US must stop bribing Israel, Egypt: Professor Walt
With the recent military coup which removed Egypt’s president Mohammed Morsi, it is time the US seized the opportunity and stopped its annual aid to Israel and the Egyptian army, an analyst says.
“In essence, the current level of U.S. aid to Egypt and Israel is a bribe dating back to the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Israel demanded a long-term aid commitment in exchange for withdrawing from the Sinai, which it had occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War,” wrote Stephen M. Walt, professor of international affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, on the website of Foreign Policy.
“Egypt got the money as a reward for making peace and realigning with the West,” he added.
According to US law, the government cannot provide aid to a country where leaders have come to power through a military coup, which has just taken place in Egypt. Therefore, Washington must end its assistance to Egypt, Walt said.
He added that “at this point there's no valid strategic reason for Israel to receive $3 billion to $4 billion in U.S. aid each year (most of it in various forms of military assistance).”
The US can provide Israel with the equivalent of that military aid on the condition that it dismantles the settlements in the West bank and agrees to the creation of a viable Palestinian state, Walt said.
Walt argued that the cutting aid to Israel and Egypt would finally advance US national interests in the region but added that “this sensible response” was far from happening as “the United States' Middle East policy isn't driven by rational calculations of the national interest.”
The US “is driven mostly by domestic politics, especially the political power of AIPAC and the rest of the Israel lobby,” he concluded.
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