Israel wants the US to help fund its withdrawal from Gaza Strip

[ruralmagnate]

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/6f980694-f2...00e2511c8.html

Israel wants the US to help fund its withdrawal from Gaza Strip
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington and Harvey Morris in,Jerusalem
Published: July 12 2005 03:00 | Last updated: July 12 2005 03:00

Senior Israeli officials were expected yesterday to ask the White House for money to help meet the costs of disengaging from the Gaza Strip.
The officials were to meet Elliot Abrams, the National Security Council official responsible for Israel, to make a presentation for needs and requirements, according to an Israeli official. Israel's Haaretz newspaper said the delegation of finance ministry officials and senior aides to Ariel Sharon, Israeli prime minister, would request $2.2bn (€1.8bn, £1.25bn). That would make it the biggest aid package for Israel since 1992, when the US provided funds to help rebuild infrastructure damaged by Iraqi missile attacks during the first Gulf war. The newspaper also said that Washington had agreed in principle to pay the costs of disengagement, which the White House considers instrumental to promoting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Why don"™t we stop all aid to Israel? Let's use that money to protect our own borders.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/07/11/news/gaza.php





Israel seeks $2.2 billion from U.S. for Gaza pullout

The Associated Press, Reuters

TUESDAY, JULY 12, 2005



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JERUSALEM Israel is asking the United States for $2.2 billion in additional aid to help pay for its upcoming withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, the Israeli deputy prime minister, Shimon Peres, said Monday.
[/align]Peres said some of the money would be used for removing settlers and their belongings. The rest would be spent on developing the Galilee and Negev regions for resettlement.
[/align]"Part of it is for the disengagement, where Israel is spending a lot of money anyway," Peres said. "We have to develop the Negev and the Galilee, which are the only alternatives to these territories" that are being evacuated.
[/align]Peres made his comments at the start of a meeting with James Wolfensohn - a Middle East envoy appointed by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia - and the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana.
[/align]The Haaretz newspaper said the aid request was scheduled to be delivered Monday in Washington at a meeting with delegates from the Israeli Finance Ministry, the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel and a team headed by Elliott Abrams, the U.S. deputy national security adviser.
[/align]The Bush administration has agreed in principle to help fund the Gaza plan, Haaretz said. Washington wants the withdrawals to consolidate a five-month-old truce and spur talks on a U.S.-led "road map" for a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel.
[/align]Israel is already the largest recipient of U.S. support, getting an annual $2.3 billion in military and other aid.
[/align]Solana and Wolfensohn are holding a series of talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials on the Gaza pullout, which is scheduled to begin in mid-August.
[/align]Funding the Gaza plan would be the biggest U.S. aid package to Israel since 1992, when Washington paid $3 billion to make up for damage sustained from Iraqi missile salvos in the Gulf war.
[/align]When Israel held peace negotiations with Syria and the Palestinians in 2000, Ehud Barak, then the Israeli prime minister, asked the United States for $20 billion to cover any required Israeli withdrawals. But the talks stalled and the request was scrapped.
[/align]The traditionally robust U.S.-Israeli ties have been shaken recently by Israel's arms exports to China, which the United States opposes. The Israeli defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, is scheduled to visit Washington next week in an attempt to repair the ties.
[/align]The Bush administration has also voiced misgivings at Israel's construction of a vast barrier through the West Bank, fearing that it could imperil future talks with the Palestinians.
[/align][/align]Sharon has cast the pullout as a "disengagement" from more than four years of fighting with the Palestinians. He faces mounting hostility from rightists who condemn the move as a betrayal of Jewish claims on biblical land and a reward for a Palestinian uprising.
[/align]The cost of the Gaza withdrawal, the first time Israel will have uprooted settlements from occupied land that Palestinians want for a state, is estimated at 8billion shekels, or $1.74 billion.
[/align]The Israeli settlers who are leaving 21 sites in Gaza and four of 120 West Bank enclaves have been encouraged by their government to move to the underdeveloped Galilee and Negev regions. This will require heavy investment in infrastructure.
[/align]The Israeli government plans to spread the pullout cost over three years to keep its budget deficit from rising significantly.
[/align]Haaretz quoted Israeli sources as saying the U.S. money would be for military outlays like relocating army bases and for developing the Galilee and Negev.
[/align]The Palestinians, who were promised $3 billion in aid from the Group of 8 industrialized countries last week, welcome the prospect of gaining Gaza, but suspect Sharon plans to parlay the pullback into a permanent hold on much of the West Bank, where the vast majority of Israel's 240,000 settlers live.
[/align]Israel's building of a West Bank barrier has further fueled such Palestinian fears. Israel calls the project a bulwark against Palestinian suicide bombers. Palestinians condemn it as a land grab, and the World Court has declared it illegal.
[/align]Israel on Sunday approved a section of the barrier it said would separate 55,000 Palestinian residents when completed. Palestinians officials said 100,000 Palestinians would be affected by the barrier.
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Just added this other story

[Charlie P]

Why don"™t we stop all aid to Israel?

Darn Good question.

[tardfarmer]

I say the US takes over Israel,

Throws the Likud out and makes it the 51st state. We must retain the holy sites, but we don't necessarily need to retain their inhabitants.

[kevin1]

Why the hell should we fund their Gaza problem ? Their internal politics are none of our business , we definitely have no business funding their mistakes .

[DaveH]

Let Israel KEEP the Gaza and the West Bank -- then they won't need our money.

[Charlie P]

I wonder if this is where part of our money will go?



Israel plans triple-fencing of Gaza after pullout



By Matt Spetalnick2 hours, 25 minutes ago[/i]
[/align][/align]Israel is rushing to complete a three-layer-deep barrier of fences and walls on its border with Gaza to keep Palestinian infiltrators out after it pulls out of the territory, military officials said on Thursday.
The army insists that, unlike Israel's internationally condemned West Bank barrier, the new project will not cut into Palestinian land. But the Palestinian Authority said such Israeli measures could keep Gaza sealed up like a giant prison.
The plan calls for adding two new fences parallel to the border fence that already surrounds the Gaza Strip and putting up seven-meter (23-foot)-high concrete walls in several places, a senior official said. He put the cost at $220 million.
Israel is beefing up its border defenses to compensate for losing its military presence in Gaza after it removes all 21 Jewish settlements from the occupied strip in mid-August.
Security officials worry that even after the withdrawal, Gaza militants will try to infiltrate gunmen and suicide bombers into the Jewish state and fire rockets across the border.
"Our purpose is to protect our citizens and soldiers. We have seen ... that we need something other than the existing fence to have security," the senior official told reporters.
He said, however, that even the triple fencing of Gaza might not be enough to stop militant attacks, and the army might have to mount incursions back into Gaza after the pullout. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has billed the withdrawal as "disengagement" from conflict with the Palestinians.
"Instead of building bridges with the Palestinians, Israel insists on building walls and fences of suffocation," said Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat.
Echoing Palestinian concerns, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week the United States wanted to make sure Israel did not keep Gaza isolated after its withdrawal.
LESSONS FROM LEBANON
The military official said Israel had learned lessons from its Lebanon withdrawal in 2000, when it left a single fence line where the army has clashed regularly with Hizbollah guerrillas.
The army is putting up two new fences that will extend about 60 km (37 miles) along its entire border with Gaza, he said.
One, made of metal and razor wire, is being installed a few dozen meters (yards) closer to the Gaza boundary line than the existing electronic fence, the official said.
The other, embedded with sensors and equipped with surveillance cameras, watchtowers and remote-control machinegun emplacements, will lie 70 to 150 meters east of the existing border fence on the Israeli side, he said.
A one-km (half-mile)-long wall will be erected on Israel's border with north Gaza and two smaller walls will be built where Israeli towns are vulnerable to Palestinian gunfire, he said.
Israel has said it will keep control of Gaza's air and sea space after the pullout for security reasons, although troops are expected to leave the boundary with Egypt.
Palestinians welcome any withdrawal but fear Israel is trading tiny Gaza, where 8,500 settlers live isolated from 1.4 million Palestinians, for a tighter hold on the occupied West Bank, where the majority of 240,000 settlers live.
The World Court has declared Israel's West Bank barrier illegal for intruding on occupied land. Israel says the planned 600-km (370-mile)-long structure keeps out suicide bombers. Palestinians call it a grab for land they claim for a state.
"The new fence is in our own territory," the senior official said of the Gaza barrier. He said the fencing would be finished by October and all of the infrastructure by mid-2006. [/align][/align]

[Champlain Islander]

Hard to figure out who is good and who is bad over there. I think most of them are the same...against us. I wish we would spend a little more here and a lot less over there. Time to pay more attention to our own problems rather than getting involved with everyone else.

[Knightia]

American greenbacks dont buy friends(or peace)- but that seems to have been the policy for manyyrs with the Jews& arabs both & today in other parts of the middle east& others.

But if i where the jews id tell big daddy bush or sam orwhoever they elect to butt out& keep all lands - just keep sending the checks daddy.

But it be nice if they would spend allUS tax payers monies right here in the US for a change.
150 billion? to iraq- 15 billion to africa for aides & on&on.I think the charge cards has been maxed long ago - better print more money uncle sam.

Maybe someday they can broker a deal here to give back all lands to mexico etc& use the Un to do it- that would help solve some of the border problems herewouldnt it?

[needabow]

You cant even know who to believe when it comes to that particular conflict over there anymore. I dont understand why we treat Israel so kindly, but it surely doesnt help us in our bridge-building with the Arab world.