Larry Derfner in Forward:
As an Israeli who sees the occupation as a plague both on Palestinians and on Israelis, I think it’s a good thing that Congress just held back $200 million in economic aid to the Palestinians as punishment for their statehood bid at the United Nations. It’s a good thing, because now that the Republican Party (and much of the Democratic Party) is indistinguishable from Likud USA, American involvement only makes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict worse, so the less influence America has over here, the better.
And the withholding of the $200 million gives the United States even less influence over the Palestinians than it had after President Obama, at Israel’s behest, did them in at the United Nations.
The Arab League has already offered to make up the $200 million to President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. The United States can even hold back on all $600 million it gives annually to the P.A.; there are plenty of oil-rich Muslim regimes that would love the honor of displacing America in Palestine. And if the P.A. goes broke, the 76-year-old Abbas says he’ll have no qualms about closing down the whole operation and letting Israel police the refugee camps, villages and cities and float the economy of 2.5 million Palestinians.
So who’s threatening whom? Congress has no leverage whatsoever over Abbas. This gray eminence has become, for the first time, a national and Third World hero by defying America and going for it at the U.N.; if anybody thinks Abbas now going to bow down to Congress’s demands, withdraw his statehood bid and thereby become a national and Third World quisling, it ain’t gonna happen.
America has taken itself out of the picture in Middle East peacemaking. It can help Israel go to war and even win a war, but not make peace.
More here.