The US had already demonstrated that it is willing to use its humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the wake of the war in Gaza to pursue political goals. Now, the US is threatening to pull the aid all together unless the Palestinians do what they want. Ha'aretz reports:
About $900 million pledged by the United States to the Palestinians will be withdrawn if the expected Palestinian Authority coalition government between Fatah and Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist, Western and Israeli diplomats said Wednesday.
During her visit to the region last week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas against forming a coalition with Hamas that will not meet the expectations of the Quartet.
Not only is the Obama administration following the Bush policy of boycotting Hamas, it is actually advocating against democracy. Ha'aretz continues:
Clinton discussed the issue of forming a Palestinian coalition with Fatah representatives, who told her that the new government would consist of non-affiliated officials whose chief task will be to prepare the Palestinian territories for new general elections.
She reportedly told the officials she believed holding new elections was secondary to building the bureaucracy of the Palestinian Authority. The Obama administration is adamant in maintaining the previous U.S. presidential administration's position of boycotting Hamas. Two weeks ago Clinton said lifting the boycott would damage attempts to reach peace in the region.
Wow. To summarize, the US stance is that Palestinian elections are bad and Israeli collective punishment against the people of Gaza will further peace efforts.
This story follows up on an analysis by Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah in their article "Did Clinton sabotage a Palestinian reconciliation?" Besides discouraging a Palestinian rapprochement that many consider necessary for moving forward with effective negotiations with Israel, Abu Nimah and Abunimah point out the hypocrisy that the US would never consider similar demands on an Israeli government. They write:
While Israeli violence is tolerated or applauded, Israel's leaders are not held to any political preconditions. Prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu emphatically rejects a sovereign Palestinian state and — like his predecessors — rejects all other Palestinian rights enshrined in international law and UN resolutions. When told to stop building illegal settlements on occupied land, Israel responds simply that this is a matter for negotiation and to prove the point it revealed plans in February to add thousands of Jewish-only homes to its West Bank colonies.
Yet Quartet envoy Tony Blair, asked by Al-Jazeera International on 1 March how his masters would deal with a rejectionist Israeli government, said, "We have to work with whoever the Israeli people elect, let's test it out not just assume it won't work." Unless Palestinians are considered an inferior race, the same logic ought to apply to their elected leaders, but they were never given a chance.It is ludicrous to demand that the stateless Palestinian people unconditionally recognize the legitimacy of the entity that dispossessed them and occupies them, that itself has no declared borders and that continues to violently expand its territory at their expense. If Palestinians are ever to recognize Israel in any form, that can only be an outcome of negotiations in which Palestinian rights are fully recognized, not a precondition for them.
The Obama administration is repeating the mistakes of the Bush administration by following this course. Much of the "hope" engendered by the Obama election was that it would abandon Bush's nation-building imperialist adventures in the Middle East. The US's policy of dictating political conditions and "solutions" on Palestinians will not weaken Hamas (will they ever learn this lesson?) or lead to an end of the conflict. This conflict will only end when Israel abandons colonizing the West Bank, recognizes Palestinian citizens of Israel's right to equality and respects Palestinian refugees' right of return to their homes and land. Ignoring these core issues will only deepen the conflict and delay a possible peace. Until the US is willing to use its power and influence to change Israeli policy, it's wasting its time.
