Ending aid will either restrain Israel and facilitate a political resolution or encourage a backlash that induces the global community to intervene.
Posts Tagged ‘Noura Erakat’
Can’t have the cake and eat it too: “US, Stop Funding Israel, or Let Others Broker Peace
Posted August 16, 2014
on:Can’t have the cake and eat it too: “US, Stop Funding Israel, or Let Others Broker Peace
Alert: Were talking about ending US aid to Israel in the New York Times!
The NYT asked if the US can still be a leader in the Middle East (seriously).
My response: the US needs to stop funding Israel or let others do the job including multilateral institutions that the US has deliberately impeded. Rashid Khalidi is part of this “debate” as are others insisting the US marginalize Hamas and support Israel at all costs.
Thanks to Josh Ruebner & US Campaign to end the occupation… for fabulous research on US military aid to Israel.
“The United States has incapacitated the U.N. Security Council by using its veto power to shield Israel from accountability 40 times between 1972 and 2011.
The only other situation where the U.S. used its veto power so systematically was to protect colonial and apartheid regimes in South Africa, Rhodesia and Namibia.”
U.S. Should Stop Funding Israel, or Let Others Broker Peace

Noura Erakat, a human rights lawyer, is an assistant professor at George Mason University and co-founder and co-editor of Jadaliyya.
August 5, 2014
As Israel’s primary patron of economic, military and diplomatic support, the United States has a duty and the capacity to help resolve the Palestinian-Israel conflict. It should either comply with its domestic laws and cease military aid to Israel or simply step aside and allow international mechanisms to function without obstruction.
Between 1949 and 2008, the U.S. has provided Israel with $103.6 billion, more than all of the foreign aid it has provided to Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America combined.
Since 2000, it has provided Israel with $3.5 billion worth of F-16s and $77 billion in Apaches.
Military aid to foreign states is subject to several U.S. laws including the Arms Export Control Act , the Foreign Assistance Act and the Leahy Law. Each of these laws conditions the receipt of aid on the furtherance of human rights.
The Department of State annually notes Israel’s systematic abuse of human rights against Palestinians.
Congress has nevertheless renewed aid to Israel without scrutiny either by willful ignorance or disregard.
In the eyes of our 535 elected representatives, Israel can do no wrong.
This has not always been the case.
The Reagan administration halted its cluster munitions sales to Israel between 1982 and 1988 in response to Israel’s disproportionate and indiscriminate attack on civilians in Beirut.
In 1991, the George H.W. Bush administration conditioned its loan guarantees to Israel on the cessation of its settlement expansion in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
The United States has ample evidence of Israel’s human rights violations that should trigger these laws today. In its most recent offensive, Israel has dropped over 100 one-ton bombs, hardly precise and discriminate weaponry, onto the densely populated and besieged Gaza Strip.
Human Rights Watch documented Israeli ground forces shooting and killing fleeing Palestinian families in Khuza’a between July 23 and 25. Amnesty International documented the killing of 45 civilians in the Occupied West Bank over the past three years.
Cessation of American military aid to Israel will create at least two possibilities in the long run. On the one hand, it can restrain Israel, thereby creating more opportunities for a political resolution to the conflict. On the other hand, it could have the opposite effect and motivate Israel to pursue more maximalist policies, thereby increasing the cost of its transgressions. This will likely induce the international community to effectively intervene à la the South African model.
Short of complying with its own laws, the United States can also step aside and allow international mechanisms to function. The United States has incapacitated the U.N. Security Council by using its veto power to shield Israel from accountability 40 times between 1972 and 2011.
The only other situation where the U.S. used its veto power so systematically was to protect colonial and apartheid regimes in South Africa, Rhodesia and Namibia. The United States has similarly undermined the efficacy of the <href=”#v=onepage&q&f=false”>International Court of Justice, the Human Rights Council and, as we are currently witnessing, the International Criminal Court.
The U.S. is a central part of the problem in the Palestinian-Israel conflict. To be a part of the solution, it needs to do less, not more.
Join Room for Debate on Facebook and follow updates on twitter.com/roomfordebate.
Oslo accords between Palestinians and Israeli: 20 year-old already? What was achieved?
Posted September 14, 2013
on:Oslo accords between Palestinians and Israeli: 20 year-old already? What was achieved?
US secretary of state Kerry has restarted the negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, and we heard nothing about “these secret negotiations” and whether they resumed, and for how long, and how serious is the US administration to pull off these negotiations and what coercive mechanisms on Israel it has in its bags…
Noura Erakat posted on FB this Sept 13, 2013:
The Oslo accords are twenty years old today, during the Clinton administration in 1993, between Rabin and Arafat in the White House Lawn.
It was supposed to gradually relinquish territories to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Could anything signify its failure more boldly than the fact that no one cares?
That may be one more of its many successes to contain and remove this conflict from central consideration.
Rather than resolve the conflict, Oslo has managed the conflict while making Israel’s settler-expansionism less egregious to the international community.
Talks have supplanted resistance, process has supplanted substance.
The result is a dire situation where the possibility of two states is dead: Palestinians are more fragmented politically and culturally from one another, and the Palestinian leadership has become a central part of the occupation regime rather than the political force that leads a multi-faceted strategy including grassroots, diplomatic, legal, and media tactics to resist it.
A few facts to consider:
1. Military Order 1650 institutionalizes separation of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank and “deports” Palestinians from Gaza found in West Bank back to Gaza further entrenching fragmentation.
2. 85% of the Annexation Wall (or Wall of Shame) runs through the West Bank and expropriates 13% of the land;
3. Settler-population has grown from 200,000 in 1993 (time of the signing of the Oslo accord) to 600,000 today.
4. Settlement expansion is now entrenched in 62% of West Bank (all of Area C).
5. Israel has declared 18% of the West Bank into a firing zone where first soldiers practice shooting and then leave to make room for a new Jewish-only settlement.
6. Gaza has been under full naval blockade and land siege for 6 years and counting.
7. Lack of control over water has led to forced displacement of farmers and cost the Palestinian economy 110,000 jobs and 10% of its annual GDP.
8. Spending on agriculture has dropped from 28.5% of Palestinian national budget in 1993 to less then 5% today. In contrast, spending on security is up to 30%.
Oslo has made all this possible while neutralizing a Palestinian leadership from resisting these conditions.
Even the most ardent supporters of the two states solution should oppose Oslo.
More of the same is only a recipe for long-term instability and insecurity.
We should celebrate this anniversary by making sure it’s the last year we commemorate Oslo.