Middle East Studies Breakthrough

We’ve actually found a Middle East studies professor who provides valuable information and insights. “In 2002, after considerable efforts had been made by President Clinton to try to reconcile Palestinian and Israeli differences, President George W. Bush stipulated the most comprehensive and detailed statement for the Palestinian future when he became the first president to call for a two state solution,” Emory University Middle East Studies professor Kenneth W. Stein writes in the Fall 2011 issue of the inFocus quarterly. “ And then, in 2011, President Barack Obama took his predecessors’ commitments one step further when he declared his support for ‘two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine.’”

“ The borders, he said, should be ‘based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps’ and the plan would be to create a “contiguous” Palestinian state, alongside Israel, a Jewish state. Never in history had a U.S. president expressed more explicit support for the Palestinian people’s aspirations.” The inFocus quarterly is published by the Jewish Policy Center.

Meanwhile, American taxpayers have bankrolled the arguably bankrupt Palestinian Authority. “Conversely, Washington has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the PA directly through presidential waivers as is necessitated by U.S. law, and to Palestinians indirectly through U.S. non-governmental organizations working in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” Dr. Stein claims. “According to the Congressional Research Service, under presidents Bush and Obama, $800 million in waivers were issued in direct assistance to the PA.”

“ Indirectly, the U.S. aids the Palestinians with hundreds of millions of dollars annually. In fiscal year 2009 alone, the U.S. donated over $980 million in indirect assistance, followed by nearly $503 million in 2010 and a slightly higher amount in 2011. This does not include the hundreds of millions of dollars each year that Washington donates to UNRWA, the UN body charged with assisting Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, and Arab countries. In fact, until the 1990s, Arab countries refused to donate to UNRWA in an effort to pressure Israel and keep the Palestinian issue front-and-center on the international agenda. Since then, most Arab states have donated to the UN agency, although the amounts usually are past due and rarely the amounts promised.”

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.

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