Israel Fears US May Suspend Egyptian Aid
Source: Globes
4 July 13 11:44, Ran Dagoni, Washington
Israel is concerned that the Obama administration will suspend the $1.3 billion annual military aid to Egypt following the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, and that suspension of aid could jeopardize the Israel-Egypt peace treaty. Israel may ask the US to find a way to continue the aid program, even though US law bans financial aid to regimes that seized power in a coup, US sources told "Globes" yesterday.
The sources familiar with the complicated three-way US-Egyptian-Israeli relationship said that keeping the Israel-Egypt peace treaty was one of the pillars of the Morsi government. The US Congress, which controls the purse strings, was suspicious, and even hostile, to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood government. Its agreement, albeit with gritted teeth, to keep the peace treaty with Israel, was one of the main reasons why the pro-Israeli Congress agreed to continue aid to Egypt after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Israel hopes that the Obama administration will understand the importance of aid to Egypt for maintaining stability in the Middle East, said the sources. In a statement yesterday, US President Barack Obama said that he had ordered a review of aid to Egypt in view of the developments in Cairo.
Morsi's ouster puts Obama in a bind: should the US, which sees itself as the world's leading democracy, support democracy as an institution and process, or a democratically elected leader who abused the process to seize dictatorial power and trample his political opponents? Should the democratic process trump everything else, including its self-destruction?
Read more: http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000859492
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dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts).
ChairmanAgnostic
(28,017 posts)It is a fragile time. At the moment, the brotherhood had its ass handed to it, with massive public support.
Funny, if you read the actual statute at issue, the Colonies would have been banned from any US support. Merry Olde England had a parliament, ergo, it was democratic, ergo, we would be out of luck when trying to kick them Limeys out.
John2
(2,730 posts)American disagree with it. I don't think we should be giving aid to Egypt for the Security of Israel period. It is none other than bribe money. Let Israel give Egypt financial Aid if they are so scared of Egypt. I don't think it should come from American taxpayers. I think our Goverment sucks, just like Snowden claims. What is the difference from giving tribute?
movonne
(9,623 posts)us to give Egypt financial aid...
Igel
(35,311 posts)Big difference. We need the litotes.
We've been giving Egypt aid for a long time. "Camp David Peace Accords" long time. Status quo, move along.
Except that there's also a law saying not to give aid to governments resulting from military coups.
Which is why the President chose his words carefully. He could have easily called it a coup--a group of people rebel and the military, siding with them, arrests the government actors that it disapproves of. Not only that, but it arrests senior members of the political party and non-political auxiliary group behind the party. That's a coup. Even worse, they're fencing in the Ikhwan protesters like they're being quarantined. Barbed wire and all.
But Obama didn't call it a coup even as the Egyptian people went coup-coup in celebrating the coup.
Perhaps a sufficiently non-coup-able expression can be devised. It was a "non-civilian-led de-electional procedure with concomitant delimitation of executive and travel privileges."
merrily
(45,251 posts)Are you sure? Because Richard Engel, while in Cairo, specifically said that there were not hundreds of thousands there, but thousands. Egypt has a population of over 86 million.
His estimate was very much in contradiction to reports--no one said by whom--that 14 million were demonstrating.
Cairo is the biggest population center in Egypt. No one I know of showed us demonstrations anywhere but in Cairo's Tahrir Square in Cairo. If there were only thousands in Tahrir Square, not even a couple of hundred thousand, where the hell were the rest of the 14 million?
If you've been to Egypt and traveled the length of it by plane, you see that, aside from Cairo and Alexandria, most of the population is distributed along the banks of the nile, north to south (or south to north) without a lot of "sprawl" east to west.
Something about this just is not sitting right.
vdogg
(1,384 posts)We shouldn't have been giving them aid in the first place, I don't care which regime is in power. This is 1.3 billion more dollars we can use at home on infrastructure, or science, or healthcare. I think we need to cut back substantially on all foreign aid.
merrily
(45,251 posts)the U.S. sponsored.
It was a kind of bribe. In exchange for peace, we had to give the Egyptian Army enough money that they could replace what was destroyed and be sure of having good equipment for the next round.
This was the era of MAD, and we went around MADly sharing our viewpoint. If Israel broke the treaty, Egypt wanted to make sure it could inflict damage. Israel's military was already good, but they also get a military subsidy for the same purpose.
This is up there with the idea that if everybody has a Maserati we'd all be excellent race-car drivers, or by giving everybody a computer we're all suddenly 500% more productive and smarter.
byeya
(2,842 posts)L0oniX
(31,493 posts)
ChairmanAgnostic
(28,017 posts)
bahrbearian
(13,466 posts)heaven forbid that any of that aid be spent here in the US. It's always we gots no money!!
Bullshit.
-p
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)But I suspect that ain't gonna happen (funny how that works).
1. There will be lots of mealy-mouthed talk about how the coup wasn't really a coup.
2. The administration will invoke a national security exception. Somehow, not paying the Egyptian generals is going to make us less safe. Not clear exactly how, though. Remember, the exception is for OUR national security, not Israel's.
Purveyor
(29,876 posts)oberliner
(58,724 posts)I hope you don't self-delete.
Purveyor
(29,876 posts)gang of 'flying monkey' to ponce on my comment.
Igel
(35,311 posts)By removing the aid, we weaken the generals' commitment to the peace treaty and make it less able to restrain any civil unrest. We also weaken their ability to monitor and patrol the Sinai.
With a weakened commitment to peace and any civilian unrest, groups on the Sinai might well be able to organize in such a way that the IDF feels compelled to retaliate. We saw the protests over the Egyptian soldiers killed near Gaza. Imagine what would happen if there was an incursion to root out a well-entrenched group either providing munitions to Hamas openly or staging hit-and-run strikes against Israel.
The generals would have no real reason not to try to restore order by invoking the threat of a foreign, hostile, long-term enemy. This could easily run out of control, with support for the pro-Hamas insurgents or leading to some hot-head general launching a pre-emptive attack. Or, if Israel felt sufficiently threatened in an increasingly risky neighborhood, they might launch a pre-emptive attack.
A previous time this kind of thing happened we had an oil embargo. If high oil prices helped produce the 2008 recession, imagine what another embargo would do. All the fracking in the world wouldn't save the economy, even though our dependence on foreign oil's declined with the rather large post-Peak Oil increase in US production.
