JERUSALEM, 17 August 2007 — The United States signed a deal yesterday to boost its military aid to Israel to $30 billion over the next decade aimed at countering a “resurgent” Iran and its allies. “The United States has an abiding interest in the state of Israel,” US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said before signing the memorandum of understanding for the aid package with the director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.
“The United States understands that Israel lives in an increasingly dangerous region ... where Iran is resurgent, where Iran is seeking a nuclear capability, where it is seeking to expand its conventional power,” he said. “There is now a nexus of cooperation between Iran, Syria, Hezbollah ... and other groups that are responsible for conflict in this region,” including the Palestinian Hamas, he said.
A statement from the office of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who met the US envoy late Wednesday, said the deal “illustrates the depth of the relationship between the two countries and the commitment of the United States to the defense of Israel and preserving its qualitative superiority.”
The package, unveiled by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on July 30, is part of a new military pact with US allies in the region aimed at countering the “negative influences” of the Al-Qaeda terror network, Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance group and archenemies Iran and Syria.
With current US defense aid to Israel standing at $2.4 billion a year, the new package will raise the value of assistance by $600 million a year on average, officials said. The total $30 billion figure represents almost 4,286 dollars for each Israeli citizen.
The deal includes what Burns described as a “unique” clause to US military foreign aid, which allows Israel to use 26.3 percent of the annual aid to buy equipment from its own defense industry.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said yesterday the continued existence of armed militias is an obstacle to the promised Palestinian state. “Building toward statehood and independence on the one hand, and continuing to tolerate armed militias on the other, are two mutually exclusive paths that will never meet,” Fayyad said .
“We are learning that from experience. We need to deal with this. That’s the key principle that needs to be understood, and understood clearly, and that has to be implemented. Today that’s what we are beginning to do in the West Bank and that is something that should be generalized. We simply cannot go back to a situation where matters are taken into the hands of the people acting outside of the... Palestinian authority. This is the key requirement,” he said in the wide-ranging interview at his Ramallah office.
Fayyad, an economist widely respected in the West, was named premier by President Mahmoud Abbas two months ago, after fighters from Islamist Hamas routed forces loyal to the moderate leader in the Gaza Strip on June 15. The takeover has left the Palestinians deeply divided, with the Western-backed Abbas controlling the occupied West Bank and the Western-shunned Hamas ruling Gaza.
