Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has called on the US to use its “special relationship” with Israel to pressure its close ally into halting attacks on Palestinians, an expectation that contrasts sharply with Washington’s track record on behalf of the big-spending pro-Israel lobby.
"We are aware of the particular relationship between the United States and Israel, and we have deployed enormous efforts for that relationship to be a factor in pressing the Israeli government to cease its aggression against our people and our holy places," Arafat said in prepared remarks released before the Cairo meeting of Arab foreign ministers on Thursday.
The oft-repeated Israeli stance, however, is that the international community cannot interfere with its efforts to quell the latest Palestinian uprising in lands conquered by the Jewish state in 1967, then settled with tens of thousands of Israelis in defiance of international law and the 1993 Oslo peace accords.
This rejection of outside interference has extended to rejecting Palestinians’ repeated appeals for international ceasefire monitors, which this week, as in March, succeeded thanks to rigid US support in the UN Security Council.
In fact, the US has showed little sign of wavering in its support for Israel, and, according to CNN, in January signed a memorandum of understanding with the Jewish state to increase military aid by $60 million, reaching $2.4 billion by 2008.
Israel spends the majority of the aid money on products from the US defense industry, an Israeli official told CNN at the time.
An October 27, 2000 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, using available and verifiable numbers, puts cumulative US aid to Israel from 1949 through FY 2000 at $81.38 billion.
This aid, as well as US diplomatic support in the form of actual or threatened vetoes in the UN Security Council, could very possibly be related to the power of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington.
This May, Fortune magazine once again ranked the American Israel Public Affairs Committee among the top five in its annual Power 25 survey of premier lobbying groups. AIPAC, according to the mass-circulation business magazine, is the number one foreign policy lobby for the fourth consecutive year.
"AIPAC's job is to shape opinion favorable to Israel," said Toby Dershowitz, an organization spokesperson, according to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. "Its main goal is enhancing US-Israeli relations."
When former Senator Charles Percy (R-IL), then chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, voted in 1981 in favor of President Reagan's ultimately successful plan to sell AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia, AIPAC successfully targeted him for defeat in his next election, according to the Report.
"All the Jews in America, from coast to coast, gathered - to oust Percy," said Tom Dine, executive director of AIPAC, at a fundraising dinner in Toronto, Canada.
"And the American politicians those who hold public positions now and those who aspire to - got the message,” he added, cited by the Report.
The Power 25 list asks members of Congress, Hill staffers, senior White House aides and lobbyists to answer the question: “Who levies power among our nation’s leaders?” - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
