The New Administration and Aid to Israel
Congress
and the Administration have not agreed to include the $450 million special aid
package Clinton promised the Israelis in the outgoing Congress’s last budget
bill. Unless it is included before Congress dissolves about December 15,
it will have to await the Bush administration.
Israeli and Jewish sources believe that this additional aid will not top
Bush’s order of priorities in his first year in the White House.
Indeed, President Clinton’s imminent departure appears to have set off near
panic among Jewish supporters of Israel. One supporter of aid to Israel
put it this way: “No upgrading of strategic relations, no cruise
missiles, no Jonathan Pollard, and now no aid as well. That’s the
farewell present the friendliest US president to Israel is leaving the Prime
Minister who has gone further than any of his predecessors in his peace
initiatives.”
The friendliest US president to Israel? A president who persuaded Barak
to give Arafat 90% of what he sought and who got nothing in return? A
president who persuaded Barak to give Hafez El-Assad of Syria 98% of what he
wanted, but was turned down rudely to his face over 30 yards of shoreline?
With friends like these....
The real panic is yet to set in. That may come when Israel’s next
prime minister may discover that Americans are sick and tired of the Middle
East, especially sick and tired of being asked for more and more aid for
Israel and its several peace partners, with its harmful consequences for all
involved, especially Israel (as our latest IASPS
Research Paper in Strategy demonstrates.)
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