With the US economy in an absolute tailspin and with the debt having almost more zeros on the end than you can count, the Obama administration continues to placate the Palestinian Authority by funneling $148,000,000 more US dollars from the already overburdened taxpayers into the black hole coffers of the Palestinian Authority. Obama has made no accounting requirement on the PA of the use of the funds. This is supposedly to help them avert a budget crisis and support efforts to achieve a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian dilemma. This can only be a band-aid fix to both issues.
First of all the Palestinian Authority, by choice, has never been self supporting or economically sound. Secondly, the US cannot buy an answer or purchase a solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as they have been trying to do for decades. Apparently Obama hasn’t done his homework or doesn’t care.
Additionally, last month in Washington D.C. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that he was working with private sector businesses and allied governments on committing significant investments to aid the Palestinian Authority and that this package would likely develop into an overall package totaling FOUR BILLION dollars in investments to prop up and stimulate the Palestinian economy. Conversely, US aid to America’s only ally in the Middle East, Israel, amounts to only $3.1 billion. This is slightly up from $2.78 billion given in 2012. Only 25% of this money goes straight to Israel while 75% stays here to help assist Israel in research and development so she can defend herself against the very group the United States wants to aid, Hamas. There are no reports of any offer from the current administration to send additional funding to help the Israeli economy. Why does the United States, and the rest of the world, seem so resolved to assist the enemies of Israel? How can the United States continue to assist the PA when Abu Mazen has publicly stated that Israel has no right to exist while holding hands with Kahlid Mashal, the terrorist leader of Hamas?
And just what does Israel get? A demand to release murdering terrorists from their prisons and more rockets fired by Hamas in to Israel to maim and kill innocent Israeli civilians. Talk about rubbing salt into the wounds of the greatest ally of the US. With the US having so many problems of its own, it would make more sense for the US Government to focus on solving their own economic woes and leave Israel and her capable leaders alone to run their own government and engage the Palestinians on their own but until the Palestinians do the bare minimum by agreeing that Israel does, indeed, have a right to exist and the right to have defensible borders, there will never be any true peace talks or negotiations. So, what’s the point in giving aid to a hostile government determined to have everything their way and unwilling to give anything in return – even something as fundamental and elementary as acknowledging Israel’s right to exist? There is no point. More financial aid will only result in aiding Hamas in procuring more rockets to hurl in to Israel. The money never gets to the Palestinian people where it is most needed.
What does it take for the United States and other nations who are determined to see Israel give up her real estate to understand that there has been a continuing financial crisis with the Palestinian budget since the days of Yasser Arafat? Literally tens of billions of dollars in aid have oozed through the hands of the Palestinian Authority with nothing to show in return except empty promises and continued acts of terror against innocent Israelis who are America’s only true friends in the Middle East.
A better avenue to pursue to help the Palestinians, whose leaders have proven themselves to be corrupt, would be to ask why there is no effort underway to retrieve the billions of dollars stashed away by Suha Arafat, wife of deceased Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who spends her time jet setting around the globe enjoying a lavish lifestyle in France and elsewhere.
Instead of throwing US dollars at the Palestinians, perhaps it would be more logical to persuade the Palestinians to surrender their guns, grenades and rockets in exchange for livestock and agricultural equipment. When Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005 giving the land to the Palestinians, Gaza was thriving with fertile fields and greenhouses producing some of the highest quality fruits and vegetables in the world. Today it is a virtual wasteland. Upon taking possession of Gaza, the Palestinians immediately went about the task of destroying the greenhouses and plundering and polluting the fields. Their only business is war and taking and destroying Israel.
US taxpayers ought to be outraged that the US Government continues to use very hard-earned tax dollars to help fund and support a terrorist regime whose leaders are bent on begging instead of focusing on growing a viable economy for their people. Providing financial support to terrorists is immoral and, according to US law, illegal. The Obama administration would better serve the American people by applying the tax dollars of her citizens to help her own struggling economy rather than shoring up a people bent on the destruction of our friend, the State of Israel.