UN-Truth

“Freezing settlements is not an option”, a Jerusalem Post headline reads today, quoting Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman at a press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in Washington on Wednesday.

“We cannot accept this vision absolutely, completely freezing these settlements. I think we must keep natural growth”, Lieberman said.

For her part, Clinton said, according to the JPost report, that “she disagreed strongly with the notion that the Bush administration had reached agreements with Israel that allowed for continuing some construction. Lieberman had alluded to these arrangements when he said: ‘We had some understandings with the previous administration, and we tried to keep this direction’. Clinton, for her part, said: ‘Looking at the history of the Bush administration, there were no informal or oral enforceable agreements’, saying that position had been ‘verified’ by accounts from former Bush administration officials…

The JPost story said that Clinton “pointed specifically to a recent opinion piece by former US ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer, who served under Bush but backed President Barack Obama in last year’s election. Kurtzer wrote in Sunday’s Washington Post that there were no understandings on settlement growth between the US and Israel. Kurtzer’s Washington Post piece differed with one written by [Elliot] Abrams, who indicated that though the understandings on the settlements were not formalized, they were understood. Abrams wrote … ‘there would be no new settlements, no financial incentives for Israelis to move to settlements and no new construction except in already built-up areas. The clear purpose of the guidelines? To allow for settlement growth in ways that minimized the impact on Palestinians’.” This JPost piece can be read in full here.

Haaretz correspondent Barak Ravid wrote in a piece published today that: “The United States has stepped up pressure on Israel regarding the Gaza Strip: Three weeks ago it sent Jerusalem a diplomatic note officially protesting Gaza policy and demanding a more liberal opening of the border crossings to facilitate reconstruction. U.S. and Israeli sources say the note was followed by a verbal communication clarifying that the Obama administration thinks Israel’s linkage of the case of abducted soldier Gilad Shalit and the opening of the crossings was not constructive.  The note was delivered to Israel after a decision by senior U.S. officials including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and special Mideast envoy George Mitchell. The latter discussed the contents of the note during his visit to Israel last week. America’s demands on Israel’s Gaza policy were also raised Wednesday during talks between Clinton and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who is on an official visit to Washington … The note’s central message was that if Israel believes that the Palestinian Authority should be strengthened vis-a-vis Hamas, it must take the necessary steps regarding the Strip … The United States made clear that it is dissatisfied with this Israeli policy and wants Jerusalem to reevaluate its stance.” This can be read in full here.

Meanwhile, in an analysis for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), Dan Diker and Pinhas Inbari wrote that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad — who became Prime Minister almost exactly two years ago, when President Mahmoud Abbas dissolved the National Unity government that included Hamas — “has continued to pay monthly salaries to nearly 12,000 Hamas Executive Force members, which had been agreed upon by the short-lived Palestinian national unity government in 2007″. The JCPA analysis then stated that “The same PA-funded Hamas Executive Force fought IDF troops in the recent Gaza war”. The JCPA analysis can be read in full here.

The evidence is, however, that Hamas militants, or Executive Force members, or whatever, did not fight very hard, or very much. Most observers note that Hamas made a tactical retreat during the Israeli military operation, Cast Lead.

The PA does continue to maintain, at every possible public occasion, that it pays some 58% of its budget to Gaza. Hardly anybody has bothered to ask where this money goes. Some of it goes to pay bills to Israel for some of the goods that go in — now in very limited quantities — through Israeli border crossings. But most of this money goes to continuing paying salaries of PA employees in Gaza. Some of them are told to stay home (and their salaries are cut off if they don’t, and they insist on going to work instead). while others are allowed to function. And, the approximately 200 graduating police recruits who were killed during their graduation ceremony on the first day of Operation Cast Lead would probably have been paid by the PA-Ramallah budget … Yet, Israeli officials still maintain that the overwhelming majority of those killed in Operation Cast Lead were Hamas, and therefore “terrorists” — and therefore legitimate military targets.

Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Gaza, Human Rights, Humanitarian Aid, International Humanitarian Law, International Law, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, Sanctions