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Washington- While there is a lot of talk within various American circles about the necessity of imposing conditions on providing military aid to Israel, a number of experts, to whom Al Jazeera Net spoke, doubt the possibility of the President’s administration joe biden On this step, despite the huge number of Palestinian casualties resulting from the Israeli army’s use of American weapons and ammunition in its ongoing aggression since October 7, Gaza strip.
President Biden submitted a request last October 20 to Congress To obtain supplementary funding for the current fiscal year worth $106 billion, which includes support for Israel with $14 billion, and other programs worth $5.6 billion for logistical support, infrastructure, and other aid to facilitate the lives of Palestinians “displaced from Gaza to neighboring countries.”
In addition, Israel annually receives military aid worth $3.3 billion, and Washington is committed to spending $500 million annually on joint missile defense programs, according to a memorandum of understanding covering the period from 2018 to 2028.
Israel is an exception in its violation of American rules and laws regulating the provision of weapons to foreign governments, especially with regard to those countries’ record of respecting human rights and adhering to the rules of international law and the laws regulating war.
“An interesting idea”
Explain White House This week he did not seek to place conditions on military aid to Israel, although Biden suggested days ago that doing so should be considered. The president told reporters that calls to place specific conditions on aid to Israel are “an interesting idea.”
In a spokesman’s response National Security Council John Kirby asked whether the president was considering modifying and reviewing the provision of aid and what he meant by “a worthwhile idea.” He responded by saying that it was “a worthwhile idea, and the approach that Biden has chosen to follow so far has yielded positive results,” referring to the truce that extended the fighting. 7 days.
Some observers considered that Biden and Kirby intended to send a message of anger to Israel in order to change the severity of its attacks on the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the death of at least 15,000 people, including more than 10,000 children and women, and about 7,000 people are still missing. The number of infected people is 36 thousand.
In an interview with Al Jazeera Net, Giorgio Cafiero, an American affairs expert and director of the Gulf States Studies Foundation, considered that, given the nature of Biden and his foreign minister Anthony Blinken And others who serve this administration: “I do not expect the White House to agree to change the nature of American aid to Israel. Biden’s team is full of Zionists who are ideologically committed to the relationship between the United States and Israel.”
He added that they want to see Washington always provide strong support for Tel Aviv, and anything is possible, “but I doubt that Washington under Biden will tie up aid to Israel, especially during the 2024 election year. Biden does not want a battle with pro-Israel lobby groups like this.”AIPAC“While he seeks to secure a second term.
Accounts of senators and representatives
At the same time, discussions by Democrats in Congress to place conditions on military aid to Israel have increased, and some are linking what new opinion polls show to this rare step in Congress.
Young Americans, especially liberals, believe that their country does too much for its closest ally in the Middle East (Israel) and does too little for the Palestinians.
A poll conducted by Quinnipiac University on November 16 showed that 52% of voters – ages 18 to 34 – said they sympathized more with the Palestinians, compared to 29% with Israel.
The percentage changed significantly compared to the results of the same poll conducted in mid-October, when 41% of these voters sympathized with the Israelis, compared to 26% with the Palestinians.
Biden and a large majority of members of Congress have so far expressed their full support for the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip following Operation “Al-Aqsa floodThe truce – which lasted for a week during which the fighting stopped – gave some Democrats the opportunity to express their concerns about how Israel is waging its war.
“We want the president to get explicit assurances from the Netanyahu government regarding a plan to reduce the unacceptable level of civilian casualties, and we want Netanyahu’s coalition to commit to fully cooperating with our efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza,” Senator Chris Van Hollen said.
In an interview with Al Jazeera Net, Charles Dunn, a former White House and State Department official, currently an expert at the Middle East Institute and the Arab Institute in Washington, and a lecturer at George Washington University, said that Senator Fann’s move to support conditionality is a “largely unprecedented idea, especially in times of crisis.” This does not affect the annual tranche of aid to Israel, but will only apply to the proposed $14 billion in supplemental aid.”
The expert added that even the concept of conditionality applied to Israeli aid may open the door to new thinking in Congress about what the United States is willing to support in the long term.
While Senator Peter Welch said in a statement, “I fully support Israel’s right to prosecute those who ordered and carried out the October 7 attacks. But Israel must not do so in a way that leads to massive civilian casualties and widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza”.
In an interview with CNN, Welch said, “I do not want us to finance two thousand pound American bombs that would be dropped on refugee camps to kill huge numbers of innocent civilians.”
Ceasefire as a condition
This growing debate serves as further evidence that Washington’s support for Israel’s war is dividing congressional Democrats. A growing number of House Democrats are demanding that the United States push for a long-term ceasefire. The number of Democrats who publicly support the ceasefire gradually rose to 49 members. Opinion polls have shown that a majority of Americans support a ceasefire in Gaza.
A recent poll showed that more than two-thirds of Americans support a ceasefire in the Israeli war on Gaza, according to a poll conducted by Reuters in partnership with the Ipsos Research Center, the results of which were published last Wednesday.
The poll, in which more than a thousand people participated, shows that American support for Israel has decreased last month since the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
The percentage of respondents who said that “the United States should support Israel” decreased from 41% in mid-October to 32% this week.
Blank check
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has been criticized by progressive advocates for not calling for a ceasefire, was one of the few Senate Democrats to explicitly support making military aid subject to more conditions on how it is used.
Sanders wrote an article in the New York Times in which he said, “Currently, we provide $3.8 billion annually, and President Biden requested $14.3 billion in addition to this amount, and asked Congress to waive the already limited regular oversight rules.”
He called for an end to Israel’s “blank check approach” and said that “the United States must make clear that while we are friends of Israel, there are conditions to that friendship, and we cannot be complicit in actions that violate international law.”
Other Democrats rejected this idea, which is that “any legislation that requires security aid to our main democratic ally (Israel) is unsuccessful, and will lose dozens of votes,” according to what Democratic Representative Josh Gottheimer said in a statement.
Senator Ben Cardin, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also stressed his rejection of the idea of conditionality, saying, “I do not think there is a need for conditionality. The way the president handled his talks with the Israelis resulted in tangible results, including the volume of humanitarian and strategic aid to the country.” The military side.”
