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A growing tension begins between the US and Israel unlike other rifts before. This tension stems from three things, Netanyahu's refusal to work towards a two state solution. The United States continued talks with Iran and lack of support for military strike, and one that sent shock waves through AIPAC recently, mention of the Symington Amendment.
Benjamin Netanyahu will refuse to support the formation of a Palestinian state in his first meeting with President Barack Obama, a source close to the Israeli prime minister says.
Netanyahu "will not make a commitment to Washington on the creation of a Palestinian state which would undoubtedly become a 'Hamastan'," parliament member Ophir Akunis from Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party was quoted as saying.
Furthermore, President Obama has also rattled Israel's cage over its plans to deal with Iran's nuclear program, which Israel insists poses an "existential threat" to the regime.
These two widely known issues have began to strain relations of late but even still, the United States has decided to raise the amount of foreign aid to Israel next year.
According to the Israeli daily, Haaretz, the budget proposed to Congress for 2010 includes $2.775 billion in aid to Israel, compared to $2.5 billon budgeted for 2009. This is more than a 10% increase in total U.S. aid to Israel.
The budget also includes an increase in the assistance to the production of weapons systems, such as the missile Hetz-3.
So while Obama is being "snubbed" the checks to Israel not only continue they increase. Additionally, the article goes on to mention the following.
Quote:
The U.S. budget proposed to congress for year 2010 also calls for the administration to respect Israel’s claims on Jerusalem. This contradicts international law, which does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied territories of East Jerusalem. It also contradicts the Oslo Agreements, which defines all of Jerusalem as a territory to be discussed during the final stages of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
However as tensions continue to rise between Obama and Netanyahu, a bomb shell was dropped in the most subtle of manners that one can only guess was Washington's way of telling Israel to sit down and shut up.
According to The Washington Times, a senior White House official said the administration considered the nuclear programs of Israel and Iran to be unrelated "apples and oranges."
The Washington Times reported that a push to get Israel to sign the NPT would jeopardize a 40-year-old secret agreement between the United States and the Jewish state to never acknowledge publicly Israel's nuclear arsenal. The Times describes documents released in recent years that acknowledge an accord, forged at a summit between U.S. President Richard Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, although there is no explicit record of the accord.
Now the cat is out of the bag and the US is publicly acknowledging Israel's nuclear weapons. While it has been widely known that Israel has between 200-300 nuclear weapons, Israel has never publicly acknowledged it, and for good reason to. According to the Symington Amendment, the United States is prevented from giving any foreign aid to Israel as it has done for so long.
The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 as amended by the Symington Amendment of 1976 and the Glenn Amendment of 1977 prohibit US military assistance to countries that acquire or transfer nuclear reprocessing technology outside of international nonproliferation regimes. Israel, unlike Iran, is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. If Congress wishes to provide US taxpayer funded foreign aid to Israel in compliance with US law, it may do so only under a special waiver from the office of the President as in the case for Pakistan.
So it seems we have a game of chicken between Obama and Netanyahu and it is anyone's guess as to which will blink first. Perhaps Netanyahu doesn't realize that the United States is in the middle of a financial crisis and while our auto industry is on the brink of collapse, the thought of giving away billions of dollars in aid to a nation that is "snubbing" you, will not set will with many American families.
Let us cave, for that matter let us remove all of our troops and naval operations and let the nation of Isreal handle it. OMG! How dare he. Quite the opposite.
Isreal is the only nation that has both the gonads and no how in regard to handling the Middle East situation. It is hard for me to believe when I look back, since the 1970's 4 individuals in my family (including myself) have served in this mess of 16th Century crap called the "Holy Land" In my part I have a camel boned box as a material memory holding a cup of sand, while a large city area in the region holds a piece of my shoulder that has now turned to dirt.
See, with Isreal we can cut this doldrum of BS down to a few months instead of a lingering muliple decades of PC crap, remember 1967 anyone? Isreal does not play around (I served jointly with their Airborne crews), they know that there is a segment of society in this area of the world that will never stop until they are truly wiped from the face of the earth. Let the US remove their nose out of the anus of stagnation and you will find a different Middle East, trust me on this one. The Jewish state of Isreal does not have the same mind in a bottle make believe mindest of the Jews in Brooklyn who go out and vote for a emotional based person of fairytails, they live it yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, and every minute. If anyone thinks Sunni or Shea' has any plans of "loving" Isreal while they claim J town as the capitol of Isreal is smoking some good Bubble Gum Black.
Big surprise. Netanyahu come back to the PM slot based on his hard line view of the Palestinian issue. After Isreal had benn slammed with shells and terrorist attacks, his promise sounded good.
I really doubt Netanyahu will do much more than posture wrt Obama. And really, Nenny is always about two leaks from a government collapsing scandal.
Big surprise. Netanyahu come back to the PM slot based on his hard line view of the Palestinian issue. After Isreal had benn slammed with shells and terrorist attacks, his promise sounded good.
I really doubt Netanyahu will do much more than posture wrt Obama. And really, Nenny is always about two leaks from a government collapsing scandal.
And Obama didn't know how to vote when he was senator so he voted present. Present in body only.
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How dare he. Quite the opposite.
In my part I have a camel boned box as a material memory holding a cup of sand, while a large city area in the region holds a piece of my shoulder that has now turned to dirt.
