The Trump administration has dealt another blow to the the flailing Palestinian Authority (PA) in the form of more budget cuts, this time to the PA’s security forces.
The State Department released its congressional budget request for 2021 on Monday; noticeably missing was funding for the Palestinian Security Services, which has received bipartisan support in congress for 27 years.
Last year, the US provided the Palestinians with an estimated $35 million for their security services.
Since President Trump took office, the US has been steadily cutting humanitarian and economic aid to the Palestinians, plunging the PA and other organizations like UNRWA into deep financial crises.
While the new budget does not provide an explicit package for the Palestinian security forces, it does request $200 million to go towards a “Diplomatic Progress Fund,” that the government could use with “flexibility” to “respond to new opportunities arising from progress in diplomatic and peace efforts around the world…such as progress on a plan for Middle East peace.”
Within the Diplomatic Progress Fund is $25 million designated towards security assistance in the West Bank.
It is understood that contingent upon the PA receiving such funds would be their acceptance of Trump’s “peace plan” that was released two weeks ago, which they have categorically rejected.
The Palestinians have boycotted the US government since it recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017, and have accused the Trump administration of using “political blackmail” to force the Palesitnians to capitulate to their demands.
Axios reported in November that Trump rejected a request from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the US to continue funding the PA security forces, allegedly saying that Israel should foot the bill instead.
While the new congressional budget request is subject to major changes given the Democrats’ control of the House of Representatives, nixing funding for the Palestinian security forces came as a surprise to many.
The US and Israel have long supported the funding of the Palestinian Security Services in order to maintain “stability” in the occupied West Bank and protect Israel’s security interests.
Security coordination between the PA and Israel has been a crucial tool for Israel’s security apparatus for decades. PA President Mahmoud Abbas has threatened for months to end security coordination with Israel if the latter continues to move forward with annexation plans outlined in Trump’s proposal.
Ramallah-based political analyst and former PLO negotiator Diana Buttu told Mondoweiss that she wasn’t at all surprised by the news, saying it was made in line with the the decades-long policy of Israel to slowly dismantle the PA.
“Believe it or not, Israel doesn’t need the PA anymore for security coordination,” Buttu said.
In the past decade, Israel has worked towards technologically modifying their security apparatus in the occupied West Bank, Buttu said, slowly phasing out the role of the PA as a result.
“If you look at the way Israel operates today, a lot of it is being done by their own technological mechanisms,” she said. “Everything from new IDs with magnetic chips for Palestinians, gates at the entrances to Palestinian areas that be can closed electronically, and facial recognition technology at checkpoints.”
“The occupation is very much operating by remote control, they don’t need the PA any longer,” she said.
Buttu doesn’t anticipate that the PA will go without funding for its security forces, however, predicting that the EU and other donor countries will step up for the sake of regional stability and due to the fact that the PA security services are the “single largest employer of Palestinians by a long shot.”
An unfortunate result of that, she says, will be less funding from donor states for more crucial services like education and healthcare.
“More money has been spent by the PA on security than education and healthcare combined,” Buttu told Mondoweiss.
“So the next bunch of European money is going to get earmarked towards security, and taken away from the other areas that are much more needed.”
“The UN human rights office has issued a long-awaited report on companies linked to Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The report names 112 business entities the office says it has reasonable grounds to conclude have been involved in activities related to settlements.
They include Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia Group and Motorola Solutions.
The Palestinians said the report was a “victory for international law”, but Israel called it “shameful”.
About 600,000 Jews live in about 140 settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967. The settlements are widely considered illegal under international law, though Israel has always disputed this.
The Palestinians have long called for the removal of the settlements, arguing that their presence on land they claim for a future independent Palestinian state makes it almost impossible to make such a state a reality.” …
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51477231
Finally, somewhat of a backbbone! Reach up and take hold!
https://www.ft.com/content/49a1a280-41f1-11ea-bdb5-169ba7be433d
“Israel’s borders will expand, but its legitimacy will erode. With hopes of a real state of their own dashed, it is now likely the Palestinians inside Israel and the occupied territories will wage an apartheid-style fight for equal rights in the land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean. It is not just the future of Palestinians at stake here but that of Israelis too.
Israelis now face a single state in which Arabs will come to outnumber Jews — and insist on the same rights. Some American Jewish leaders long critical of Israeli and US policy argue that only if Israelis are faced with the realities of a single state will they revert to the preference for two states”
https://www.ft.com/content/2bcff144-4be7-11ea-95a0-43d18ec715f5
“The Israeli prime minister, who is seeking re-election on March 2 for the third time in less than a year, pounced on the opportunity to burnish his credentials as the man who could coax a US president into offering up a peace plan that would give his rightwing base the one thing the international community has largely denied them: recognition of Israel’s claims to the biblical heartland that Palestinians say is their home. The plan was far-fetched and with little chance of ever materialising but it was important as an official document rewarding long-held Israeli rightwing positions — from annexing settlements, holding on to East Jerusalem and stripping a third of the occupied West Bank from any future Palestinian state.
As Palestinian and Arab condemnation of the plan grew, the White House walked back its support of any immediate annexation of land in the West Bank until after the Israeli elections delivered a clear winner. An Israeli cabinet meeting to approve annexation was cancelled. “They betrayed him [Mr Netanyahu],” said a member of the Likud executive committee, asking for anonymity while discussing a political embarrassment for his party. “It’s like they shut off the electricity during a party.”
Patel, “It is understood that contingent upon the PA receiving such funds would be their acceptance of Trump’s “peace plan” that was released two weeks ago, which they have categorically rejected.”
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A year ago: “They disrespected us a week ago by not allowing our great vice president to see them, and we give them hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and support, tremendous numbers, numbers that nobody understands,” said Trump.”That money is on the table. That money is not going to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace” with Israel, he said.
The U.S. president also said that he has “a proposal for peace,”
Yesterday: The Trump administration’s Mideast peace plan is a basis for negotiations and could be subject to changes, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft said Tuesday as the UN Security Council convened to discuss to the plan.
A senior Trump administration official said after the Security Council session that Washington is “willing to have an honest and open discussion on [the plan] as a possible basis to restart negotiations for a realistic two-state solution. As we’ve said all along, our plan is the start of a process, not the end.”
What’s going on? What is Patel pushing?
https://twitter.com/BettyMcCollum04/status/1227696220963037185
Speeding the fall of Abbas and the collapse of the PA seems illogical to me, but this seems to be the direction of the rhetoric and actions by Trump and Bibi. Maybe some radical pressure is needed for new elections and in fact some type of pressure will push Palestinian society to better governance. Seems farfetched. It seems misconceived.