After wasting money sending a US delegation to sit passively in Europe to see for themselves what is well known and documented, Obama announced that the US won’t participate in Durban II. Now that we have breathed our sigh of relief, we turn our attention to Secretary of State Clinton’s first official visit to the Mideast.
She will swing by the Sharm El Sheikh Donor’s conference on Monday, where international donors promise large sums of money to Gaza for Hamas to steal. But it’s OK, because soon Fatah and Hamas will share the booty openly. Then she continues to Jerusalem to speak with current and incoming Israeli leaders, and to Ramallah to speak with the leader of the Fatah terrorist organization, Abu Mazen (Abbas).
Will she have a briefing from Obama’s friend and Saudi protege, the new director of US intelligence analysis, Chas Freeman, saying that Jews put cancer in food and send it Arabs? Assuredly he would have warned her about the international Zionist plot.
Her goal of course will be to try to breathe life into the Arab peace plan wherein Israel gives up most of its viable land and accepts hundreds of thousands of overtly hostile people as citizens in exchange for an Arab promise not to attack it. The Arab peace plan is itself a hostile takeover of a sovereign state. Presented to any other nation, it would be called extortion.
State Dept. Briefing on Clinton’s Middle East trip Tuesday and Wednesday
MR. DUGUID: I’d now like to introduce our Acting Assistant Secretary for Near East Asian Affairs Jeffrey Feltman and the USAID’s Acting Assistant Director for the Middle East Greg Laudato[1]. Their opening remarks, again, will be on the record, questions on background.
ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY FELTMAN: I think all of you know that the Secretary is traveling, leaving tomorrow night for her first trip to the Middle East. She will be participating in the Gaza donor conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt on Monday. She’ll also have the opportunity while in Sharm el-Sheikh to meet many of her Arab and European counterparts who will be gathered for the Sharm el-Sheikh conference. She also will have a bilateral meeting, of course, with Egyptian President Mubarak.
From Sharm el-Sheikh, she will travel on to Jerusalem and Ramallah. She’ll have a series of meetings with Israeli officials, both her counterparts now, as well as Prime Minister Olmert and President Peres, as well as have a chance for consultations with – Benjamin Netanyahu, of course, has been asked to form the next Israeli government. She will also go to Ramallah and have meetings there with Palestinian officials.
QUESTION: That’s all on –
ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY FELTMAN: It’s Tuesday and Wednesday. She’ll be in Jerusalem and Ramallah on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The Sharm el-Sheikh conference has gathered a lot of international leaders to try to address the immediate humanitarian concerns in the Gaza Strip. The United States and others will be showing leadership in stepping forth with new forms of assistance to reach the people in need in the Gaza Strip. It’s also worth keeping this in context, because not only do we want to address the needs – the very real needs in the Gaza Strip, but we also want to move forward toward that comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace that President Obama talked about here in the State Department a few weeks ago when the announcement was made about the appointment of Senator Mitchell as Special Envoy for Middle East Peace.
Part of this, of course, is a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, and the Secretary will use this trip to talk to Palestinian leaders, Arab leaders, Israelis, about how to move forward toward the two-state solution. But it’s also about a comprehensive peace between Israel and all of Israel’s Arab neighbors.
In Israel, she’ll also have a chance, of course, to see a lot of friends. She’s had – Senator Clinton is a longtime friend and supporter of Israel, and she will be able to compare notes on a variety of issues that concern both Israel and the United States about the region, including topics such as Iran. And I think I’ll let George – yeah, sorry.
MR. DUGUID: I must correct the record. Mr. George Laudato.
MR. LAUDATO: Thank you. USAID’s Acting Administrator Alonzo Fulgham will travel with the Secretary to the region to participate in the conference. We expect that the U.S. – while the U.S. pledge is still being finalized, we expect that it will be a – it will be announced at the – at Sharm. And we expect that the portion of that pledge that USAID will manage will be generous and probably large – somewhat larger than what we are currently doing in the region, in Gaza.
We expect also that any activities that flow from that pledge will look very similar to the types of activities that we are currently working on in Gaza. Since late December, we’ve committed and – we’ve committed over $10 million to the relief effort in Gaza, have moved a significant amount of that assistance into Gaza, and we operate through eight major NGOs that have operational entities on the ground in Gaza and allow them to reach out and move assistance directly to the people in the towns and villages of Gaza. That has consisted of food and food supplies, medical supplies, plastic sheeting, blankets – the kinds of things one would associate with a – with the immediate needs of a – well, a situation like we find ourselves in, in Gaza.
We’ve also moved a considerable amount of assistance through the World Food Program, food aid, and they have set up feeding programs that reach about 160,000 people. We’ve done a limited amount of humanitarian-related reconstruction, and we’ve done this over the years. I mean, we just, for example, recently in the fall, worked on some major sewage activities in Gaza because of the very immediate impact it was having on the lives of the local people. And we expect that there will be more of this kind of activity at a higher level when the – when we operationalize the pledges that will be made in Gaza – in Sharm.
And we could just continue to – we look forward to continuing to work with the people. We’ve found it – it’s been a very effective program to date, and we hope to continue.
