THE JERUSALEM POST: The White House’s June 20 statement on the Gaza blockade shows that the Obama administration has abandoned all strategic concepts in its approach to the matter.
The White House’s June 20 statement on Gaza is immensely revealing of the shortcomings in US policy. It isn’t at all just a matter of policy toward Israel but of a failure to consider the broader US national interest.
Here’s the real issue: Does the US want the long-term existence of a revolutionary Islamist mini-state on the Mediterranean, spreading terrorism and anti-Semitism, eager to go to war with Israel again, working hard to block any Israel-Palestinian peace, expelling Christians, oppressing women and subverting moderate Arab states? It begins: “The president has described the situation in Gaza as unsustainable and has made clear that it demands fundamental change.”
One would expect the words “unsustainable” and “demands fundamental change” to mean the president demands the overthrow of the Hamas regime. In fact, it signifies the exact opposite: He demands that regime’s stabilization.
The statement continues by describing Obama’s plan to give roughly $200 million to Gaza as “a down payment on the US commitment to the people of Gaza, who deserve a chance to take part in building a viable, independent state of Palestine, together with those who live in the West Bank.”
Just think of that paragraph’s implications: a “down payment” on a “US commitment,” that is, not an act of generosity for which the US must get something in return. Rather, the phrasing makes it seem the US owes them the money.
Moreover, such aid retards rather than advances building a Palestinian state by shoring up a Hamas government which is against the Palestinian Authority, against peace with Israel and against a two-state solution. >>> Barry Rubin* | Sunday, June 27, 2010
*The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center and editor of Middle East Review of International Affairs and Turkish Studies. He blogs at www.rubinreports.blogspot.com
