[Peace] Excellent Article in Today's Chicago Tribune

[David Green]

Dear friends,

This article, by UIUC Professor Kenneth Cuno, was in
today's Chicago Tribune:

U.S. pays for Israeli policy it condemns
  
By Kenneth Cuno.

Kenneth Cuno teaches the history of the modern Middle
East at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Published April 17, 2002

With April 15 still fresh in our minds, this is a good
time to consider how American taxpayers are financing
Israel's illegal and shortsighted policy of building
Jewish settlements in the territories it occupied
during the June 1967 war.

All but the most extremist supporters of Israel in the
U.S. recognize the ever-growing settlements as
standing in the way of a geographically viable
Palestinian state, thereby making an end to the
conflict between Israel and the Palestinians more
remote.

The U.S. opposes settlement activity, yet our aid to
Israel makes the continued financing of settlements
possible.

Every American administration since 1967 has opposed
the building of these settlements. President Jimmy
Carter called them illegal, since they violate the
Fourth Geneva Convention (to which Israel itself is a
signatory) which states that "the occupying power
shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian
population into the territory it occupies." Fearful of
the pro-Israel lobby, subsequent presidents treaded
more softly, calling the settlements "obstacles to
peace" and today--even more softly--"unhelpful."

Still, our policy is clear: We oppose settlements.
Palestinian statehood is an essential part of any
eventual peace settlement, but how can there be a
Palestinian state if the occupied territories are
expropriated for Israeli settlements?

Though American aid to Israel is not earmarked for
settlement building, by providing aid ostensibly for
other purposes the U.S. enables Israel to shift funds
from those purposes to the building and subsidizing of
settlements in occupied territory.

For Fiscal Year 2002 Israel was allotted $2.04 billion
in military aid and $720 million in economic aid--in
grants, not loans. That's a third of our total foreign
aid budget. The total economic aid bill is higher if
you include additional goodies like tax deductions for
Israel bonds and private contributions to Israel.

In fact, "economic aid" is a misnomer. With a per
capita GNP comparable to Britain's, Israel is hardly a
developing country. Compare the "economic aid" figure
above with the estimated $500 million that Israel
spent on settlements in 1999, the last year of
Benjamin Netanyahu's government, and you can see how
American taxpayers are unwittingly helping to finance
settlements.

Though the leftist Labor and rightist Likud parties
differ in their approaches, both parties have built
and continue to build settlements in occupied
territory. Settlement building started soon after the
June war, and intensified with the election of the
first Likud government, led by Menachem Begin, in
1977.

As Minister of Agriculture in that government, Ariel
Sharon, now Israel's prime minister, drew up the
Likud's master plan for future settlement development.
The 1993 Oslo agreement did not ban settlement
activity, though it was implied that the status quo
should be maintained, and Israeli governments since
then have pledged not to establish new settlements.

In spite of that, construction has continued under
both Labor and the Likud--and the settler population
has actually doubled since Oslo. Israel insists that
these are not "new" settlements, but merely existing
ones undergoing "natural expansion." But surely there
is nothing "natural" about colonization encouraged by
tax breaks for businesses and individuals plus
subsidized housing--all thanks to American taxpayers.

Sharon and others insist that the failure of the peace
process and the slide into war is the fault of the
Palestinians, who, they claim, never intended to make
peace. But consider that before the outbreak of the
current conflict 59 percent of the West Bank had been
expropriated by Israel for settlements, roads, and
other purposes, all for the benefit of 200,000
settlers, leaving the remaining two-fifths of it for2
million Palestinians. Over a third of the tiny Gaza
Strip had been seized for a mere 6,500 settlers,
shrinking the area in which another 1.1 million
Palestinians are confined. One-third of annexed East
Jerusalem's area had been expropriated to make way for
180,000 settlers.

In his first year in office, Sharon has established 25
new settlement outposts, building at a faster pace
than Netanyahu did. The settlers have full rights and
benefits as Israeli citizens. They can vote and are
subject to Israeli civilian law, while their
Palestinian neighbors live under occupation.

The shortsightedness of Israel's settlement policy is
clear enough: It deprives the Palestinians of any hope
for meaningful self-determination and removes any
reason for them to take the "peace process" seriously.
Proposals advanced by former President Bill Clinton
and recently by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah recognize
that things have gone to the point where no Israeli
government can remove all of the settlers.

They provide instead for the removal of some settlers
and a land swap to compensate the Palestinians for the
settlement blocks that Israel will annex. This is
acceptable to the Palestinians, but continued
settlement activity threatens to make even this
compromise impossible.

President Bush has an opportunity to signal his
disapproval of Sharon's intransigence by threatening
to withhold Israel's next economic aid check. He could
take up the suggestion of former Sen. Mark Hatfield
(R-Ore.) that we reduce Israel's economic aid in
direct proportion to what Israel spends on settlement
activity. That would not affect Israel's security,
since military aid is separate. But it would make a
distinction between our support for Israel's right to
exist on one hand, and its colonial expansion on the
other. If the president hears from enough disgruntled
taxpayers, he might be encouraged to put your money
where his mouth is.



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