 Mainstream British and US media, when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, portrays the role of the US as that of an honest broker. The reality however is that far from being neutral, it is US economic, political and military support for Israel, which has enabled the conflict to remain unresolved for so long.
Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid in the world. Israel receives more than $6 billion annually, about $8 million per day in aid. Until the US stops lending its weight to Israel through biased and unfair support, a truly just peace will remain elusive.
- Israel Systematically Violates Human Rights.
Every day, Israeli security forces in the West Bank and Gaza violate articles of the Geneva Convention on Human Rights, an agreement that governs wartime rules of engagement and to which Israel is a member.
- Palestinian homes and agriculture fields are routinely demolished to make way for illegal Israeli settlements. Israeli soldiers also regularly arrest and detain - often for years - Palestinians without due process.
- According to Amnesty International, Israel is the only country in the world that legalizes torture.
- Israel Is Illegally Occupying Palestine. The United Nation's General Assembly has repeatedly condemned the Israel settlements in the Occupied Territories as illegal. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are forced to live in apartheid conditions, and the Israeli settlements built on confiscated land separate the Palestinians from each other, making for isolated Palestinian Bantustans surrounded by Jewish-only neighborhoods. By carving up the Occupied Territories in this way, the rapid construction of Israeli settlements has prevented the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Israel's continued occupation of Palestine, sanctioned and maintained by the US, is one of the most serious obstructions to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.
- The US Uses Palestine as a Military Test Ground. The US relies on Israel to test out new military technologies in battle conditions. For example, cluster bombs have been used in southern Lebanon and ammunition containing depleted uranium has been fired against civilian populations in Palestine. Israel has cooperated with the US arms industry on research and development for new jet fighters, anti-missile defense systems, and even the Strategic Defense Initiative, or the resurrected "Star Wars" program.
- The US's failure to hold Israeli human rights abusers accountable for their actions by, at the very least, ending aid to the country is setting a dangerous precedent for other human rights violator around the world. Every night news broadcasts around the world show the routine abuses committed by Israeli security forces. The US often criticizes other nations for poor human rights records, and yet Israel is rarely included in such criticism. The US's support for the Israel in the face of these much-publicized crimes completely discredits the US's claim to be "an honest broker of peace" and contributes to the instability of US-Middle East relations.
- For years, Israeli military expertise has been shared with other abusive undemocratic regimes across the globe. In the 1980s, Israeli security forces trained a Honduran military intelligence unit, Battalion 316, that disappeared, tortured and killed Honduran citizens. Israel also trained members of the South African apartheid regime's Inkatha hit squads that targeted ANC leaders. US aid to Israel, then, has led to the support of regimes that US taxpayers perhaps would not have otherwise aided.
- One-third of the US's entire foreign aid budget goes to support Israel. This is seven times more money than the US gives to all of sub-Saharan Africa. Dozens of poor countries could use this money better than Israel, which doesn't need this support: the country has more nuclear weapons than China or France, and the Israeli economy is booming thanks its high tech industry. US aid to Israel funds a brutal military responsible for regular human rights abuses, the occupation of Palestine, and the expansion of illegal settlements.
If there is to be a chance for a just peace in the Middle East, unconditional US support to Israel must end.
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