrorist groups. It plans to funnel assistance through the PA, NGOs, and U.N. agencies. But the PA remains a weak and problematic institution hobbled by corruption, despite recent reforms. And U.N. agencies often have their own agenda as well as an anti-American and anti-Israeli tilt.
The largest U.N. body involved with facilitating aid to the Palestinians is the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), a notoriously opaque and dysfunctional institution that has been infiltrated by Hamas supporters and other Palestinian radicals.[1]Even though it receives over a third of a billion dollars in international funding every year, and despite recurrent reports of inefficiency and corruption, UNRWA is not externally or publicly audited. Such lack of accountability is particularly troubling for an organization that has been chronically dogged by controversy.
There are numerous reports documenting that UNRWA has been infiltrated by Hamas terrorists. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), at least 16 UNRWA staff had been detained by Israeli authorities for security-related crimes, and three had been convicted in military courts of terrorism-related activities.[2]UNRWA's leadership has admitted in the past that Hamas, which the U.S. government has designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, has been able to infiltrate the U.N. agency. Peter Hansen, then-commissioner-general of UNRWA, sparked a political storm in 2004 when he remarked in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that "I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll, and I don't see that as a crime. Hamas, as a political organization, does not mean that every member is a militant, and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another."[3]
Specific examples of radicals working for UNRWA are readily available. For instance, Said Sayyam, the Hamas minister of interior, worked as a teacher at UNRWA schools in Gaza, while the headmaster of another UNRWA school, Awas al-Qiq, was the leader of a cell that build rockets for the Islamic Jihad terrorist group. Several other UNRWA employees left their jobs to run in the 2006 Palestinian elections as Hamas candidates. Despite the fact that the United States is the biggest single donor to UNRWA, that agency continues to resist reform and refuses external audits of its operations. Incredibly, the UNRWA Web site that includes information on its "Special Gaza Appeal" instructs donors to send money through the Commercial Bank of Syria, which has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for money laundering and suspected involvement in moving money to terrorist groups.[4] Clearly, the UNRWA bureaucracy takes an extremely lax attitude on fighting terrorism and should not be trusted to handle aid provided by the U.S. government.
No Taxpayer Subsidies for Terrorist Groups
Given the penetration of UNRWA and other NGOs by terrorist groups, the United States must be absolutely sure that its aid does not end up being diverted. Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL) has warned that "to route $900 million to this area, and let's say that Hamas was only able to steal 10 percent of that, we would still become Hamas's second-largest funder after Iran."[5]
Congress needs to scrutinize the Obama Administration's aid plans to make sure that there is absolutely no chance that funds provided by American taxpayers end up being pocketed by members of terrorist groups--a development that would violate section 301c of the Foreign Assistance Act. The Senate should pull funding for UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority from the $410 billion spending bill currently before Congress. And both houses of Congress should hold hearings and exercise their oversight powers to make sure that future aid to the Palestinians is dispensed on a more modest scale via closely vetted NGOs, not through corrupted U.N. bodies operating at cross-purposes with U.S. foreign policy goals.
James Phillips is Senior Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.
Heritage, March 9, 2009
WebMemo #2333
Full article w/references here
The Obama Administration has announced a huge aid package of $900 million to help ease the humanitarian plight of Palestinians in Gaza and to shore up the bankrupt Palestinian Authority (PA). This surge of soft power is aimed at strengthening Palestinian moderates and helping to clear the way for revived Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. But as long as Hamas remains free to rain rockets down on Israel, these ambitions remain little more than wishful thinking.
Since the 1993 Oslo peace accords, the U.S. has showered $2.2 billion in bilateral aid on the Palestinians, in addition to more than $3.4 billion for humanitarian aid funneled to the Palestinians through dysfunctional U.N. organizations since 1950. This aid has:
- Subsidized the welfare of Palestinian refugees;
- Contributed to a culture of victimization and shrill anti-Israeli and anti-Western radicalism; and
- Freed up some Palestinian groups to focus on destroying Israel rather than on providing for and advancing the long-term interests of the Palestinian people.
- Significantly reduce these overly ambitious aid goals;
- Halt the funding of U.N. agencies that do not adequately screen their workers for terrorist connections or permit external audits; and
- Tighten restrictions on the disbursement of aid to ensure that the aid will not be diverted for hostile purposes.
Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the Obama Administration's pledge of $900 million in aid at an international donors conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. The aid package includes $300 million for humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, $200 million in budget support for the PA, and $400 million to support the PA's Palestinian Reform and Development Plan in the West Bank.
The Obama Administration maintains that this massive aid package will not end up in the pockets of Hamas and other terrorist groups. It plans to funnel assistance through the PA, NGOs, and U.N. agencies. But the PA remains a weak and problematic institution hobbled by corruption, despite recent reforms. And U.N. agencies often have their own agenda as well as an anti-American and anti-Israeli tilt.
The largest U.N. body involved with facilitating aid to the Palestinians is the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), a notoriously opaque and dysfunctional institution that has been infiltrated by Hamas supporters and other Palestinian radicals.[1]Even though it receives over a third of a billion dollars in international funding every year, and despite recurrent reports of inefficiency and corruption, UNRWA is not externally or publicly audited. Such lack of accountability is particularly troubling for an organization that has been chronically dogged by controversy.
There are numerous reports documenting that UNRWA has been infiltrated by Hamas terrorists. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), at least 16 UNRWA staff had been detained by Israeli authorities for security-related crimes, and three had been convicted in military courts of terrorism-related activities.[2]UNRWA's leadership has admitted in the past that Hamas, which the U.S. government has designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, has been able to infiltrate the U.N. agency. Peter Hansen, then-commissioner-general of UNRWA, sparked a political storm in 2004 when he remarked in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that "I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll, and I don't see that as a crime. Hamas, as a political organization, does not mean that every member is a militant, and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another."[3]
Specific examples of radicals working for UNRWA are readily available. For instance, Said Sayyam, the Hamas minister of interior, worked as a teacher at UNRWA schools in Gaza, while the headmaster of another UNRWA school, Awas al-Qiq, was the leader of a cell that build rockets for the Islamic Jihad terrorist group. Several other UNRWA employees left their jobs to run in the 2006 Palestinian elections as Hamas candidates. Despite the fact that the United States is the biggest single donor to UNRWA, that agency continues to resist reform and refuses external audits of its operations. Incredibly, the UNRWA Web site that includes information on its "Special Gaza Appeal" instructs donors to send money through the Commercial Bank of Syria, which has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for money laundering and suspected involvement in moving money to terrorist groups.[4] Clearly, the UNRWA bureaucracy takes an extremely lax attitude on fighting terrorism and should not be trusted to handle aid provided by the U.S. government.
No Taxpayer Subsidies for Terrorist Groups
Given the penetration of UNRWA and other NGOs by terrorist groups, the United States must be absolutely sure that its aid does not end up being diverted. Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL) has warned that "to route $900 million to this area, and let's say that Hamas was only able to steal 10 percent of that, we would still become Hamas's second-largest funder after Iran."[5]
Congress needs to scrutinize the Obama Administration's aid plans to make sure that there is absolutely no chance that funds provided by American taxpayers end up being pocketed by members of terrorist groups--a development that would violate section 301c of the Foreign Assistance Act. The Senate should pull funding for UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority from the $410 billion spending bill currently before Congress. And both houses of Congress should hold hearings and exercise their oversight powers to make sure that future aid to the Palestinians is dispensed on a more modest scale via closely vetted NGOs, not through corrupted U.N. bodies operating at cross-purposes with U.S. foreign policy goals.
James Phillips is Senior Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.
Obama's National Intelligence Crackpot - What does the Jewish lobby have to do with China's dissidents
Obama's National Intelligence Crackpot, by Bret Stephens
What does the Jewish lobby have to do with China's dissidents
WSJ, Mar 10, 2009
On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal published a letter from 17 U.S. ambassadors defending the appointment of Charles Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council. The same day, the leaders of the 1989 protests that led to the massacre at Beijing's Tiananmen Square wrote Barack Obama "to convey our intense dismay at your selection" of Mr. Freeman.
If moral weight could be measured on a zero to 100 scale, the signatories of the latter letter, some of whom spent years in Chinese jails, would probably find themselves in the upper 90s. Where Mr. Freeman and his defenders stand on this scale is something readers can decide for themselves.
So what do Chinese democracy activists have against Mr. Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia? As it turns out, they are all, apparently, part-and-parcel of the Israel Lobby.
In a recent article about Mr. Freeman's nomination in the Huffington Post, M.J. Rosenberg of the left-wing Israel Policy Forum writes that "Everyone involved in the anti-Freeman effort are staunch allies of the lobby." Of course: Only the most fervid Likudnik mandarins could object to Mr. Freeman's 2006 characterization of Mao Zedong as a man who, for all his flaws, had a "brilliance of . . . personality [that] illuminated the farthest corners of his country and inspired many would-be revolutionaries and romantics beyond it." It also takes a Shanghai Zionist to demur from Mr. Freeman's characterization of the Chinese leadership's response to the "mob scene" at Tiananmen as "a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership."
Mr. Freeman knows China well: He served as a translator during Richard Nixon's historic 1972 visit to Beijing. More recently, Mr. Freeman served on the advisory board of CNOOC, the Chinese state-owned oil giant. Is this also a qualification to lead the NIC?
But the Far East is by no means Mr. Freeman's only area of expertise. For many years he has led the Middle East Policy Council, generously funded by Saudi money. It's a generosity Mr. Freeman has amply repaid.
Thus, recalling Mr. Freeman's special pleading on behalf of Riyadh during his stint as ambassador in the early '90s, former Secretary of State James Baker called it "a classic case of clientitis from one of our best diplomats." Mr. Freeman has also been quoted as saying "It is widely charged in the United States that Saudi Arabian education teaches hateful and evil things. I do not think this is the case." Yet according to a 2006 report in the Washington Post, an eighth grade Saudi textbook contains the line, "They are the Jews, whom God has cursed and with whom He is so angry that He will never again be satisfied." Maybe Mr. Freeman was unaware of this. Or maybe he doesn't consider it particularly evil and hateful.
Whatever the case, Mr. Freeman has been among the Kingdom's most devoted fans, going so far as to suggest that King Abdullah "is very rapidly becoming Abdullah the Great." No sycophancy there.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Freeman was a ferocious critic of the war on terror. Not surprising, either, was his opinion about what started it: "We have paid heavily and often in treasure in the past for our unflinching support and unstinting subsidies of Israel's approach to managing its relations with the Arabs," he said in 2006. "Five years ago we began to pay with the blood of our citizens here at home."
This is not a particularly original argument, although in Mr. Freeman's case it becomes a kind of monomania, in which Israel is always the warmonger, always slapping away Arab hands extended in peace. Say what you will about this depiction of reality, there's also a peculiar psychology at work.
Then again, as Middle East scholar Martin Kramer points out, Mr. Freeman's recent views on the causes of 9/11 contradict his view from 1998, when he insisted that al Qaeda's "campaign of violence against the United States has nothing to do with Israel." What changed? Mr. Kramer thinks Mr. Freeman was merely following the lead of his benefactor, Citibank shareholder Prince Al-Waleed, who opined that 9/11 was all about U.S. support for Israel, not what the Kingdom teaches about the infidels.
Is Mr. Freeman merely a shill? That seems unfair, even if it's hard to square his remorseless "realism" in matters Chinese with the touching solicitude he feels for Israel's victims (who, by his count, must be numbered in the tens of millions). James Fallows of the Atlantic has argued that Mr. Freeman's "contrarian inclination" would serve him well in the NIC post. But the line between contrarian and crackpot is a thin one, and knowing the difference between the two is a main task of intelligence.
Adm. Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence who asked Mr. Freeman to serve, is testifying today in Congress. Somebody should ask him if any of Mr. Freeman's views quoted above meet the definition of "crackpot," and, if not, why?
What does the Jewish lobby have to do with China's dissidents
WSJ, Mar 10, 2009
On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal published a letter from 17 U.S. ambassadors defending the appointment of Charles Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council. The same day, the leaders of the 1989 protests that led to the massacre at Beijing's Tiananmen Square wrote Barack Obama "to convey our intense dismay at your selection" of Mr. Freeman.
If moral weight could be measured on a zero to 100 scale, the signatories of the latter letter, some of whom spent years in Chinese jails, would probably find themselves in the upper 90s. Where Mr. Freeman and his defenders stand on this scale is something readers can decide for themselves.
So what do Chinese democracy activists have against Mr. Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia? As it turns out, they are all, apparently, part-and-parcel of the Israel Lobby.
In a recent article about Mr. Freeman's nomination in the Huffington Post, M.J. Rosenberg of the left-wing Israel Policy Forum writes that "Everyone involved in the anti-Freeman effort are staunch allies of the lobby." Of course: Only the most fervid Likudnik mandarins could object to Mr. Freeman's 2006 characterization of Mao Zedong as a man who, for all his flaws, had a "brilliance of . . . personality [that] illuminated the farthest corners of his country and inspired many would-be revolutionaries and romantics beyond it." It also takes a Shanghai Zionist to demur from Mr. Freeman's characterization of the Chinese leadership's response to the "mob scene" at Tiananmen as "a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership."
Mr. Freeman knows China well: He served as a translator during Richard Nixon's historic 1972 visit to Beijing. More recently, Mr. Freeman served on the advisory board of CNOOC, the Chinese state-owned oil giant. Is this also a qualification to lead the NIC?
But the Far East is by no means Mr. Freeman's only area of expertise. For many years he has led the Middle East Policy Council, generously funded by Saudi money. It's a generosity Mr. Freeman has amply repaid.
Thus, recalling Mr. Freeman's special pleading on behalf of Riyadh during his stint as ambassador in the early '90s, former Secretary of State James Baker called it "a classic case of clientitis from one of our best diplomats." Mr. Freeman has also been quoted as saying "It is widely charged in the United States that Saudi Arabian education teaches hateful and evil things. I do not think this is the case." Yet according to a 2006 report in the Washington Post, an eighth grade Saudi textbook contains the line, "They are the Jews, whom God has cursed and with whom He is so angry that He will never again be satisfied." Maybe Mr. Freeman was unaware of this. Or maybe he doesn't consider it particularly evil and hateful.
Whatever the case, Mr. Freeman has been among the Kingdom's most devoted fans, going so far as to suggest that King Abdullah "is very rapidly becoming Abdullah the Great." No sycophancy there.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Freeman was a ferocious critic of the war on terror. Not surprising, either, was his opinion about what started it: "We have paid heavily and often in treasure in the past for our unflinching support and unstinting subsidies of Israel's approach to managing its relations with the Arabs," he said in 2006. "Five years ago we began to pay with the blood of our citizens here at home."
This is not a particularly original argument, although in Mr. Freeman's case it becomes a kind of monomania, in which Israel is always the warmonger, always slapping away Arab hands extended in peace. Say what you will about this depiction of reality, there's also a peculiar psychology at work.
Then again, as Middle East scholar Martin Kramer points out, Mr. Freeman's recent views on the causes of 9/11 contradict his view from 1998, when he insisted that al Qaeda's "campaign of violence against the United States has nothing to do with Israel." What changed? Mr. Kramer thinks Mr. Freeman was merely following the lead of his benefactor, Citibank shareholder Prince Al-Waleed, who opined that 9/11 was all about U.S. support for Israel, not what the Kingdom teaches about the infidels.
Is Mr. Freeman merely a shill? That seems unfair, even if it's hard to square his remorseless "realism" in matters Chinese with the touching solicitude he feels for Israel's victims (who, by his count, must be numbered in the tens of millions). James Fallows of the Atlantic has argued that Mr. Freeman's "contrarian inclination" would serve him well in the NIC post. But the line between contrarian and crackpot is a thin one, and knowing the difference between the two is a main task of intelligence.
Adm. Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence who asked Mr. Freeman to serve, is testifying today in Congress. Somebody should ask him if any of Mr. Freeman's views quoted above meet the definition of "crackpot," and, if not, why?
Monday, March 9, 2009
WaPo: 'Direct diplomacy' with Iran and Syria starts small
A Toe in the Water. WaPo Editorial
'Direct diplomacy' with Iran and Syria starts small.
TWP, Monday, March 9, 2009; A14
THE OBAMA administration's opening forays into foreign affairs have been as calibrated and cautious as its domestic policy has been bold. Last month President Obama laid out a strategy for Iraq that tracked more closely with that recommended by the military commanders appointed by President George W. Bush than with his own campaign promises. Now Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has opened Mr. Obama's much-promised "direct diplomacy" with adversaries with a couple of low-level contacts with Syria and an invitation to Iran to join a multinational conference on Afghanistan. Ms. Clinton says that she is "testing the waters," and she has been appropriately guarded in her expectations. That's good: A bolder U.S. offer to either country would alarm U.S. allies in the region and probably be rejected.
During her first tour of the Middle East as secretary of state, Ms. Clinton got an earful from Arab rulers alarmed both by Iran's continued belligerence across the region and by the notion that a deal between Washington and Tehran might be in the works. "There's a great deal of concern about Iran in the entire region," she said after three days of talks; a senior State Department official said that Ms. Clinton had expressed doubt in one of her private meetings that Iran would respond to a U.S. offer of engagement. That was only logical, given the latest tirade of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who called Israel "a cancerous tumor," rejected Mideast peace negotiations and said that Mr. Obama was following the same "crooked path" as Mr. Bush. Ms. Clinton's suggestion that Tehran participate in the Afghanistan conference came on a front where the two countries have collaborated in the past; Iran's initial response was positive.
The outreach to Syria seems more promising to many. Several former senior U.S. diplomats in the Middle East are saying that Bashar al-Assad's regime is eager to improve relations with the United States. Syria seeks an easing of U.S. economic sanctions and would also like to see U.S. mediation of peace talks with Israel. For its part, the administration wants Syria to curtail its material support for Hamas and Hezbollah; both the United States and Israel dream of rupturing Syria's alliance with Iran.
There are big and probably insurmountable obstacles to any such breakthrough. Mr. Assad heads a murderous regime; a United Nations tribunal was established last week to consider political murders in Lebanon that most likely were authored in Damascus. Mr. Assad continues to seek hegemony over Lebanon, something that the United States should not countenance. Israel's next government will probably be led by Binyamin Netanyahu, who promised immediately before his election that he would not return the occupied Golan Heights to Syria.
Yet the Obama administration, Syria and Israel may all benefit by engaging even in negotiations that go nowhere. The appearance of better relations with the United States may attract more European investment and diplomatic support for Syria; it may also inject an irritant into relations between Syria and Iran. Mr. Netanyahu's unwillingness to discuss Palestinian statehood may draw him toward talks with Syria despite his pledges. Such modest movement may be all Mr. Obama can hope for from "direct diplomacy," at least in the short term.
'Direct diplomacy' with Iran and Syria starts small.
TWP, Monday, March 9, 2009; A14
THE OBAMA administration's opening forays into foreign affairs have been as calibrated and cautious as its domestic policy has been bold. Last month President Obama laid out a strategy for Iraq that tracked more closely with that recommended by the military commanders appointed by President George W. Bush than with his own campaign promises. Now Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has opened Mr. Obama's much-promised "direct diplomacy" with adversaries with a couple of low-level contacts with Syria and an invitation to Iran to join a multinational conference on Afghanistan. Ms. Clinton says that she is "testing the waters," and she has been appropriately guarded in her expectations. That's good: A bolder U.S. offer to either country would alarm U.S. allies in the region and probably be rejected.
During her first tour of the Middle East as secretary of state, Ms. Clinton got an earful from Arab rulers alarmed both by Iran's continued belligerence across the region and by the notion that a deal between Washington and Tehran might be in the works. "There's a great deal of concern about Iran in the entire region," she said after three days of talks; a senior State Department official said that Ms. Clinton had expressed doubt in one of her private meetings that Iran would respond to a U.S. offer of engagement. That was only logical, given the latest tirade of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who called Israel "a cancerous tumor," rejected Mideast peace negotiations and said that Mr. Obama was following the same "crooked path" as Mr. Bush. Ms. Clinton's suggestion that Tehran participate in the Afghanistan conference came on a front where the two countries have collaborated in the past; Iran's initial response was positive.
The outreach to Syria seems more promising to many. Several former senior U.S. diplomats in the Middle East are saying that Bashar al-Assad's regime is eager to improve relations with the United States. Syria seeks an easing of U.S. economic sanctions and would also like to see U.S. mediation of peace talks with Israel. For its part, the administration wants Syria to curtail its material support for Hamas and Hezbollah; both the United States and Israel dream of rupturing Syria's alliance with Iran.
There are big and probably insurmountable obstacles to any such breakthrough. Mr. Assad heads a murderous regime; a United Nations tribunal was established last week to consider political murders in Lebanon that most likely were authored in Damascus. Mr. Assad continues to seek hegemony over Lebanon, something that the United States should not countenance. Israel's next government will probably be led by Binyamin Netanyahu, who promised immediately before his election that he would not return the occupied Golan Heights to Syria.
Yet the Obama administration, Syria and Israel may all benefit by engaging even in negotiations that go nowhere. The appearance of better relations with the United States may attract more European investment and diplomatic support for Syria; it may also inject an irritant into relations between Syria and Iran. Mr. Netanyahu's unwillingness to discuss Palestinian statehood may draw him toward talks with Syria despite his pledges. Such modest movement may be all Mr. Obama can hope for from "direct diplomacy," at least in the short term.
Monday, March 2, 2009
United States Assistance to the Palestinians
United States Assistance to the Palestinians. Office of the Spokesman, US State Dept
Washington, DC, March 2, 2009
At the March 2, 2009 donors conference for Gaza recovery in Sharm el Sheikh, the United States announced its intent to provide support to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Gaza recovery totaling approximately $900 million. The assistance will be available in 2009, and is subject to Congressional approval. The assistance includes continued immediate humanitarian support to the Palestinian people in Gaza, including for the UN Consolidated Appeal; budget support for the PA; and further support for the priorities identified by the PA in the Palestinian Reform and Development Plan.
We will work closely with Congress on our assistance package. It will include the following components:
Up to $300 million to meet urgent humanitarian needs, including those identified under the UN appeal and to support the PA’s plan for Gaza. This is to be provided through USAID in coordination with UN agencies, international organizations and USAID grantees, and through the Department of State for UN agencies, ICRC, and other humanitarian organizations.
$200 million in budget support to address the PA’s anticipated $1.15 billion budget shortfall for 2009.
Up to $400 million in 2009 to support priorities identified in the Palestinian Reform and Development Plan (PRDP) that will help the PA solidify economic and institutional reforms in the West Bank. This includes support for private sector development, essential public infrastructure improvements in the West Bank, and security sector assistance coordinated by the U.S. Security Coordinator (USSC).
In 2008, the U.S. was the single largest national donor to the Palestinian people. The U.S. exceeded its December 2007 Paris Donors’ Conference pledge of $555 million, committing more than $600 million, including $300 million in direct budget support and $184.7 million in assistance for Palestinian refugees. In addition, since the Gaza crisis began in December 2008, the U.S. has provided over $65 million in immediate humanitarian assistance, primarily through UN agencies and NGOs.
PRN: 2009/180
Washington, DC, March 2, 2009
At the March 2, 2009 donors conference for Gaza recovery in Sharm el Sheikh, the United States announced its intent to provide support to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Gaza recovery totaling approximately $900 million. The assistance will be available in 2009, and is subject to Congressional approval. The assistance includes continued immediate humanitarian support to the Palestinian people in Gaza, including for the UN Consolidated Appeal; budget support for the PA; and further support for the priorities identified by the PA in the Palestinian Reform and Development Plan.
We will work closely with Congress on our assistance package. It will include the following components:
Up to $300 million to meet urgent humanitarian needs, including those identified under the UN appeal and to support the PA’s plan for Gaza. This is to be provided through USAID in coordination with UN agencies, international organizations and USAID grantees, and through the Department of State for UN agencies, ICRC, and other humanitarian organizations.
$200 million in budget support to address the PA’s anticipated $1.15 billion budget shortfall for 2009.
Up to $400 million in 2009 to support priorities identified in the Palestinian Reform and Development Plan (PRDP) that will help the PA solidify economic and institutional reforms in the West Bank. This includes support for private sector development, essential public infrastructure improvements in the West Bank, and security sector assistance coordinated by the U.S. Security Coordinator (USSC).
In 2008, the U.S. was the single largest national donor to the Palestinian people. The U.S. exceeded its December 2007 Paris Donors’ Conference pledge of $555 million, committing more than $600 million, including $300 million in direct budget support and $184.7 million in assistance for Palestinian refugees. In addition, since the Gaza crisis began in December 2008, the U.S. has provided over $65 million in immediate humanitarian assistance, primarily through UN agencies and NGOs.
PRN: 2009/180
Thursday, February 12, 2009
US Gov't Help: Gaza Humanitarian Relief
Gaza Humanitarian Relief
Robert Wood, Acting Spokesman, Office of the Spokesman
Public Affairs, Washington, DC, February 12, 2009
Question Taken at the Daily Press Briefing on February 10, 2009
Question: Have we provided or do we have plans to provide additional humanitarian aid to Gaza (in addition to the 20 million)?
Answer: At this time, the United States government has contributed almost $60 million for the provision of food, potable water, medicine, and plastic sheeting for emergency shelter needs.
In addition, the State Department has contributed money to support the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the International Committee of the Red Cross. For example, since the beginning of the most recent conflict, it has dedicated nearly $55 million to these two organizations for food, shelter and other emergency relief in West Bank and Gaza.
Moreover, USAID has provided almost $6 million for emergency assistance to Gaza. Food, milk powder, blankets, plastic sheeting, and other nonfood items have been distributed to beneficiaries, and the distributions are continuing. This assistance is distributed to beneficiaries through USAID’s implementing partners under several recently awarded grants, including grants to Mercy Corps, American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), CHF International, Relief International, Catholic Relief Services, and CARE International. Food distributions are done through USAID’s grant to the World Food Program (WFP).
The needs of Gaza’s Palestinians remain acute. The U.S. government will continue to monitor the situation to judge what additional contributions would be the most helpful.
PRN: 121
Robert Wood, Acting Spokesman, Office of the Spokesman
Public Affairs, Washington, DC, February 12, 2009
Question Taken at the Daily Press Briefing on February 10, 2009
Question: Have we provided or do we have plans to provide additional humanitarian aid to Gaza (in addition to the 20 million)?
Answer: At this time, the United States government has contributed almost $60 million for the provision of food, potable water, medicine, and plastic sheeting for emergency shelter needs.
In addition, the State Department has contributed money to support the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the International Committee of the Red Cross. For example, since the beginning of the most recent conflict, it has dedicated nearly $55 million to these two organizations for food, shelter and other emergency relief in West Bank and Gaza.
Moreover, USAID has provided almost $6 million for emergency assistance to Gaza. Food, milk powder, blankets, plastic sheeting, and other nonfood items have been distributed to beneficiaries, and the distributions are continuing. This assistance is distributed to beneficiaries through USAID’s implementing partners under several recently awarded grants, including grants to Mercy Corps, American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), CHF International, Relief International, Catholic Relief Services, and CARE International. Food distributions are done through USAID’s grant to the World Food Program (WFP).
The needs of Gaza’s Palestinians remain acute. The U.S. government will continue to monitor the situation to judge what additional contributions would be the most helpful.
PRN: 121
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Why Democrats Ignore Pro-Palestinian Activists
Why Congress Ignores Pro-Palestinian Activists, by Eric Trager
Contentions/Commentary Blog, Jan 13, 2009 - 7:45 AM
Juan Cole has a typically conspiratorial theory for explaining why congressmen have ignored the pro-Palestinian marches that occurred in a handful of American cities this past weekend:
Indeed, maybe congressmen ignore pro-Palestinian rallies because the ANSWER Coalition - an offshoot of the communist World Workers Party (WWP) - organizes them. Maybe congressmen know that the WWP - a longtime supporter of Fidel Castro and Kim Jong-Il - actively protested Slobodan Milosevic’s war crimes tribunal, and therefore feel uncomfortable associating with it.
Or, maybe congressmen stay away because these rallies are just as anti-American as they are pro-Palestinian, with banners declaring the U.S. “racist” and “terrorist.” Or maybe it’s because congressmen don’t want to march with protesters who cover their faces, which is something that only truly nefarious groups do in this country. Or maybe it’s because congressmen don’t want to be around people who burn flags; haul mock coffins; splatter clotheslines of baby t-shirts with fake blood; and never - never - advocate for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Of course, these issues are just the tip of the iceberg. But, if pro-Palestinian activists really want to know why their cries fall on deaf ears in Washington, they should start by looking in the mirror. Politicians are, after all, deeply image-conscious: they are unlikely to march alongside people who appear immoderate, and certainly won’t give much weight to rallies that communist-affiliated groups organize. It’s strange that Juan Cole - who claims political expertise with his regular treatises on the remarkable influence of “Likudniks” - doesn’t recognize this most basic political reality.
(By the way, the images of pro-Palestinian activists that I linked to in this post were from the recent demonstration in San Francisco.)
Contentions/Commentary Blog, Jan 13, 2009 - 7:45 AM
Juan Cole has a typically conspiratorial theory for explaining why congressmen have ignored the pro-Palestinian marches that occurred in a handful of American cities this past weekend:
The US Senate and the US House of Representatives are not afraid of street protests in San Francisco. And why should they be? What sort of threat is it to them, that we say if they don’t change their legislation we will . . . walk in the street? Their response would be, ‘Make sure you have comfortable shoes; now, I have to see this nice lobbyist in my office in a thousand dollar suit and alligator shoes who has an enormous check for my current political campaign.’Well, I have an alternative to Cole’s thesis: maybe it’s not the slimy pro-Israel lobbyists - who are so rich that they practically wear money - that pro-Palestinian activists should blame for not being heard. Rather, maybe the problem is the pro-Palestinian activists themselves.
Indeed, maybe congressmen ignore pro-Palestinian rallies because the ANSWER Coalition - an offshoot of the communist World Workers Party (WWP) - organizes them. Maybe congressmen know that the WWP - a longtime supporter of Fidel Castro and Kim Jong-Il - actively protested Slobodan Milosevic’s war crimes tribunal, and therefore feel uncomfortable associating with it.
Or, maybe congressmen stay away because these rallies are just as anti-American as they are pro-Palestinian, with banners declaring the U.S. “racist” and “terrorist.” Or maybe it’s because congressmen don’t want to march with protesters who cover their faces, which is something that only truly nefarious groups do in this country. Or maybe it’s because congressmen don’t want to be around people who burn flags; haul mock coffins; splatter clotheslines of baby t-shirts with fake blood; and never - never - advocate for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Of course, these issues are just the tip of the iceberg. But, if pro-Palestinian activists really want to know why their cries fall on deaf ears in Washington, they should start by looking in the mirror. Politicians are, after all, deeply image-conscious: they are unlikely to march alongside people who appear immoderate, and certainly won’t give much weight to rallies that communist-affiliated groups organize. It’s strange that Juan Cole - who claims political expertise with his regular treatises on the remarkable influence of “Likudniks” - doesn’t recognize this most basic political reality.
(By the way, the images of pro-Palestinian activists that I linked to in this post were from the recent demonstration in San Francisco.)
Saturday, January 10, 2009
U.S. Rejected Aid for Israeli Raid on Iranian Nuclear Site
U.S. Rejected Aid for Israeli Raid on Iranian Nuclear Site, by David E Sanger
TNYT, January 11, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.
White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country’s only known uranium enrichment plant is located.
The White House denied that request outright, American officials said, and the Israelis backed off their plans, at least temporarily. But the tense exchanges also prompted the White House to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a major covert program that Mr. Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Barack Obama.
This account of the expanded American covert program and the Bush administration’s efforts to dissuade Israel from an aerial attack on Iran emerged in interviews over the past 15 months with current and former American officials, outside experts, international nuclear inspectors and European and Israeli officials. None would speak on the record because of the great secrecy surrounding the intelligence developed on Iran.
Several details of the covert effort have been omitted from this account, at the request of senior United States intelligence and administration officials, to avoid harming continuing operations.
The interviews also suggest that while Mr. Bush was extensively briefed on options for an overt American attack on Iran’s facilities, he never instructed the Pentagon to move beyond contingency planning, even during the final year of his presidency, contrary to what some critics have suggested.
The interviews also indicate that Mr. Bush was convinced by top administration officials, led by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, that any overt attack on Iran would probably prove ineffective, lead to the expulsion of international inspectors and drive Iran’s nuclear effort further out of view. Mr. Bush and his aides also discussed the possibility that an airstrike could ignite a broad Middle East war in which America’s 140,000 troops in Iraq would inevitably become involved.
Instead, Mr. Bush embraced more intensive covert operations actions aimed at Iran, the interviews show, having concluded that the sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies were failing to slow the uranium enrichment efforts. Those covert operations, and the question of whether Israel will settle for something less than a conventional attack on Iran, pose immediate and wrenching decisions for Mr. Obama.
The covert American program, started in early 2008, includes renewed American efforts to penetrate Iran’s nuclear supply chain abroad, along with new efforts, some of them experimental, to undermine electrical systems, computer systems and other networks on which Iran relies. It is aimed at delaying the day that Iran can produce the weapons-grade fuel and designs it needs to produce a workable nuclear weapon.
Knowledge of the program has been closely held, yet inside the Bush administration some officials are skeptical about its chances of success, arguing that past efforts to undermine Iran’s nuclear program have been detected by the Iranians and have only delayed, not derailed, their drive to unlock the secrets of uranium enrichment.
Late last year, international inspectors estimated that Iran had 3,800 centrifuges spinning, but American intelligence officials now estimate that the figure is 4,000 to 5,000, enough to produce about one weapon’s worth of uranium every eight months or so.
While declining to be specific, one American official dismissed the latest covert operations against Iran as “science experiments.” One senior intelligence official argued that as Mr. Bush prepared to leave office, the Iranians were already so close to achieving a weapons capacity that they were unlikely to be stopped.
Others disagreed, making the point that the Israelis would not have been dissuaded from conducting an attack if they believed that the American effort was unlikely to prove effective.
Since his election on Nov. 4, Mr. Obama has been extensively briefed on the American actions in Iran, though his transition aides have refused to comment on the issue.
Early in his presidency, Mr. Obama must decide whether the covert actions begun by Mr. Bush are worth the risks of disrupting what he has pledged will be a more active diplomatic effort to engage with Iran.
Either course could carry risks for Mr. Obama. An inherited intelligence or military mission that went wrong could backfire, as happened to President Kennedy with the Bay of Pigs operation in Cuba. But a decision to pull back on operations aimed at Iran could leave Mr. Obama vulnerable to charges that he is allowing Iran to speed ahead toward a nuclear capacity, one that could change the contours of power in the Middle East.
An Intelligence Conflict
Israel’s effort to obtain the weapons, refueling capacity and permission to fly over Iraq for an attack on Iran grew out of its disbelief and anger at an American intelligence assessment completed in late 2007 that concluded that Iran had effectively suspended its development of nuclear weapons four years earlier.
That conclusion also stunned Mr. Bush’s national security team — and Mr. Bush himself, who was deeply suspicious of the conclusion, according to officials who discussed it with him.
The assessment, a National Intelligence Estimate, was based on a trove of Iranian reports obtained by penetrating Iran’s computer networks.
Those reports indicated that Iranian engineers had been ordered to halt development of a nuclear warhead in 2003, even while they continued to speed ahead in enriching uranium, the most difficult obstacle to building a weapon.
The “key judgments” of the National Intelligence Estimate, which were publicly released, emphasized the suspension of the weapons work.
The public version made only glancing reference to evidence described at great length in the 140-page classified version of the assessment: the suspicion that Iran had 10 or 15 other nuclear-related facilities, never opened to international inspectors, where enrichment activity, weapons work or the manufacturing of centrifuges might be taking place.
The Israelis responded angrily and rebutted the American report, providing American intelligence officials and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with evidence that they said indicated that the Iranians were still working on a weapon.
While the Americans were not convinced that the Iranian weapons development was continuing, the Israelis were not the only ones highly critical of the United States report. Secretary Gates, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said the report had presented the evidence poorly, underemphasizing the importance of Iran’s enrichment activity and overemphasizing the suspension of a weapons-design effort that could easily be turned back on.
In an interview, Mr. Gates said that in his whole career he had never seen “an N.I.E. that had such an impact on U.S. diplomacy,” because “people figured, well, the military option is now off the table.”
Prime Minister Olmert came to the same conclusion. He had previously expected, according to several Americans and Israeli officials, that Mr. Bush would deal with Iran’s nuclear program before he left office. “Now,” said one American official who bore the brunt of Israel’s reaction, “they didn’t believe he would.”
Attack Planning
Early in 2008, the Israeli government signaled that it might be preparing to take matters into its own hands. In a series of meetings, Israeli officials asked Washington for a new generation of powerful bunker-busters, far more capable of blowing up a deep underground plant than anything in Israel’s arsenal of conventional weapons. They asked for refueling equipment that would allow their aircraft to reach Iran and return to Israel. And they asked for the right to fly over Iraq.
Mr. Bush deflected the first two requests, pushing the issue off, but “we said ‘hell no’ to the overflights,” one of his top aides said. At the White House and the Pentagon, there was widespread concern that a political uproar in Iraq about the use of its American-controlled airspace could result in the expulsion of American forces from the country.
The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Sallai Meridor, declined several requests over the past four weeks to be interviewed about Israel’s efforts to obtain the weapons from Washington, saying through aides that he was too busy.
Last June, the Israelis conducted an exercise over the Mediterranean Sea that appeared to be a dry run for an attack on the enrichment plant at Natanz. When the exercise was analyzed at the Pentagon, officials concluded that the distances flown almost exactly equaled the distance between Israel and the Iranian nuclear site.
“This really spooked a lot of people,” one White House official said. White House officials discussed the possibility that the Israelis would fly over Iraq without American permission. In that case, would the American military be ordered to shoot them down? If the United States did not interfere to stop an Israeli attack, would the Bush administration be accused of being complicit in it?
Admiral Mullen, traveling to Israel in early July on a previously scheduled trip, questioned Israeli officials about their intentions. His Israeli counterpart, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, argued that an aerial attack could set Iran’s program back by two or three years, according to officials familiar with the exchange. The American estimates at the time were far more conservative.
Yet by the time Admiral Mullen made his visit, Israeli officials appear to have concluded that without American help, they were not yet capable of hitting the site effectively enough to strike a decisive blow against the Iranian program.
The United States did give Israel one item on its shopping list: high-powered radar, called the X-Band, to detect any Iranian missile launchings. It was the only element in the Israeli request that could be used solely for defense, not offense.
Mr. Gates’s spokesman, Geoff Morrell, said last week that Mr. Gates — whom Mr. Obama is retaining as defense secretary — believed that “a potential strike on the Iranian facilities is not something that we or anyone else should be pursuing at this time.”
A New Covert Push
Throughout 2008, the Bush administration insisted that it had a plan to deal with the Iranians: applying overwhelming financial pressure that would persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear program, as foreign enterprises like the French company Total pulled out of Iranian oil projects, European banks cut financing, and trade credits were squeezed.
But the Iranians were making uranium faster than the sanctions were making progress. As Mr. Bush realized that the sanctions he had pressed for were inadequate and his military options untenable, he turned to the C.I.A. His hope, several people involved in the program said, was to create some leverage against the Iranians, by setting back their nuclear program while sanctions continued and, more recently, oil prices dropped precipitously.
There were two specific objectives: to slow progress at Natanz and other known and suspected nuclear facilities, and keep the pressure on a little-known Iranian professor named Mohsen Fakrizadeh, a scientist described in classified portions of American intelligence reports as deeply involved in an effort to design a nuclear warhead for Iran.
Past American-led efforts aimed at Natanz had yielded little result. Several years ago, foreign intelligence services tinkered with individual power units that Iran bought in Turkey to drive its centrifuges, the floor-to-ceiling silvery tubes that spin at the speed of sound, enriching uranium for use in power stations or, with additional enrichment, nuclear weapons.
A number of centrifuges blew up, prompting public declarations of sabotage by Iranian officials. An engineer in Switzerland, who worked with the Pakistani nuclear black-marketeer Abdul Qadeer Khan, had been “turned” by American intelligence officials and helped them slip faulty technology into parts bought by the Iranians.
What Mr. Bush authorized, and informed a narrow group of Congressional leaders about, was a far broader effort, aimed at the entire industrial infrastructure that supports the Iranian nuclear program. Some of the efforts focused on ways to destabilize the centrifuges. The details are closely held, for obvious reasons, by American officials. One official, however, said, “It was not until the last year that they got really imaginative about what one could do to screw up the system.”
Then, he cautioned, “none of these are game-changers,” meaning that the efforts would not necessarily cripple the Iranian program. Others in the administration strongly disagree.
In the end, success or failure may come down to how much pressure can be brought to bear on Mr. Fakrizadeh, whom the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate identifies, in its classified sections, as the manager of Project 110 and Project 111. According to a presentation by the chief inspector of the International Atomic Energy Agency, those were the names for two Iranian efforts that appeared to be dedicated to designing a warhead and making it work with an Iranian missile. Iranian officials say the projects are a fiction, made up by the United States.
While the international agency readily concedes that the evidence about the two projects remains murky, one of the documents it briefly displayed at a meeting of the agency’s member countries in Vienna last year, from Mr. Fakrizadeh’s projects, showed the chronology of a missile launching, ending with a warhead exploding about 650 yards above ground — approximately the altitude from which the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was detonated.
The exact status of Mr. Fakrizadeh’s projects today is unclear. While the National Intelligence Estimate reported that activity on Projects 110 and 111 had been halted, the fear among intelligence agencies is that if the weapons design projects are turned back on, will they know?
David E. Sanger is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times. Reporting for this article was developed in the course of research for “The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power,” to be published Tuesday by Harmony Books.
TNYT, January 11, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.
White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country’s only known uranium enrichment plant is located.
The White House denied that request outright, American officials said, and the Israelis backed off their plans, at least temporarily. But the tense exchanges also prompted the White House to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a major covert program that Mr. Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Barack Obama.
This account of the expanded American covert program and the Bush administration’s efforts to dissuade Israel from an aerial attack on Iran emerged in interviews over the past 15 months with current and former American officials, outside experts, international nuclear inspectors and European and Israeli officials. None would speak on the record because of the great secrecy surrounding the intelligence developed on Iran.
Several details of the covert effort have been omitted from this account, at the request of senior United States intelligence and administration officials, to avoid harming continuing operations.
The interviews also suggest that while Mr. Bush was extensively briefed on options for an overt American attack on Iran’s facilities, he never instructed the Pentagon to move beyond contingency planning, even during the final year of his presidency, contrary to what some critics have suggested.
The interviews also indicate that Mr. Bush was convinced by top administration officials, led by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, that any overt attack on Iran would probably prove ineffective, lead to the expulsion of international inspectors and drive Iran’s nuclear effort further out of view. Mr. Bush and his aides also discussed the possibility that an airstrike could ignite a broad Middle East war in which America’s 140,000 troops in Iraq would inevitably become involved.
Instead, Mr. Bush embraced more intensive covert operations actions aimed at Iran, the interviews show, having concluded that the sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies were failing to slow the uranium enrichment efforts. Those covert operations, and the question of whether Israel will settle for something less than a conventional attack on Iran, pose immediate and wrenching decisions for Mr. Obama.
The covert American program, started in early 2008, includes renewed American efforts to penetrate Iran’s nuclear supply chain abroad, along with new efforts, some of them experimental, to undermine electrical systems, computer systems and other networks on which Iran relies. It is aimed at delaying the day that Iran can produce the weapons-grade fuel and designs it needs to produce a workable nuclear weapon.
Knowledge of the program has been closely held, yet inside the Bush administration some officials are skeptical about its chances of success, arguing that past efforts to undermine Iran’s nuclear program have been detected by the Iranians and have only delayed, not derailed, their drive to unlock the secrets of uranium enrichment.
Late last year, international inspectors estimated that Iran had 3,800 centrifuges spinning, but American intelligence officials now estimate that the figure is 4,000 to 5,000, enough to produce about one weapon’s worth of uranium every eight months or so.
While declining to be specific, one American official dismissed the latest covert operations against Iran as “science experiments.” One senior intelligence official argued that as Mr. Bush prepared to leave office, the Iranians were already so close to achieving a weapons capacity that they were unlikely to be stopped.
Others disagreed, making the point that the Israelis would not have been dissuaded from conducting an attack if they believed that the American effort was unlikely to prove effective.
Since his election on Nov. 4, Mr. Obama has been extensively briefed on the American actions in Iran, though his transition aides have refused to comment on the issue.
Early in his presidency, Mr. Obama must decide whether the covert actions begun by Mr. Bush are worth the risks of disrupting what he has pledged will be a more active diplomatic effort to engage with Iran.
Either course could carry risks for Mr. Obama. An inherited intelligence or military mission that went wrong could backfire, as happened to President Kennedy with the Bay of Pigs operation in Cuba. But a decision to pull back on operations aimed at Iran could leave Mr. Obama vulnerable to charges that he is allowing Iran to speed ahead toward a nuclear capacity, one that could change the contours of power in the Middle East.
An Intelligence Conflict
Israel’s effort to obtain the weapons, refueling capacity and permission to fly over Iraq for an attack on Iran grew out of its disbelief and anger at an American intelligence assessment completed in late 2007 that concluded that Iran had effectively suspended its development of nuclear weapons four years earlier.
That conclusion also stunned Mr. Bush’s national security team — and Mr. Bush himself, who was deeply suspicious of the conclusion, according to officials who discussed it with him.
The assessment, a National Intelligence Estimate, was based on a trove of Iranian reports obtained by penetrating Iran’s computer networks.
Those reports indicated that Iranian engineers had been ordered to halt development of a nuclear warhead in 2003, even while they continued to speed ahead in enriching uranium, the most difficult obstacle to building a weapon.
The “key judgments” of the National Intelligence Estimate, which were publicly released, emphasized the suspension of the weapons work.
The public version made only glancing reference to evidence described at great length in the 140-page classified version of the assessment: the suspicion that Iran had 10 or 15 other nuclear-related facilities, never opened to international inspectors, where enrichment activity, weapons work or the manufacturing of centrifuges might be taking place.
The Israelis responded angrily and rebutted the American report, providing American intelligence officials and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with evidence that they said indicated that the Iranians were still working on a weapon.
While the Americans were not convinced that the Iranian weapons development was continuing, the Israelis were not the only ones highly critical of the United States report. Secretary Gates, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said the report had presented the evidence poorly, underemphasizing the importance of Iran’s enrichment activity and overemphasizing the suspension of a weapons-design effort that could easily be turned back on.
In an interview, Mr. Gates said that in his whole career he had never seen “an N.I.E. that had such an impact on U.S. diplomacy,” because “people figured, well, the military option is now off the table.”
Prime Minister Olmert came to the same conclusion. He had previously expected, according to several Americans and Israeli officials, that Mr. Bush would deal with Iran’s nuclear program before he left office. “Now,” said one American official who bore the brunt of Israel’s reaction, “they didn’t believe he would.”
Attack Planning
Early in 2008, the Israeli government signaled that it might be preparing to take matters into its own hands. In a series of meetings, Israeli officials asked Washington for a new generation of powerful bunker-busters, far more capable of blowing up a deep underground plant than anything in Israel’s arsenal of conventional weapons. They asked for refueling equipment that would allow their aircraft to reach Iran and return to Israel. And they asked for the right to fly over Iraq.
Mr. Bush deflected the first two requests, pushing the issue off, but “we said ‘hell no’ to the overflights,” one of his top aides said. At the White House and the Pentagon, there was widespread concern that a political uproar in Iraq about the use of its American-controlled airspace could result in the expulsion of American forces from the country.
The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Sallai Meridor, declined several requests over the past four weeks to be interviewed about Israel’s efforts to obtain the weapons from Washington, saying through aides that he was too busy.
Last June, the Israelis conducted an exercise over the Mediterranean Sea that appeared to be a dry run for an attack on the enrichment plant at Natanz. When the exercise was analyzed at the Pentagon, officials concluded that the distances flown almost exactly equaled the distance between Israel and the Iranian nuclear site.
“This really spooked a lot of people,” one White House official said. White House officials discussed the possibility that the Israelis would fly over Iraq without American permission. In that case, would the American military be ordered to shoot them down? If the United States did not interfere to stop an Israeli attack, would the Bush administration be accused of being complicit in it?
Admiral Mullen, traveling to Israel in early July on a previously scheduled trip, questioned Israeli officials about their intentions. His Israeli counterpart, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, argued that an aerial attack could set Iran’s program back by two or three years, according to officials familiar with the exchange. The American estimates at the time were far more conservative.
Yet by the time Admiral Mullen made his visit, Israeli officials appear to have concluded that without American help, they were not yet capable of hitting the site effectively enough to strike a decisive blow against the Iranian program.
The United States did give Israel one item on its shopping list: high-powered radar, called the X-Band, to detect any Iranian missile launchings. It was the only element in the Israeli request that could be used solely for defense, not offense.
Mr. Gates’s spokesman, Geoff Morrell, said last week that Mr. Gates — whom Mr. Obama is retaining as defense secretary — believed that “a potential strike on the Iranian facilities is not something that we or anyone else should be pursuing at this time.”
A New Covert Push
Throughout 2008, the Bush administration insisted that it had a plan to deal with the Iranians: applying overwhelming financial pressure that would persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear program, as foreign enterprises like the French company Total pulled out of Iranian oil projects, European banks cut financing, and trade credits were squeezed.
But the Iranians were making uranium faster than the sanctions were making progress. As Mr. Bush realized that the sanctions he had pressed for were inadequate and his military options untenable, he turned to the C.I.A. His hope, several people involved in the program said, was to create some leverage against the Iranians, by setting back their nuclear program while sanctions continued and, more recently, oil prices dropped precipitously.
There were two specific objectives: to slow progress at Natanz and other known and suspected nuclear facilities, and keep the pressure on a little-known Iranian professor named Mohsen Fakrizadeh, a scientist described in classified portions of American intelligence reports as deeply involved in an effort to design a nuclear warhead for Iran.
Past American-led efforts aimed at Natanz had yielded little result. Several years ago, foreign intelligence services tinkered with individual power units that Iran bought in Turkey to drive its centrifuges, the floor-to-ceiling silvery tubes that spin at the speed of sound, enriching uranium for use in power stations or, with additional enrichment, nuclear weapons.
A number of centrifuges blew up, prompting public declarations of sabotage by Iranian officials. An engineer in Switzerland, who worked with the Pakistani nuclear black-marketeer Abdul Qadeer Khan, had been “turned” by American intelligence officials and helped them slip faulty technology into parts bought by the Iranians.
What Mr. Bush authorized, and informed a narrow group of Congressional leaders about, was a far broader effort, aimed at the entire industrial infrastructure that supports the Iranian nuclear program. Some of the efforts focused on ways to destabilize the centrifuges. The details are closely held, for obvious reasons, by American officials. One official, however, said, “It was not until the last year that they got really imaginative about what one could do to screw up the system.”
Then, he cautioned, “none of these are game-changers,” meaning that the efforts would not necessarily cripple the Iranian program. Others in the administration strongly disagree.
In the end, success or failure may come down to how much pressure can be brought to bear on Mr. Fakrizadeh, whom the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate identifies, in its classified sections, as the manager of Project 110 and Project 111. According to a presentation by the chief inspector of the International Atomic Energy Agency, those were the names for two Iranian efforts that appeared to be dedicated to designing a warhead and making it work with an Iranian missile. Iranian officials say the projects are a fiction, made up by the United States.
While the international agency readily concedes that the evidence about the two projects remains murky, one of the documents it briefly displayed at a meeting of the agency’s member countries in Vienna last year, from Mr. Fakrizadeh’s projects, showed the chronology of a missile launching, ending with a warhead exploding about 650 yards above ground — approximately the altitude from which the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was detonated.
The exact status of Mr. Fakrizadeh’s projects today is unclear. While the National Intelligence Estimate reported that activity on Projects 110 and 111 had been halted, the fear among intelligence agencies is that if the weapons design projects are turned back on, will they know?
David E. Sanger is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times. Reporting for this article was developed in the course of research for “The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power,” to be published Tuesday by Harmony Books.
Should Israel seek a diplomatic settlement, or accept Hamas's invitation to a bloodier battle?
Crossroads in Gaza
Should Israel seek a diplomatic settlement, or accept Hamas's invitation to a bloodier battle?
WaPo Editorial, Saturday, January 10, 2009; A12
HAMAS'S QUICK rejection of the U.N. Security Council's call for a cease-fire in Gaza might have surprised some in the West who have followed the mounting civilian casualties and the near-breakdown of access to food, water, and medical services with growing concern. In fact, Hamas revels in the Palestinian suffering its terrorism has triggered. Thousands of its fighters have retreated into Gaza's most densely populated areas, where they continue to fire dozens of rockets a day at Israeli civilians. They want nothing more than to draw Israel into an even bigger and bloodier fight -- during which, Hamas calculates, Israeli forces will suffer heavy casualties, while the even bigger Palestinian losses will reap a propaganda windfall for Hamas across the Middle East and Europe.
Israel's leaders are on the verge of giving Hamas its wish. Its top leaders also rejected the U.N. cease-fire resolution passed Thursday night; now they appear to be debating whether to throw thousands of reserve soldiers into a street-by-street battle. It's not clear what the aim of the new offensive might be. Some Israelis are calling for the overthrow of Hamas's rule in Gaza; others urge a more limited operation to seize a strip of territory along the border with Egypt, which would allow Israel to more directly attack tunnels through which Hamas smuggles weapons.
Either operation would probably do Israel more harm than good -- while raising the already considerable political cost of the war for the United States as well as for Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, Israel's de facto allies against Hamas. Israeli officials have rightly been wary of taking action that would leave their troops bogged down in Gaza -- but several of the options being considered would do just that. For now, there is no responsible Palestinian party to which Israel could hand control of Gaza or even the land near the Egyptian border; the Palestinian Authority, even if willing, remains too weak. Nor is it clear that Israel is capable of stopping either the smuggling or the rocket launches by military means. During the last several years before Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, it was unable to do so.
Israel's best option remains a deal with Egypt under which action to stop smuggling would be intensified on the Egyptian side of the border. Israel would like international forces to join that effort; Egypt has refused, though it says it would accept more expert help and equipment. If Hamas is to accept a truce, Israel will be expected to open its border crossings with Gaza to normal commerce.
Any diplomatic settlement to the conflict, either between Israel and Egypt or including Hamas, would be unsatisfactory in some ways. Hamas would remain in power and declare itself victorious, and probably any effort to stop new arms smuggling would not be completely effective. Still, given the tremendous human costs of the war -- nearly 800 dead, of whom half may be civilians -- and the escalating political cost to Israel and its allies, a deal would be far better than another military escalation. The Bush administration, which so far has done little more than support Israel's decisions throughout this crisis, should now be pressing it to settle.
Should Israel seek a diplomatic settlement, or accept Hamas's invitation to a bloodier battle?
WaPo Editorial, Saturday, January 10, 2009; A12
HAMAS'S QUICK rejection of the U.N. Security Council's call for a cease-fire in Gaza might have surprised some in the West who have followed the mounting civilian casualties and the near-breakdown of access to food, water, and medical services with growing concern. In fact, Hamas revels in the Palestinian suffering its terrorism has triggered. Thousands of its fighters have retreated into Gaza's most densely populated areas, where they continue to fire dozens of rockets a day at Israeli civilians. They want nothing more than to draw Israel into an even bigger and bloodier fight -- during which, Hamas calculates, Israeli forces will suffer heavy casualties, while the even bigger Palestinian losses will reap a propaganda windfall for Hamas across the Middle East and Europe.
Israel's leaders are on the verge of giving Hamas its wish. Its top leaders also rejected the U.N. cease-fire resolution passed Thursday night; now they appear to be debating whether to throw thousands of reserve soldiers into a street-by-street battle. It's not clear what the aim of the new offensive might be. Some Israelis are calling for the overthrow of Hamas's rule in Gaza; others urge a more limited operation to seize a strip of territory along the border with Egypt, which would allow Israel to more directly attack tunnels through which Hamas smuggles weapons.
Either operation would probably do Israel more harm than good -- while raising the already considerable political cost of the war for the United States as well as for Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, Israel's de facto allies against Hamas. Israeli officials have rightly been wary of taking action that would leave their troops bogged down in Gaza -- but several of the options being considered would do just that. For now, there is no responsible Palestinian party to which Israel could hand control of Gaza or even the land near the Egyptian border; the Palestinian Authority, even if willing, remains too weak. Nor is it clear that Israel is capable of stopping either the smuggling or the rocket launches by military means. During the last several years before Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, it was unable to do so.
Israel's best option remains a deal with Egypt under which action to stop smuggling would be intensified on the Egyptian side of the border. Israel would like international forces to join that effort; Egypt has refused, though it says it would accept more expert help and equipment. If Hamas is to accept a truce, Israel will be expected to open its border crossings with Gaza to normal commerce.
Any diplomatic settlement to the conflict, either between Israel and Egypt or including Hamas, would be unsatisfactory in some ways. Hamas would remain in power and declare itself victorious, and probably any effort to stop new arms smuggling would not be completely effective. Still, given the tremendous human costs of the war -- nearly 800 dead, of whom half may be civilians -- and the escalating political cost to Israel and its allies, a deal would be far better than another military escalation. The Bush administration, which so far has done little more than support Israel's decisions throughout this crisis, should now be pressing it to settle.
Monday, January 5, 2009
State Dept: U.S. Government Support for Humanitarian Assistance Activities in Gaza
U.S. Government Support for Humanitarian Assistance Activities in Gaza
Fact Sheet
US State Dept, Office of the Spokesman
Washington, DC, January 5, 2009
The United States Government continues to support the delivery of urgently needed food, health, shelter and other emergency assistance to the people of Gaza through our ongoing support for international organizations such as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the World Food Program (WFP), and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
On December 30, the United States announced a contribution to UNRWA for its 2009 appeals. Of the $85 million contribution, $5 million will directly support UNRWA’s Gaza Flash Appeal that will provide food, temporary shelter, and medical assistance for over 500,000 conflict-affected refugees in Gaza. The Flash Appeal funding will also supply up to 500,000 liters of fuel to municipalities and utilities for basic public services, including electricity and water treatment. $20 million will support UNRWA’s 2009 Emergency Appeal for the West Bank and Gaza, of which a large portion bolsters UNRWA’s ongoing emergency assistance activities for more than 1 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza. $60 million will support UNRWA’s General Fund for the provision of education, primary health care, and relief services to Palestinian refugees in the region, including Gaza.
The United States Government continues to provide food assistance through the World Food Program (WFP) to 20,000 non-refugee Palestinian households in Gaza with a bi-monthly package of five basic foods. Since December 28, WFP and its implementing partner, Community Housing Foundation (CHF), have distributed some 720 metric tons (MT) of food commodities to beneficiaries in Gaza. An additional 1,350 MT is available in Gaza for distribution when the security situation allows.
The United States Government also continues to support the International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC 's) efforts to supply Gaza’s hospitals and clinics with urgently needed medicines, surgery kits, hygiene kits, intravenous fluids, bandages, plastic sheeting and other medical equipment. The ICRC is bringing two generators into Gaza to ensure continued operation of Gaza’s hospitals despite electricity cuts and maintenance problems resulting from a lack of spare parts.
The United States Government has provided other medical and food supplies to health care facilities in Gaza, including syringes, tubes, gloves, x-ray film, tape, silk for sutures and bedding (mattresses, blankets and linens), and 18,000 kilograms of plastic sheeting to cover broken windows and help mitigate the cold.
The United States is the largest bilateral donor to UNRWA, which provides essential services to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and elsewhere.
The United States is deeply concerned about the safety of civilians caught up in this conflict, and urges all sides to facilitate the provision of humanitarian relief.
2009/009
Released on January 5, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
Gaza Conflict Threatens Regional Peace and Stability, UN Official Cautions
Gaza Conflict Threatens Regional Peace and Stability, UN Official Cautions
New York, Jan 2 2009 3:10PM
The future of the Middle-East peace process, the stability of the region and the safety of ordinary people in the Gaza Strip have been seriously jeopardized by the “irresponsibility of Hamas rocket attacks” and the “excessiveness of Israel’s response,” a senior United Nations envoy to warned today, as diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict intensify.
On the seventh day of Israeli bombing raids on Gaza and with more than 400 Gazans reportedly killed and thousands wounded, Robert Serry, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, called for the international community to step up its attempts to end the growing humanitarian crisis.
“Much of Gaza’s infrastructure has now been destroyed. The death and injury toll in Gaza continues to mount. Hamas rockets are now reaching 40 kilometres into Israel,” Mr. Serry said via video-link from Jerusalem.
Israel has cited rocket and other attacks by militants in Gaza against Israeli civilians as the reason for its military offensive and closing crossings into Gaza for much of the previous two months.
With Israeli tanks on Gaza’s border, the envoy underscored the urgency and importance of an immediate and lasting cessation of hostilities to avoid an even deeper and deadlier conflict.
He said that he will join a number of Arab leaders slated to arrive in New York next week to find a solution to the crisis.
“Diplomatic efforts are underway involving many players, including the United States, the European Union (EU), the Arab League, Turkey and others, and we believe the roles of the Quartet [comprising the UN, EU, Russian and the US] and the Security Council are going to be very important.”
While a ceasefire is vital, a return to the previous situation would not be enough to maintain security or find a durable peace, Mr. Serry said.
He stressed the need for the uninterrupted reopening of crossings into Gaza with a commitment from both sides to fully respect a ceasefire, including an end to all rocket attacks from Gaza and weapons smuggling into the Hamas controlled territory.
“It will also require bringing Gaza back into the fold of the Palestinian Authority through arrangements on the ground and renewed efforts to reunited Gaza and the West Bank,” he said, adding that “it is more vital than ever that Israeli-Palestinian peace is achieved. The underlying issues must be addressed: end of conflict, end of occupation and the creation of the Palestinian State alongside a secure Israel.”
Meanwhile, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has been distributing bread to families in the hardest-hit areas of Gaza, and said today that it urgently requires $9 million to meet additional food needs caused by the upsurge in fighting.
The bombing raids over the last week have greatly worsened the already harsh humanitarian situation in Gaza, which is home to an estimated 1.5 million people facing severe shortages of food, fuel and cooking gas.
“The current situation in Gaza is appalling and many basic food items are no longer available on the market,” said Christine van Nieuwenhuyse, WFP Representative in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Yesterday, the agency started handing out bread to around 15,000 people in the northern city of Beit Hanoun – one of the poorest areas in Gaza and the most heavily affected by the conflict.
However, the recent Israeli offensive has prevented WFP and its partners from operating at full capacity and has delayed the regular distribution of food to nearly 270,000 people in the region.
“We are responding to the immediate food emergency needs as much as we can, but the destruction of local infrastructure and the shortages of basic utilities such as fuel and gas means that more people will fall into poverty, and have no other option than to be assisted by the international community,” said Ms. Nieuwenhuyse.
WFP’s 3,300-ton food stockpile will run out during the next month as distributions resume, security permitting, with more food convoys expected to replenish the supplies.
Due to the scarcity of wheat, most of the mills and bakeries in Gaza have stopped working and there is an acute shortage of bread, the staple food for Palestinians.
In a related development, a group of independent UN human rights experts said today that it was “deeply alarmed” at the continuing violence in Gaza and called on all parties to end attacks putting civilian lives at risk.
“Both air strikes by Israeli Government forces and rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel are resulting in inexcusable loss of life and placing the civilian populations in the affected areas in extreme danger,” said Asma Jahangir, chairperson of the experts’ coordinating body, said in a statement.
She stressed that international human rights law “imposes binding obligations on all parties in situations of armed conflict.”
The chairperson said that neither Israel’s use of disproportionate force, missiles launched from Gaza, nor the general disregard for the safety of non-combatants can justify either side’s aggression.
The UN experts voiced particular concern at the impact of the current violence and destruction of vital infrastructure on the already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and called on all parties to ensure access for humanitarian relief efforts and supplies.
Independent experts, known as special rapporteurs, serve in an autonomous unpaid capacity and report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Jan 2 2009 3:10PM
________________
For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news
New York, Jan 2 2009 3:10PM
The future of the Middle-East peace process, the stability of the region and the safety of ordinary people in the Gaza Strip have been seriously jeopardized by the “irresponsibility of Hamas rocket attacks” and the “excessiveness of Israel’s response,” a senior United Nations envoy to warned today, as diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict intensify.
On the seventh day of Israeli bombing raids on Gaza and with more than 400 Gazans reportedly killed and thousands wounded, Robert Serry, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, called for the international community to step up its attempts to end the growing humanitarian crisis.
“Much of Gaza’s infrastructure has now been destroyed. The death and injury toll in Gaza continues to mount. Hamas rockets are now reaching 40 kilometres into Israel,” Mr. Serry said via video-link from Jerusalem.
Israel has cited rocket and other attacks by militants in Gaza against Israeli civilians as the reason for its military offensive and closing crossings into Gaza for much of the previous two months.
With Israeli tanks on Gaza’s border, the envoy underscored the urgency and importance of an immediate and lasting cessation of hostilities to avoid an even deeper and deadlier conflict.
He said that he will join a number of Arab leaders slated to arrive in New York next week to find a solution to the crisis.
“Diplomatic efforts are underway involving many players, including the United States, the European Union (EU), the Arab League, Turkey and others, and we believe the roles of the Quartet [comprising the UN, EU, Russian and the US] and the Security Council are going to be very important.”
While a ceasefire is vital, a return to the previous situation would not be enough to maintain security or find a durable peace, Mr. Serry said.
He stressed the need for the uninterrupted reopening of crossings into Gaza with a commitment from both sides to fully respect a ceasefire, including an end to all rocket attacks from Gaza and weapons smuggling into the Hamas controlled territory.
“It will also require bringing Gaza back into the fold of the Palestinian Authority through arrangements on the ground and renewed efforts to reunited Gaza and the West Bank,” he said, adding that “it is more vital than ever that Israeli-Palestinian peace is achieved. The underlying issues must be addressed: end of conflict, end of occupation and the creation of the Palestinian State alongside a secure Israel.”
Meanwhile, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has been distributing bread to families in the hardest-hit areas of Gaza, and said today that it urgently requires $9 million to meet additional food needs caused by the upsurge in fighting.
The bombing raids over the last week have greatly worsened the already harsh humanitarian situation in Gaza, which is home to an estimated 1.5 million people facing severe shortages of food, fuel and cooking gas.
“The current situation in Gaza is appalling and many basic food items are no longer available on the market,” said Christine van Nieuwenhuyse, WFP Representative in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Yesterday, the agency started handing out bread to around 15,000 people in the northern city of Beit Hanoun – one of the poorest areas in Gaza and the most heavily affected by the conflict.
However, the recent Israeli offensive has prevented WFP and its partners from operating at full capacity and has delayed the regular distribution of food to nearly 270,000 people in the region.
“We are responding to the immediate food emergency needs as much as we can, but the destruction of local infrastructure and the shortages of basic utilities such as fuel and gas means that more people will fall into poverty, and have no other option than to be assisted by the international community,” said Ms. Nieuwenhuyse.
WFP’s 3,300-ton food stockpile will run out during the next month as distributions resume, security permitting, with more food convoys expected to replenish the supplies.
Due to the scarcity of wheat, most of the mills and bakeries in Gaza have stopped working and there is an acute shortage of bread, the staple food for Palestinians.
In a related development, a group of independent UN human rights experts said today that it was “deeply alarmed” at the continuing violence in Gaza and called on all parties to end attacks putting civilian lives at risk.
“Both air strikes by Israeli Government forces and rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel are resulting in inexcusable loss of life and placing the civilian populations in the affected areas in extreme danger,” said Asma Jahangir, chairperson of the experts’ coordinating body, said in a statement.
She stressed that international human rights law “imposes binding obligations on all parties in situations of armed conflict.”
The chairperson said that neither Israel’s use of disproportionate force, missiles launched from Gaza, nor the general disregard for the safety of non-combatants can justify either side’s aggression.
The UN experts voiced particular concern at the impact of the current violence and destruction of vital infrastructure on the already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and called on all parties to ensure access for humanitarian relief efforts and supplies.
Independent experts, known as special rapporteurs, serve in an autonomous unpaid capacity and report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Jan 2 2009 3:10PM
________________
For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news
Gaza: UN Human Rights Experts Express Shock at the Scale of Combat
Gaza: UN Human Rights Experts Express Shock at the Scale of Combat
New York, Jan 2 2009 1:10PMA group of independent United Nations human rights experts today said it was “deeply alarmed” at the continuing violence in Gaza and called on all parties to end attacks putting civilian lives at risk.
“Both air strikes by Israeli Government forces and rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel are resulting in inexcusable loss of life and placing the civilian populations in the affected areas in extreme danger,” said Asma Jahangir, chairperson of the experts’ coordinating body, said in a statement.
She stressed that international human rights law “imposes binding obligations on all parties in situations of armed conflict.”
The chairperson said that neither Israel’s use of disproportionate force, missiles launched from Gaza, nor the general disregard for the safety of non-combatants can justify either side’s aggression.
“They constitute clear violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law,” she said.
The UN experts voiced particular concern at the impact of the current violence and destruction of vital infrastructure on the already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and called on all parties to ensure access for humanitarian relief efforts and supplies.
“Independent human rights monitoring, including by the various UN Special Procedures, is particularly crucial in these circumstances which result in an exceptionally broad range of human rights violations.”
Independent experts, known as special rapporteurs, serve in an autonomous unpaid capacity and report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Jan 2 2009 1:10PM
________________
For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news
New York, Jan 2 2009 1:10PMA group of independent United Nations human rights experts today said it was “deeply alarmed” at the continuing violence in Gaza and called on all parties to end attacks putting civilian lives at risk.
“Both air strikes by Israeli Government forces and rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel are resulting in inexcusable loss of life and placing the civilian populations in the affected areas in extreme danger,” said Asma Jahangir, chairperson of the experts’ coordinating body, said in a statement.
She stressed that international human rights law “imposes binding obligations on all parties in situations of armed conflict.”
The chairperson said that neither Israel’s use of disproportionate force, missiles launched from Gaza, nor the general disregard for the safety of non-combatants can justify either side’s aggression.
“They constitute clear violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law,” she said.
The UN experts voiced particular concern at the impact of the current violence and destruction of vital infrastructure on the already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and called on all parties to ensure access for humanitarian relief efforts and supplies.
“Independent human rights monitoring, including by the various UN Special Procedures, is particularly crucial in these circumstances which result in an exceptionally broad range of human rights violations.”
Independent experts, known as special rapporteurs, serve in an autonomous unpaid capacity and report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Jan 2 2009 1:10PM
________________
For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news
US State Dept Secretary's Remarks: Situation in Gaza
US State Dept Secretary's Remarks: Situation in Gaza
Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:43:15 -0600
Secretary Condoleezza Rice
The White House, Washington, DC, January 2, 2009
SECRETARY RICE: Good morning. I’ve just had a chance to brief the President and to discuss with him the situation in Gaza. Obviously, the United States is very concerned about the situation there and is working very hard with our partners around the world to address it.
I want to begin by noting that Hamas has held the people of Gaza hostage ever since their illegal coup against the forces of President Mahmoud Abbas, the legitimate President of the Palestinian people. The Hamas has used Gaza as a launching pad for rockets against Israeli cities and has contributed deeply to a very bad daily life for the Palestinian people in Gaza, and to a humanitarian situation that we have all been trying to address. But frankly, Hamas has made it very difficult for the people of Gaza to have a reasonable life.
We are working toward a ceasefire that would not allow a reestablishment of the status quo ante where Hamas can continue to launch rockets out of Gaza. It is obvious that that ceasefire should take place as soon as possible, but we need a ceasefire that is durable and sustainable. I might note that it was Hamas that rejected the Egyptian and Arab calls for an extension of the Takia that Egypt had negotiated. But I have been in constant contact with the key Arab states. I have talked with our European colleagues, and we are talking constantly with the Israeli Government to find a solution to Gaza that will be a sustainable one for the people of Gaza, for the people of Israel and for the people of the Palestinian territories of the Middle East more broadly.
The President has also been in touch with the major leaders of the Arab States and with the Israelis. And we’re going to continue our work toward a ceasefire that will not allow a return to the status quo ante and that will be durable. Thank you very much.
QUESTION: Dr. Rice, do you plan to go to the Mideast to broker…?
SECRETARY RICE: I have no plans at this point. Thank you.
Released on January 2, 2009
Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:43:15 -0600
Secretary Condoleezza Rice
The White House, Washington, DC, January 2, 2009
SECRETARY RICE: Good morning. I’ve just had a chance to brief the President and to discuss with him the situation in Gaza. Obviously, the United States is very concerned about the situation there and is working very hard with our partners around the world to address it.
I want to begin by noting that Hamas has held the people of Gaza hostage ever since their illegal coup against the forces of President Mahmoud Abbas, the legitimate President of the Palestinian people. The Hamas has used Gaza as a launching pad for rockets against Israeli cities and has contributed deeply to a very bad daily life for the Palestinian people in Gaza, and to a humanitarian situation that we have all been trying to address. But frankly, Hamas has made it very difficult for the people of Gaza to have a reasonable life.
We are working toward a ceasefire that would not allow a reestablishment of the status quo ante where Hamas can continue to launch rockets out of Gaza. It is obvious that that ceasefire should take place as soon as possible, but we need a ceasefire that is durable and sustainable. I might note that it was Hamas that rejected the Egyptian and Arab calls for an extension of the Takia that Egypt had negotiated. But I have been in constant contact with the key Arab states. I have talked with our European colleagues, and we are talking constantly with the Israeli Government to find a solution to Gaza that will be a sustainable one for the people of Gaza, for the people of Israel and for the people of the Palestinian territories of the Middle East more broadly.
The President has also been in touch with the major leaders of the Arab States and with the Israelis. And we’re going to continue our work toward a ceasefire that will not allow a return to the status quo ante and that will be durable. Thank you very much.
QUESTION: Dr. Rice, do you plan to go to the Mideast to broker…?
SECRETARY RICE: I have no plans at this point. Thank you.
Released on January 2, 2009
Sunday, December 28, 2008
In The New Republic On Israel War Against HAMAS
Very Disproportionate, Indeed. By Marty Peretz
The New Republic Blogs. Saturday, December 27, 2008 9:22 PM
From January 1 until December 21, Hamas and its allies had launched exactly 1,250 rockets across the border between Gaza and Israel. Then the escalation really started: on Wednesday 70 projectile missiles landed in the Negev and its populated areas. On Thursday, more of the same. On Friday, two Palestinian girls, cousins of 5 and 12 years, were killed by a rocket that was launched in the Strip and landed in the Strip. But these unfortunates were not the targets of fire. It was just another day of blast offs into the Jewish state.
The government in Jerusalem had made it unmistakably clear that it would no longer tolerate this fire power aimed at innocent civilian life. It had been saying this for months to an increasingly skeptical and apprehensive, not to say, restive public. And to Hamas which didn't seem to care. Instead, it threatened Israel by word and follow-up deeds that confirmed the recklessness - as if confirmation was needed- of also this Palestinian "liberation" movement, the last in the long line of terrorist revolutionaries acting in the name of pathetic and blood-thirsty Palestine.
So at 11:30 on Saturday morning, according to both the Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz, as well as the New York Times, 50 fighter jets and attack helicopters demolished some 40 to 50 sites in just about three minutes, maybe five. Message: do not fuck with the Jews. At roughly noon, another 60 air-attack vehicles went after other Hamas strategic positions. Israeli intelligence reported 225 people dead, mostly Hamas military leaders with some functionaries, besides, and perhaps 400 wounded. The Palestinians announced 300 dead, probably as a reflex in order to begin their whining about disproportionate Israeli acts of war. And 600 wounded.
Frankly, I am up to my gullet with this reflex criticism of Israel as going beyond proportionality in its responses to war waged against its population with the undisguised intention of putting an end to the political expression of the Jewish nation. Within hours, Nicolas Sarkozy was already taking up the cudgel of French righteousness and pronouncing the actually quite sober Israeli response to the continuous war on its borders "disproportionate." Enough. What would be proportionate, oh, so so proportionate apparently, are those tried-and-true half measures to contain Hamas that have never worked. Remember that in 2005 Israel ceded Gaza to the Palestinians waiting and hoping that they would make something of a civil society of their territory, civil for their own and civil to their neighbors. It was not to be.
There is only small likelihood that Hamas has learned its lesson. These Sunni fanatics are still supported by the Shi'a fanatics in Iran. And they are also backed by the House of Saud which cannot be seen to be turning its back on Sunni piety. Gaza is the only place in the Middle East where Tehran and Riyadh are allied. In both Lebanon and Iraq, they are the bankrollers (and more than bankrollers) of hostile sectarian forces engaged in killing each other. Thus, Hamas has still some rope with which to play. Cash, after all, is a great deluder.
The current warfare will go on a bit longer. If there is a pause and if I were giving advice to the Israelis, this is what I would say to Hamas and to the people of Gaza: "If a rocket or missile is launched against us, if you take captive one of our soldiers (as you have held one for two and a half years), if you raise a new Intifada against us, there will be an immediate response. And it will be very disproportionate. Proportion does not work."
No sooner had I written these last words that Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader exiled in Damascus (which also apparently pines to make peace with Israel), announced the beginning of the Third Intifada.
The New Republic Blogs. Saturday, December 27, 2008 9:22 PM
From January 1 until December 21, Hamas and its allies had launched exactly 1,250 rockets across the border between Gaza and Israel. Then the escalation really started: on Wednesday 70 projectile missiles landed in the Negev and its populated areas. On Thursday, more of the same. On Friday, two Palestinian girls, cousins of 5 and 12 years, were killed by a rocket that was launched in the Strip and landed in the Strip. But these unfortunates were not the targets of fire. It was just another day of blast offs into the Jewish state.
The government in Jerusalem had made it unmistakably clear that it would no longer tolerate this fire power aimed at innocent civilian life. It had been saying this for months to an increasingly skeptical and apprehensive, not to say, restive public. And to Hamas which didn't seem to care. Instead, it threatened Israel by word and follow-up deeds that confirmed the recklessness - as if confirmation was needed- of also this Palestinian "liberation" movement, the last in the long line of terrorist revolutionaries acting in the name of pathetic and blood-thirsty Palestine.
So at 11:30 on Saturday morning, according to both the Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz, as well as the New York Times, 50 fighter jets and attack helicopters demolished some 40 to 50 sites in just about three minutes, maybe five. Message: do not fuck with the Jews. At roughly noon, another 60 air-attack vehicles went after other Hamas strategic positions. Israeli intelligence reported 225 people dead, mostly Hamas military leaders with some functionaries, besides, and perhaps 400 wounded. The Palestinians announced 300 dead, probably as a reflex in order to begin their whining about disproportionate Israeli acts of war. And 600 wounded.
Frankly, I am up to my gullet with this reflex criticism of Israel as going beyond proportionality in its responses to war waged against its population with the undisguised intention of putting an end to the political expression of the Jewish nation. Within hours, Nicolas Sarkozy was already taking up the cudgel of French righteousness and pronouncing the actually quite sober Israeli response to the continuous war on its borders "disproportionate." Enough. What would be proportionate, oh, so so proportionate apparently, are those tried-and-true half measures to contain Hamas that have never worked. Remember that in 2005 Israel ceded Gaza to the Palestinians waiting and hoping that they would make something of a civil society of their territory, civil for their own and civil to their neighbors. It was not to be.
There is only small likelihood that Hamas has learned its lesson. These Sunni fanatics are still supported by the Shi'a fanatics in Iran. And they are also backed by the House of Saud which cannot be seen to be turning its back on Sunni piety. Gaza is the only place in the Middle East where Tehran and Riyadh are allied. In both Lebanon and Iraq, they are the bankrollers (and more than bankrollers) of hostile sectarian forces engaged in killing each other. Thus, Hamas has still some rope with which to play. Cash, after all, is a great deluder.
The current warfare will go on a bit longer. If there is a pause and if I were giving advice to the Israelis, this is what I would say to Hamas and to the people of Gaza: "If a rocket or missile is launched against us, if you take captive one of our soldiers (as you have held one for two and a half years), if you raise a new Intifada against us, there will be an immediate response. And it will be very disproportionate. Proportion does not work."
No sooner had I written these last words that Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader exiled in Damascus (which also apparently pines to make peace with Israel), announced the beginning of the Third Intifada.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Ignatius: A New Partner In Syria?
In the WaPo: A New Partner In Syria? By David Ignatius
Wednesday, December 24, 2008; A11
DAMASCUS, Syria -- President Bashar al-Assad says he doesn't want to send a message to Barack Obama, exactly, but to express a three-part hope for the incoming administration's Middle East policy:
First, he hopes Obama won't start "another war anywhere in the world, especially not in the Middle East." And he trusts that the doctrine of "preemptive war" will end when George W. Bush leaves office.
Second, Assad said, "We would like to see this new administration sincerely involved in the peace process." He hopes that Obama will back Syria's indirect negotiations with Israel, and he urges the new administration to pursue "the Lebanese track and the Palestinian track, as well."
Asked whether he would mind if the Syrian track went first (a sequence that has worried some Syrians who prefer the ideological purity of following the Palestinians), Assad answered: "Of course not. Each track will help the other."
Third, he says he wants Syria and the United States to work together to stabilize Iraq as American troops begin to leave. "We can't turn the clock back," Assad said. "The war happened. Now we have to talk about the future. We have to forge a process, a political vision and a timetable for withdrawal."
In all three "hopes," Assad seemed to be looking for a new start with Obama after years of chilly relations with Bush. Assad said he knew little about Obama or his policies but has heard that he is more in contact with ordinary people than Bush has been, which, Assad contended, would give Obama a better understanding of America.
Assad spoke in English during the 30-minute interview Monday. He was accompanied only by his political and media adviser Bouthaina Shaaban. This time, in contrast to my interview with him in 2003, when Assad was often stiff and doctrinaire, he was loose and informal, breaking several times into laughter.
Assad's easy demeanor suggested that he's more firmly in charge now. The Bush administration's attempt to isolate Syria has failed, even in the judgment of senior White House officials. That leaves Assad in the catbird seat, courted by European and Arab nations and conducting back-channel talks through Turkey with his erstwhile enemy Israel.
Asked, for example, about reports that Saudi Arabia is seeking to improve its relations with Damascus because it sees U.S. engagement with Syria ahead and fears that "the train may be leaving the station," Assad laughed.
"Maybe it has already left the station," he said. But he vows that he is ready to receive any emissaries. "I have no problem with the Saudis. We would like good relations with every country in this region."
Assad said that he is ready to move to direct talks with Israel as soon as he receives clarification on two points: One, he wants assurance that the Israelis will withdraw fully from the Golan Heights. To clarify that issue, he sent a "borders document" to the Israelis this month that highlights some points along the pre-1967 border. As of Monday, he said, he hadn't received an Israeli response. His second condition for direct talks is that the United States join as a sponsor.
On the crucial question of Syria's future relations with Iran, Assad was noncommittal. He said the relationship with Iran wasn't about the "kind of statehood" Syria has or its cultural affinities but about protecting Syrian interests against hostile neighbors. "It's about who plays a role in this region, who supports my rights," he said. "It's not that complicated."
Asked whether Syria was prepared to restrain Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militia in Lebanon, Assad said this was a matter the Israelis should sort out in separate negotiations with the Lebanese. Indeed, he promoted the idea of the other negotiating tracks -- which would draw in, at least indirectly, Hezbollah and Hamas.
"The longer the border, the bigger the peace," Assad said. "Hezbollah is on the Lebanese border, not Syrian. Hamas is on the Palestinian border. . . . They should look at those other tracks. They should be comprehensive. If you want peace, you need three peace treaties, on three tracks."
A relaxed Assad clearly believes that Syria is emerging from its pariah status. An international tribunal is still scheduled to meet in The Hague to weigh Syria's alleged role in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. But in the meantime, Assad is receiving a stream of visiting diplomats. He looks like a ready partner for Obama's diplomacy, but a cautious one -- waiting to see what's on offer before he shows more of his hand.
The writer is co-host of PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008; A11
DAMASCUS, Syria -- President Bashar al-Assad says he doesn't want to send a message to Barack Obama, exactly, but to express a three-part hope for the incoming administration's Middle East policy:
First, he hopes Obama won't start "another war anywhere in the world, especially not in the Middle East." And he trusts that the doctrine of "preemptive war" will end when George W. Bush leaves office.
Second, Assad said, "We would like to see this new administration sincerely involved in the peace process." He hopes that Obama will back Syria's indirect negotiations with Israel, and he urges the new administration to pursue "the Lebanese track and the Palestinian track, as well."
Asked whether he would mind if the Syrian track went first (a sequence that has worried some Syrians who prefer the ideological purity of following the Palestinians), Assad answered: "Of course not. Each track will help the other."
Third, he says he wants Syria and the United States to work together to stabilize Iraq as American troops begin to leave. "We can't turn the clock back," Assad said. "The war happened. Now we have to talk about the future. We have to forge a process, a political vision and a timetable for withdrawal."
In all three "hopes," Assad seemed to be looking for a new start with Obama after years of chilly relations with Bush. Assad said he knew little about Obama or his policies but has heard that he is more in contact with ordinary people than Bush has been, which, Assad contended, would give Obama a better understanding of America.
Assad spoke in English during the 30-minute interview Monday. He was accompanied only by his political and media adviser Bouthaina Shaaban. This time, in contrast to my interview with him in 2003, when Assad was often stiff and doctrinaire, he was loose and informal, breaking several times into laughter.
Assad's easy demeanor suggested that he's more firmly in charge now. The Bush administration's attempt to isolate Syria has failed, even in the judgment of senior White House officials. That leaves Assad in the catbird seat, courted by European and Arab nations and conducting back-channel talks through Turkey with his erstwhile enemy Israel.
Asked, for example, about reports that Saudi Arabia is seeking to improve its relations with Damascus because it sees U.S. engagement with Syria ahead and fears that "the train may be leaving the station," Assad laughed.
"Maybe it has already left the station," he said. But he vows that he is ready to receive any emissaries. "I have no problem with the Saudis. We would like good relations with every country in this region."
Assad said that he is ready to move to direct talks with Israel as soon as he receives clarification on two points: One, he wants assurance that the Israelis will withdraw fully from the Golan Heights. To clarify that issue, he sent a "borders document" to the Israelis this month that highlights some points along the pre-1967 border. As of Monday, he said, he hadn't received an Israeli response. His second condition for direct talks is that the United States join as a sponsor.
On the crucial question of Syria's future relations with Iran, Assad was noncommittal. He said the relationship with Iran wasn't about the "kind of statehood" Syria has or its cultural affinities but about protecting Syrian interests against hostile neighbors. "It's about who plays a role in this region, who supports my rights," he said. "It's not that complicated."
Asked whether Syria was prepared to restrain Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militia in Lebanon, Assad said this was a matter the Israelis should sort out in separate negotiations with the Lebanese. Indeed, he promoted the idea of the other negotiating tracks -- which would draw in, at least indirectly, Hezbollah and Hamas.
"The longer the border, the bigger the peace," Assad said. "Hezbollah is on the Lebanese border, not Syrian. Hamas is on the Palestinian border. . . . They should look at those other tracks. They should be comprehensive. If you want peace, you need three peace treaties, on three tracks."
A relaxed Assad clearly believes that Syria is emerging from its pariah status. An international tribunal is still scheduled to meet in The Hague to weigh Syria's alleged role in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. But in the meantime, Assad is receiving a stream of visiting diplomats. He looks like a ready partner for Obama's diplomacy, but a cautious one -- waiting to see what's on offer before he shows more of his hand.
The writer is co-host of PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues.
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