[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
PROMOTING PEACE? REEXAMINING U.S. AID TO THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY,
PART II
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 14, 2011
__________
Serial No. 112-68
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
_____
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
68-296PDF WASHINGTON : 2011
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; DC
area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC
20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
DAN BURTON, Indiana GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York
ELTON GALLEGLY, California ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California BRAD SHERMAN, California
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
RON PAUL, Texas GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
MIKE PENCE, Indiana RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
JOE WILSON, South Carolina ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
CONNIE MACK, Florida GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas DENNIS CARDOZA, California
TED POE, Texas BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
BILL JOHNSON, Ohio CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
DAVID RIVERA, Florida FREDERICA WILSON, Florida
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania KAREN BASS, California
TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina
ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York
RENEE ELLMERS, North Carolina
VACANT
Yleem D.S. Poblete, Staff Director
Richard J. Kessler, Democratic Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
WITNESSES
The Honorable Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern
sudies, Council on Foreign Relations........................... 10
Jonathan Schanzer, Ph.D., vice president of research, Foundation
for Defense of Democracies..................................... 15
Mr. James Phillips, senior research fellow for Middle Eastern
affairs, The Heritage Foundation............................... 25
Mr. David Makovsky, Ziegler distinguished fellow, director of
Project on the Middle East Peace Process, The Washington
Institute...................................................... 32
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Elliott Abrams: Prepared statement................. 12
Jonathan Schanzer, Ph.D.: Prepared statement..................... 17
Mr. James Phillips: Prepared statement........................... 27
Mr. David Makovsky: Prepared statement........................... 34
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 80
Hearing minutes.................................................. 81
The Honorable Gary L. Ackerman, a Representative in Congress from
the State of New York: Prepared statement...................... 83
The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Representative in Congress
from the Commonwealth of Virginia: Prepared statement.......... 85
The Honorable William Keating, a Representative in Congress from
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Questions for the record.... 87
PROMOTING PEACE? REEXAMINING U.S. AID TO THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY,
PART II
----------
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011
House of Representatives,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 o'clock a.m.,
in room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ileana Ros-
Lehtinen (chairman of the committee) presiding.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. The committee will come to order. I
would like to remind audience members that disruption of
committee proceedings is against the law and will not be
tolerated. Although wearing themed shirts while seated in the
hearing room is permissible, holding up signs during the
proceedings is not. Any disruptions will result in a suspension
of the proceedings until the Capitol Police can come and
restore order.
After recognizing myself and the ranking member, Mr.
Berman, for 7 minutes each for our opening statements, I will
recognize the chairman and the ranking member of the
Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia for 3 minutes
each for their opening statements. I will then recognize
members for a 1-minute opening statement from each.
We will then hear from our witnesses. Thank you, panelists.
And I would ask that you summarize your prepared statements
within 5 minutes each before we move to the question and answer
period with members under the 5 minute rule.
Without objection, the witnesses' prepared statements will
be made part of the record, and members may have 5 days to
insert statements and questions for the record, subject to the
length limitation of the rules. The Chair now recognizes
herself for 7 minutes.
Today's hearing is a part of a broader oversight by the
committee to examine U.S. assistance to the Palestinian
Authority and U.S. policy options to address the troubling turn
of events regarding the PA's activities.
First, I would like to thank my friend and colleague Mr.
Chabot, the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and
South Asia, for assisting us in elevating this hearing to the
full committee. We stand at a critical juncture with respect to
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which will inevitably have a
major impact throughout the region. Events appear to be heading
increasingly in a negative direction, and regrettably the
administration has been slow to take action.
The most recent challenge to the peace process is the
Palestinians' intention to seek membership in the United
Nations as the State of Palestine, but without having made any
effort to seriously negotiate with Israel. After weeks of
uncertainty and drift, the administration has finally pledged
that if the Palestinians go to the U.N. Security Council and
ask for U.N. membership for a State of Palestine, the U.S. will
veto that resolution.
But the administration's waiting until the 11th hour to
make this announcement wasted a critical opportunity to prevent
the problem from building. This sits a stark contrast to the
decisiveness that the Truman administration displayed with
respect to Israel.
As Clark Clifford reportedly remarked to President Truman
on the eve of Israel's independence, when much of the cabinet
was arrayed against the decision to recognize the State of
Israel, and I quote:
``In an area as unstable as the Middle East, where
there is not now and never has been any tradition of
democratic government, it is important for the long-
range security of our country, and indeed the world,
that a nation committed to the democratic system be
established there on which we can rely. The new Jewish
state can be such a place. We should strengthen it in
its infancy by prompt recognition.''
The United States was indeed the first country to recognize
the State of Israel, and Israel today is such a government and
ally. Strong U.S. leadership in this tradition would have drawn
a bright line that other responsible nations could have rallied
behind.
Now, however, because the Palestinians have been allowed to
mobilize support, they will probably go to the General
Assembly, where the U.S. does not have a veto, and ask for
explicit recognition of a Palestinian state, or implicit
recognition through an upgrade in their status at the U.N. This
tactic would enable the Palestinians to seek full membership in
other U.N. agencies.
Given that we know that this is likely to happen, we have
time to take action to minimize the damage. In 1989, Yasser
Arafat's PLO tried to do the same thing that Abu Mazen's PLO is
doing, seeking the de facto recognition of a Palestinian state
from the U.N. through agencies like the World Health
Organization.
The PLO seemed assured of victory, and Israel seemed bound
for international isolation. But then George Herbert Walker
Bush--which is highly regarded, his administration, to this
day, for its success in multilateral diplomacy--made a bold
pledge: The U.S. would withhold funding to any U.N. entity that
granted membership, or any upgraded status, to the PLO.
The PLO's scheme was stopped dead in its tracks. The
administration should use the same funding conditions that
worked two decades ago to stop Abu Mazen's dangerous unilateral
scheme today.
This controversy regarding unilateral statehood reflects a
broader failure by the Palestinian to meet their obligations.
They continue to engage in anti-Israel incitement and to
glorify violent extremism. They refuse to negotiate directly
with Israel, and refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist as
a Jewish state. Most troubling of all, they have aligned
themselves with Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist
organization whose stated objective is the elimination of the
State of Israel and all of its Jewish citizens.
Despite decades of assistance totaling billions of dollars,
if a Palestinian state were declared today it would be neither
democratic, nor peaceful, nor willing to negotiate with Israel.
By providing the Palestinians with $2.5 billion over the
last 5 years, the U.S. has only rewarded and reinforced their
bad behavior. It raises tough questions as to just what are the
tangible benefits for the U.S., or for lasting peace and
security between Israel and the Palestinians, or derived for
decades from assistance provided by United States taxpayers.
Palestinian leaders are not going to make the tough
decisions and change their ways unless compelled to. If
progress is to be made, the administration must stop looking
for ways to circumvent requirements that the PA must meet
certain criteria before they can receive U.S. aid. These
conditions call for the Palestinians to completely abandon
their unilateral efforts to secure recognition as an
independent state, tear up their agreements with Hamas, return
to direct negotiations with Israel, stop anti-Israel
incitement, and begin preparing the Palestinian people for
peace with Israel and recognize Israel's right to exist as a
democratic Jewish state.
We hope that those conditions are there. We hope that they
will be met. I would appreciate our witnesses addressing the
most effective course of action to achieve those desired
objectives. I thank my good friend, the ranking member Mr.
Berman, for the time, and now I am pleased to recognize him for
7 minutes for his opening statement.
Mr. Berman. Well, thank you very much, Madam Chairman. And
I thank the witnesses. You have put together an excellent group
of people for a very important subject.
Madam Chairman, the Palestinian Authority president,
Mahmoud Abbas, has apparently chosen to scorn the negotiation
table in favor of unilateral action at the U.N., action that he
says will bring his people closer to statehood. This step,
which runs counter both to repeated U.S. requests and to prior
Palestinian commitments, is likely to have disastrous
consequences, and almost certainly it will make the prospect of
a Palestinian state ever more distant.
Exactly what the Palestinians intend to do, what their
resolution will say, and what process they will pursue at the
U.N. are unknown at this time. Perhaps there is still time for
good sense and effective diplomacy to prevail. Should the
Palestinians follow through with their U.N. initiative,
however, they will be reneging on their past commitment,
enshrined in the 1993 Oslo Agreement and elsewhere, to resolve
their problems with Israel through direct, bilateral
negotiations.
One thing is clear: There will be no recognition of
Palestinian statehood by the Security Council, where I am
certain the Obama administration would use its veto, just as it
has in the past, to prevent the passage of an unbalanced, anti-
Israel resolution.
That means that the Palestinians will likely take their
case to the U.N. General Assembly. And what exactly would the
General Assembly recognition of a Palestinian state do for the
Palestinian people? Absolutely nothing. It would not help the
Palestinians achieve a state that lives in peace alongside
Israel. It would not solve the Palestinians' need for
recognized borders, nor would it solve sensitive issues like
the status of Jerusalem, water rights, or Palestinian refugees.
Nor would it improve the economy or the security of the West
Bank or Gaza.
In fact, Abbas' strategy would leave the core issues of
this conflict unresolved and festering. Yet, while a U.N.
General Assembly resolution will have absolutely no impact on
the ground, it could have a major impact in international
courts of law, as so many experts assert.
If the General Assembly enhances the Palestinians' current
status as a non-state observer to that of a state, the
Palestinians would have standing to bring cases against Israel
at the International Criminal Court and the International Court
of Justice. And that is exactly what President Abbas has
indicated he will do.
Of course, that would merely waste more time and further
poison relations with Israel, making statehood and peace
further away than ever. I would appeal to our European friends,
and to all nations, not to support a resolution with such
calamitous potential.
Many analysts have suggested that the U.N. initiative
reflects the fact that Abbas is a prisoner of domestic
politics, that he must burnish his nationalist credentials if
he is to be a credible leader. According to a poll 3 months
ago, Palestinians favored the initiative by 65 percent to 31
percent.
But those views may be evolving. According to another
Palestinian poll released just last week, only 35 percent of
the Palestinians now believe that the Palestinian Authority
should go ahead with their U.N. strategy, while a clear
majority, 59 percent, said that the PA should go back to the
negotiation table with the Israelis for the sake of a permanent
peace.
I don't want to put too much stock in Palestinian polling,
but it just may be the case that Abbas is misjudging his own
people. I would be interested in the views of our panelists on
the quality of those polls.
Madam Chairman, Congress has been very generous in its
support of the Palestinian Authority's worthy efforts to build
institutions and the economy in the West Bank. There is at
least one person at that table who played a major role in that.
In fact, we are the most generous nation in the world in that
regard.
Therefore, I believe it is appropriate to point out that,
should the Palestinians pursue their unilateralist course, the
hundreds of millions of dollars in annual assistance that we
have given them in recent years will likely be terminated, and
that could well result in the collapse of the Palestinian
Authority.
And it pains me to say that. U.S. aid has contributed
significantly to many positive developments in the West Bank:
Economic growth, institution-building, progress in governance
and improved security for the Palestinians and Israel. But all
of that is just a Band-Aid. It will not last. It is not
enduring if there is no political solution, and for that we
need negotiations, not U.N. unilateralism.
We will be prudent in our actions, but one thing is clear:
President Abbas' Palestinian Authority should not be rewarded
with American taxpayer dollars for actions that defy
Palestinian commitments, threaten to destabilize the region, or
run counter to U.S. interests. These dollars can better be
spent elsewhere.
Just 2 months ago, this body passed H. Resolution 268,
which said that the House ``affirms that Palestinian efforts to
circumvent direct negotiations and pursue recognition of
statehood prior to agreement with Israel will harm U.S.-
Palestinian relations and will have serious implications for
U.S. assistance programs for the Palestinians and the
Palestinian Authority.''
The Palestinians have been forewarned. We should not shrink
from this pledge of just 2 months ago. In closing, I want to
reiterate my conviction: Negotiations are the only path to a
lasting two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
President Abbas likes to tell people he wouldn't get anything
in negotiations with Prime Minister Netanyahu, but the fact is,
he hasn't even tested the proposition, even though Netanyahu
has repeatedly made clear his desire to commence talks
unconditionally.
It is not too late for President Abbas to abandon his
flawed U.N. strategy and engage directly with the Israelis. For
the sake of peace, and for the sake of his relations with the
Palestinians' most important benefactor, the United States of
America, I urge him to do so.
And I yield back, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much. My good friend
Mr. Berman, the ranking member. I am pleased to yield 3 minutes
to Congressman Steve Chabot, the chairman of the Middle East
and South Asia Subcommittee.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you, Madam Chair. Since taking office,
President Obama has reiterated numerous times his belief that
the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of
America's core interests in the Middle East. Over the past 2
years, however, even as the Palestinian Leadership has
repeatedly retreated from a meaningful peace process, American
assistance has remained unchanged.
Plainly speaking, a fundamental disconnect has formed
between our aid policy and our policy objectives. I recently
traveled to Israel and the West Bank, where I was able to
witness firsthand the tremendous gains that have been made on
the ground. Indeed, the two most prominent features of the
Ramallah landscape are construction cranes and unfinished
business and buildings.
Unfortunately, the current Palestinian leadership appears
all-too-willing to sacrifice the achievements of Prime Minister
Fayyad's state-building effort in the name of political
theatrics. Instead of capitalizing on these gains through
honest negotiations with Israel, the Palestinian leadership
seems to be dead set on pursuing a path of unilateralism before
the U.N. Security Council and/or the General Assembly this
September.
True Israeli-Palestinian peace can only be made between two
peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, and not the 191 other
members of the General Assembly. If decades of frustration have
taught us nothing else, it is that the road to Palestinian
statehood does not start in New York, and it is not the place
of the United States, the United Nations, or any other country
or institution to short circuit the requisite negotiations
between the two parties. Indeed, a unilateralism is simply
rejectionism by another name.
For years, we have invested heavily both money and effort
to help the Palestinians build a state for themselves, and it
is irrefutable that our work has yielded results. The security
gains on the ground in the West Bank have enabled unprecedented
economic growth. Israelis have felt comfortable making security
concessions that would have been unthinkable even a few years
ago.
But just because our current aid policy has yielded
results, that does not mean that it is currently, or that it
will in the future. Under the best economic conditions, U.S.
aid should not be an ever-flowing stream of taxpayer money.
Under the current economic conditions, it simply cannot be.
The fact of the matter is that we are rapidly approaching a
watershed moment in U.S.-Palestinian relations. Both the
potential reconciliation government that Hamas and the
unilateral campaign at the U.N. could not be more contrary to
U.S. interests in the region. Rejectionist elements within the
Palestinian leadership still refuse to sit and negotiate in
good faith, even as Israel reiterates its commitment to have
the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Time and again, Israel has demonstrated its commitment to a
Palestinian state living as its neighbor in peace and security.
But there are no short-cuts on the path to that outcome, and
there is no getting around the hard concessions that will have
to be made.
Although short-term security may be achievable
unilaterally, peace is not. Palestinian rejectionism, whether
by Hamas or Fatah, must be abandoned. If the Palestinians
continue on their current path, the question before this
Congress will not be ``What portion of our aid will be cut?''
but rather ``What, if any, portion will remain?''
I yield back, Madam Chair.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much, Mr. Chabot, the
chairman of the appropriate subcommittee. My good friend from
New Jersey, Mr. Sires, is recognized for 1 minute.
[No response.]
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you for passing that up. Mr.
Cicilline, my mayor?
[No response.]
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you. Ms. Bass?
[No response.]
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. I tell you, this is wonderful. Mr.
Carnahan? Is recognized for 1 minute.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank you
and Ranking Member Berman for convening this hearing on this
subject, especially now. This is a critical time. Like many of
my colleagues, I have serious concerns about the Palestinian
leaders and their plans to take to the U.N. this month a
unilateral push for statehood, an end run around the necessary
peace process.
I strongly oppose any and all of these efforts, and believe
that it is in the best interests of the Palestinian people, the
Israeli people, and the peace process that this resolution as
conceived not be offered. It is incumbent upon Congress and the
administration to send the strongest possible message to
President Abbas that his efforts are in no one's interests,
including his own people.
We should reexamine how and whether we continue to offer
assistance to the PA in the course of this conversation. I want
to thank the panel for being here today, and really getting us
focused on the path through this process, over the next few
weeks in New York.
Thank you, and I yield back.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Sir. Mr. Rohrabacher is
recognized, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and
Investigations, for 1 minute.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman. The
testimony that most concerned me in the first of these hearings
was the admission by Jacob Wallace, our Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Near-Eastern Affairs, which--he was testifying
right there. He said that we were not using our various
programs and our aid as leverage to push the Palestinian
Authority back to the peace table, and for talks with Israel.
What are we using--or what are we spending all this money
for, if it is not to promote peace? I mean, this is not anti-
Palestinian or pro-Israeli, this is pro-peace. I mean, if we
are not using our money for that, what are we using it for?
I am very interested to hear the opinions of our witnesses
today as to how much money we are giving, and whether we are
actually achieving anything by the aid that we are giving to
the Palestinians, if we are not going to push for peace.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, sir. My Florida
colleague, Mr. Deutch, is recognized for 1 minute.
Mr. Deutch. Thank you, Madam Chair and Ranking Member
Berman. Thank you to the witnesses for appearing today. We are
just days away from possible unilateral action at the U.N. by
the Palestinians. The decisions by Mr. Abbas to use the United
Nations to bypass face-to-face negotiations with Israel is not
only unwise, it is utterly unacceptable. The United States has
made our position clear: The only way to lasting peace is
through direct negotiations.
Madam Chair, this week marks the 18th anniversary of the
Oslo Peace Accords. In just days, nearly two decades of peace
could be undone by the Palestinians' actions at the United
Nations. The Palestinians must know there will be consequences
for their actions in New York. If these actions jeopardize
stability in the region, Israeli security, and our own U.S.
interests in the greater Middle East, there must be serious
diplomatic and punitive consequences.
If Mr. Abbas is serious about creating lasting peace and
establishing a state for the Palestinian people, he would
abandon this foolish plan, he would abandon partnership with
Hamas, and he would return to the negotiating table where Prime
Minister Netanyahu has been waiting without conditions for the
past year.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much. Ms. Schmidt is
recognized, who will be running her 90th marathon this weekend.
Good luck.
Ms. Schmidt. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank
you to the witnesses for being here today. This is a very
important subject, and I will be succinct.
Madam Chair, allow me to be clear about my position on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict: I support a free, secure, and
independent Palestine state, but never--and I mean never--at
the expense of a free, secure, and independent Israel. Period,
case closed.
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and is a
dear friend and a great ally. While I understand the argument
in favor of providing foreign aid to the Palestinians, I have
to ask this question: What are we getting in return for our
money? Since the 1990s, the United States has provided over $4
billion in aid. But what is the benefit?
On May 4th of this year, President Abbas and his Fatah-led
Palestinian Authority signed a power-sharing agreement with
Hamas, an organization that has been designated as a foreign
terrorist organization by the U.S. President Abbas signed this
agreement with Hamas, even though Hamas refuses to accept
Israel's right to exist.
Now, we are faced with the prospect of the Palestinian
Authority unilaterally pursuing a resolution in the U.N., with
the objective to garner international support for Palestinian
statehood. That being said, I have to wonder, why are we still
providing U.S. assistance to the Palestinian Authority?
Thank you, Madam Chair. I look forward to this panel, and I
yield back my time.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Ma'am. Mr. Keating is
recognized.
Mr. Keating. Madam Chair, I am going to--since I just came
in--pass and yield my time.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much. Mr. Kelly of
Pennsylvania?
[No response.]
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Mr. Connolly of Virginia? Thank you,
I apologize. I had not seen you there.
Mr. Connolly. No problem, Madam Chairman. I want to thank
you for holding this hearing, and I look forward to the
testimony.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much, sir. Mr.
Gallegly is recognized.
Mr. Gallegly. I thank the chairman, and I just want to be
very brief. I think this hearing is very timely, and with all
of the things that we see on the evening news about the
rancorous side of Congress, and all of the hostility and lack
of bipartisanship, I think this is a classic example of how we
stand together, not as Republicans or Democrats, but as
Americans who truly believe in peace, and how vitally important
it is, not only to that region of the world, but the rest of
the world, that we address this issue together, as Republicans
and Democrats, in a very strong, bipartisan way.
And your leadership, along with my good friend Howard
Berman from my home state of California, I want to thank both
of you, and I yield back.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, sir. Mr. Murphy is
recognized.
[No response.]
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. He was just here a second ago. They
move fast. Mr. Manzullo, who is the chairman of the
Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, is recognized.
Mr. Manzullo. Thank you, Madam Chair, for having this
hearing. Americans are--at least my constituents are upset over
the $4 billion that the United States has put into bilateral
assistance to the Palestinians in the past 15 years or so. And
we are very concerned that the Palestinians are playing a very
dangerous game at the United Nations by trying to bypass the
direct talks with Prime Minister Netanyahu.
The administration must stand with Congress to send a clear
and unmistakable message that declaring statehood via the U.N.
is not only counterproductive, but endangers Israel's security.
I've had the opportunity to meet with five Prime Ministers from
Israel, sat in the joint session of Congress to hear the great
speech of Prime Minister Netanyahu. And we as a Congress, I
believe, are united that the United Nations action cannot
supplant the direct talks that must take place between the
Palestinians and Israel itself.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much. Thank you to
all of the members for their excellent opening statements. And
now the Chair is pleased to welcome our witnesses.
The Honorable Elliott Abrams is certainly no stranger to
our committee. He is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies
at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has served in a number
of senior positions in the executive branch, as Deputy
Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor
for Global Democracy Strategy from 2005 to 2009. From December
2002 to February 2005, he served as Special Assistant to the
President, and as a Senior Director for Near East and North
African Affairs at the National Security Council.
From June 2001 to December 2002, he served as Special
Assistant to the President, and a Senior Director for
Democracy, Human Rights, and International Organizations at the
National Security Council. Welcome, Mr. Abrams.
Next, we will hear from Dr. Jonathan Schanzer. He is the
vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies. Dr. Schanzer has worked as a terrorism finance
analyst at the U.S. Department of Treasury, where he played an
important role in the designation of numerous terrorist
financiers.
Dr. Schanzer has also worked for several other U.S.-based
think tanks: The Washington Institute for Near East Studies,
the Jewish Policy Center, and the Middle East Forum. Thank you,
Dr. Schanzer. It is a pleasure.
Mr. Phillips is the senior research fellow for Middle
Eastern affairs at the Heritage Foundation. Mr. Phillips is a
veteran international security specialist who has written
extensively on Middle Eastern affairs and international
terrorism since 1978. He is a former research fellow at the
Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, and
a former joint doctoral research fellow at the East-West
Center. Welcome, Mr. Phillips.
And lastly, we will hear from David Makovsky, who is the
Ziegler distinguished fellow and director of the Project on
Middle East Peace. Mr. Makovsky is a member of the Council on
Foreign Relations and the London-based International Institute
for Strategic Studies.
Before joining the Washington Institute, he was an award-
winning journalist who covered the peace process from 1989 to
the year 2000. He is the former executive editor of the
Jerusalem Post, was diplomatic correspondent for Israel's
leading daily, and is a former contributing editor to the U.S.
News and World Report. He has served for 11 years as that
magazine's special Jerusalem correspondent.
A wonderful array of panelists. We will begin with you, Mr.
Abrams. And as I said at the onset, all of your prepared
statements will be made a part of the record. Mr. Abrams is
recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ELLIOTT ABRAMS, SENIOR FELLOW FOR
MIDDLE EASTERN SUDIES, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
Mr. Abrams. Thank you, Madam Chairman, for inviting me
here. Thank you to all the members of the committee. It is an
honor and privilege to return to the committee again. Thank you
for holding this hearing, which sends, I think, a very tough
message to the Palestinian Leadership.
The maneuver in New York by the PLO leadership suggests, as
many members have said, that they are turning away, both from
direct negotiations with Israel and from state-building at
home, and toward a confrontational melodrama in New York. This
faces you with a difficult problem: What is to be done about
our aid program?
If the Palestinian leadership--the PLO leadership, which is
also the Fatah leadership--insists on going forward against all
American advice, what should change if the PLO insists on this?
Personally, I say something has to change. You have warned
against this step in New York, and you have said there would be
consequences, and you should be as good as your word. Second, I
would say, as Mr. Berman said, we don't know quite what is
going to happen yet. I think this is not a September event; I
think it is an October event.
Some of the programs that are up for cutting are actually
in our interest, and the interest of Israel, such as the
security programs that Mr. Chabot mentioned. Generally cutting
off the PA is a very difficult thing to do. For one thing, we
should distinguish between the PA and the PLO. The PA, the
Palestinian Authority, is an administrative body, essentially
under Prime Minister Fayyad and a bunch of other ministers.
They are not going to New York. They are not recognized in
the U.N. They are not in the U.N. That is the PLO. The entire
Palestinian Authority is not to blame for what the PLO Fatah
crew is planning in New York. I think the collapse of the PA
would not be in our interest, or for that matter Israel's or
Jordan's. It might actually benefit Hamas and other terrorist
groups.
So the first thing I would say is, give this a few weeks
and wait and see what President Abbas, in his capacity as
Chairman of the PLO, does. Does he go to the Security Council
to force an American veto? That is very harmful for the United
States. What language does he put forth in his resolution? How
bad is it, exactly? Does he try to get the General Assembly to
pronounce on Jerusalem? On refugees? On borders? Does he go
forward the next day to say ``I am for negotiations,'' or is he
to go forward the next day in the International Criminal Court?
So you should keep some powder dry, I think.
Second, I think you ought to move to close the PLO office
in Washington. It is the PLO that is doing this. It is the PLO
whose Ambassador yesterday, in a speech that I would describe
as disgusting, said that in the new State of Palestine, there
should not be one Jew. He didn't say ``Israeli.'' He said
``Jew.'' So Palestine has to be Judenrein, in his view.
That is the kind of thing that ought to get somebody PNGed
from the United States. That office is open because you
provided a Presidential wavier in 1987, and every President has
exercised it every 6 months. Eliminate the waiver, close the
PLO office in Washington.
Third, start looking again at our aid to UNRWA, which is
hundreds of millions of dollars. We are the most generous
donor. And what UNRWA does is perpetuate this refugee problem.
It started at $750,000. Now it is $5 million. Every other post-
World War II refugee problem is gone. This one keeps getting
larger, thanks to UNRWA.
Finally, I would say, take a far harder line on PLO and PA
corruption. This is not a criticism of Prime Minister Fayyad,
for whom I have the highest regard, but he is surrounded by the
old Fatah/PLO corrupt crew. For example, since 2006, the
Palestine Investment Fund, which is worth about $1 billion, has
been taken away from him, from his authority.
And there are plenty of allegations about things like self-
dealing by the members of that board. So I think, given the
amounts of money that have been mentioned here, $5 billion the
United States has given, you have every right to demand
investigations into and the elimination of corruption.
This is a difficult set of issues, but the PLO leadership
should know that if they turned from the work of building a
decent, democratic state from the ground up, and from genuine
negotiations with Israel, you are determined that they will pay
the price. And in that determination, you are right.
Thank you for this opportunity to appear before the
committee.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Abrams follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
----------
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much.
Dr. Schanzer?
STATEMENT OF JONATHAN SCHANZER, PH.D., VICE PRESIDENT OF
RESEARCH, FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES
Mr. Schanzer. Chairman Ros-Lehtinen, Ranking Member Berman,
and distinguished members of the committee, on behalf of the
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, I thank you for the
opportunity to discuss today some of the challenges associated
with our country's annual $600 million aid package to the
Palestinians.
I testify today having conducted interviews last week with
Palestinian Authority figures, Fatah party representatives, and
Israeli officials in both Ramallah and Jerusalem. These
interviews confirm that our aid package needs an overhaul.
While my written testimony is more expansive, in the interest
of time I will focus today only on the problems of Palestinian
Authority corruption and support for terrorism.
In recent years, the PA has been lauded for its
transparency and accountability, thanks to PA Prime Minister
Salam Fayyad. Recently, however, Fayyad has been sidelined by
President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas has consolidated power, and he
is now abusing it. One egregious example is the Palestine
Investment Fund.
The PIF was created in 2002 to function as a transparent
sovereign wealth fund, to benefit the Palestinian people. In
recent years, however, Abbas has changed the charter, installed
his own choices for board members, placed the PIF under his
full control, and neglected to have it properly audited. As the
largest donor to the PA, the U.S. has a right to oversee the
fund.
The PIF contributes dividends to the PA every year. The PA
also borrows from this fund, currently worth at least $1
billion, when it cannot pay salaries. In return for the money
borrowed, Abbas has been repaying the PIF with land slated for
businesses that enrich his own inner circle.
Oversight of the PIF is long overdue. One former official
charges that $1.3 billion has gone missing from the fund.
Another claims that exposing the PIF would reveal corruption at
the highest levels of the PA. And the fact that Hamas recently
took full control over the PIF's assets in Gaza now adds to the
concern.
Another example of corruption is the way in which Abbas'
sons, Yasser and Tarek, have reportedly accumulated wealth
since their father took office in 2005. Yasser, the oldest son,
owns Falcon Tobacco, which has a lucrative monopoly over the
marketing of U.S.-made cigarettes, such as Kent and Lucky, in
the West Bank and Gaza. Yasser also owns a company that
reportedly received $1.89 million from USAID in 2005 to build a
sewage system in the West Bank town of Hebron. Another company
owned by Yasser Abbas received some $300,000 in USAID funds.
The younger, Tarek, is the general manager of Sky
Advertising, which receives hundreds of thousands of dollars
from USAID to bolster opinion of the U.S. in Palestinian
territories. His ad agency also won a lucrative contract from
the controversial Wataniya cell phone company, where his
brother Yasser sits on the board. Wataniya was created with
international donor funds, including U.S. assistance.
Finally, there is the PA's troubling financial relationship
with Hamas. Despite its ongoing feud with Hamas, the PA has
secretly allowed the Jihadist group to raise funds through an
electricity scam. Electricity in Gaza is produced by a power
plant that is guaranteed by the Palestinian Authority, but the
bills are collected by Hamas. As one former Palestinian
Authority official confided to me, the Hamas authorities
collect the bills from customers in Gaza, but never sends the
money back to the West Bank, and the PA continues to foot the
bill.
It should also be noted that Hamas government institutions
and prominent Hamas members simply don't pay their bills, and
the PA covers them as well. Thus, the PA allows Hamas to raise
funds by billing Gazans for electricity that they don't
generate. And because the PA is funded by U.S. taxpayer money,
we are all enabling Hamas to raise those funds. This is a
violation of U.S. law, and must be addressed immediately.
In my written testimony, I describe some of my misgivings
about cutting off aid entirely. Among other things, we could
effectively relinquish all of our leverage with the
Palestinians, leaving the door open for Iran or other bad
actors to influence the PA in ways that could further threaten
regional stability.
But this does not mean that Congress should maintain the
status quo. Congress should challenge the corrupt system
created by Mahmoud Abbas. This includes: One, stricter
oversight of the Presidential waiver process that releases
Palestinian funds each year. Two, oversight of the Palestine
Investment Fund, including a full audit. Three, conduct an
inquiry into the wealth of Mahmoud Abbas and his sons Yasser
and Tarek, to determine whether U.S. funds have contributed to
their holdings. Four, demand an immediate resolution to the
matter of the electric power plant in Gaza. U.S. taxpayers
should not be indirectly financing Hamas. Number five,
scrutinize the Presidential budget of PA President Mahmoud
Abbas. And finally, find ways to increase the role of Prime
Minister Salam Fayyad, who has been marginalized by Abbas in
recent years.
On behalf of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies,
I thank you again for inviting me to testify here today, and I
look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Schanzer follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
----------
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Doctor.
Mr. Phillips?
STATEMENT OF MR. JAMES PHILLIPS, SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW FOR
MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION
Mr. Phillips. Well, Madam Chairman, thank you for this
opportunity to testify before the committee. I am the Senior
Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Heritage Foundation,
and the views I express in this testimony are my own and should
not be construed as representing any official position at the
Heritage Foundation.
And with that, I would like to summarize my prepared
statement. U.S. aid to the Palestinians is aimed at supporting
Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, strengthening and
reforming the Palestinian Authority, which was created through
those negotiations, and improving the living standards of
Palestinians to demonstrate the benefits of peaceful
coexistence with Israel.
These are laudable goals. But unfortunately, peace
negotiations have bogged down. Even worse, the Palestinian
Authority has reached a rapprochement with Hamas, the Islamic
extremist organization with a long record of terrorism, which
is not only opposed to peace negotiations with Israel, but is
implacably committed to Israel's destruction.
The Palestinian Authority's relationship with Hamas and its
ongoing efforts to include Hamas in a ruling coalition under a
May 2011 power-sharing agreement raise disturbing questions
about the long-term intentions of the Palestinian Authority,
and cast doubt on its commitment to negotiate a genuine peace
with Israel.
By consorting with Hamas terrorists, the Palestinians are
violating the Oslo Accords and destroying the rationale for
continued American aid. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas also
has chosen to pursue a dubious dead-end path to Palestinian
statehood through the United Nations, rather than through the
negotiations with Israel. This U.N. diplomatic gambit could
derail any hope of resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace
negotiations in the near future, and could destabilize the
region by exacerbating the already tense atmosphere between
Israelis and Palestinians, provoking widespread anti-Israeli
demonstrations that could easily spin out of control.
The unilateral Palestinian push for statehood not only
violates previous Palestinian agreements with Israel, but also
those with the United States, which was a co-signatory of the
Oslo Accords. Yet the Obama administration has bent over
backwards to avoid criticizing the Palestinians. This low key,
reticent approach has failed to halt the Palestinian U.N. drive
for unilateral statehood.
It is long past time for the Obama administration to become
actively engaged on this issue at the highest levels. Secretary
of State Clinton and the President himself should explicitly
and forcefully state American opposition to Palestinian plans
for unilateral statehood. They should explicitly state that the
U.S. will veto any Security Council resolution recognizing
statehood or calling for full membership in the U.N. before an
Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is concluded.
The United States should also declare that it will withhold
voluntary or assessed funds to any U.N. organization that
admits Palestine as a state or grants it non-member state
observer status. As the chairman mentioned, in 1989 when the
PLO issued its first declaration of statehood, the first Bush
administration blocked this effort by threatening to withhold
U.S. funding for the United Nations.
While the Obama administration's deference to the U.N.
makes such a strong stand unlikely, Congress can step into the
breach and pass legislation prohibiting funding to any U.N.
organization that endorses unilateral statehood, admits
Palestine as a member state, or grants it non-member state
observer status.
Congress should also cut U.S. economic aid to the
Palestinian Authority if it continues to shun negotiations with
Israel and ignore its commitments under previous agreements.
U.S. aid is not an entitlement, and should be closely tied to
the Palestinian performance in demonstrating its commitment to
peace.
If the Palestinians persist in their efforts to sidestep
direct negotiations in favor of some form of illusory
statehood, then they should expect to look elsewhere for funds
to build that pseudo-state. The bottom line is that the United
States must block any effort to create a Palestinian state that
sponsors terrorism or seeks to make an end run around bilateral
negotiations with Israel by exploiting the anti-Israeli bias of
the U.N General Assembly.
U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority must be closely tied
to its compliance with previous agreements to fight terrorism,
halt incitement against Israel, and negotiate a final peace
settlement. The U.S. should leverage its aid to convince
Palestinians that the only realistic path to statehood lies
through negotiations with Israel. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Phillips follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
----------
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Makovsky
STATEMENT OF MR. DAVID MAKOVSKY, ZIEGLER DISTINGUISHED FELLOW,
DIRECTOR OF PROJECT ON THE MIDDLE EAST PEACE PROCESS, THE
WASHINGTON INSTITUTE
Mr. Makovsky. Thank you, Madam Chairman, Ranking Member
Berman, and distinguished members of the committee. Thank you
for this opportunity.
From the start, I would like to emphatically state that I
do not support the Palestinian appeal to the United Nations.
This measure would only be appropriate if Israel was unwilling
to directly negotiate an end to this ongoing tragic conflict.
Israel, however, has repeatedly called for such direct talks.
Therefore, I strongly believe that the Palestinian leadership's
U.N. approach is wrongheaded and contrary to long-standing
Palestinian commitments.
At the same time, I am not convinced that a decision to cut
off assistance to the PA is the best response, since I fear it
would lead to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.
Congressional aid since Fiscal Year '08 has produced
unprecedented levels of West Bank stability, prosperity,
improved governance, and previously unimaginable levels of
Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation that have benefitted
Palestinians and Israelis alike.
Any changes to U.S. aid should therefore be carefully
calibrated so as not to undermine the benefits that accrue
beyond the Palestinian arena. We should also see how the drama
at the U.N. plays out. As Elliott Abrams just stated, if the
Palestinians opt for their current maximalist course, then we
should consider imposing non-financial measures, measures such
as against the PLO offices in Washington and the suspension of
senior-level meetings between U.S. and Palestinian officials.
Of course, in any event, I agree with Dr. Schanzer that
abuses of the Palestinian Investment Fund should be
investigated regardless.
A total suspension of assistance would certainly be
warranted if the PA took a premeditated turn toward a third
intifada, a third uprising. But President Abbas' record
strongly suggests that this is not his intent. Policymakers
must always ask themselves the question: Who benefits from
these actions? I think the group that stands to gain the most
from a cut-off of U.S. aid to the PA would be Hamas, which does
not recognize Israel's existence at all. In stark contrast, the
PA's cooperation and security relationship with Israel over the
last 4 years has produced real and favorable change.
Even Israeli security officials insist--many of them have
said this to me--that security cooperation is vital and must
continue. For example, in 2002, 410 Israelis were killed by
suicide bombings and other attacks emanating from the West
Bank. From 2007 to 2010, a period of 3\1/2\ years, Israel
suffered only one fatality from a suicide attack. Imams calling
for suicide attacks against Israel have been removed from
around 1,300 mosques in the West Bank. New teachers in the West
Bank are now vetted to ensure that none purvey the ideals of
Hamas. Gone is the revolving door of the Arafat era, when
terrorists would be jailed only to be released when others were
not looking.
There has also been a real professionalization of the
security services, and I thank here the congressionally-
supported U.S. Security Coordinators program that has played a
large role in strengthening the Palestinian-Israeli security
cooperation. If congressional aid is suspended and Palestinian
security officials engaged in this cooperation go unpaid, the
risk of terror attacks Israel will grow exponentially.
So who pays the price for this cut-off? Let us not kid
ourselves. Thanks to American financial support, Palestinian
security cooperation with Israel has gone hand in hand with
Prime Minister Fayyad's success in institution-building,
improved law and order in the West Bank, and Israel's lifting
of almost all its major manned checkpoints, have been key
contributions to the 9.3 percent growth enjoyed by the West
Bank in 2010.
However, without U.S. aid, the odds are greater that
Fayyad, who has been the greatest obstacle to Fatah-Hamas
reconciliation, will resign, imperiling both security
cooperation and institution-building efforts. He is the goose
who lays the golden eggs. Without eggs, I think he will resign.
In other words, withholding U.S. aid will undermine the people
we want to help, and help the people we want to undermine.
Although the PA may pay a price in its relations to the
U.S. for its misguided venture at the U.N., regardless it is
worth waiting to see if their bid for full membership is scaled
back to a less maximalist resolution that is more aspirational
in nature. I think what is clear, that the three poison pills
of this resolution for Israel is that they would demarcate
borders that make peacemaking impossible, that it will
encourage, by giving the Palestinians status that they could go
after Israeli officials and prosecute them at the International
Criminal Court, this is a very serious issue. And it means,
also, the possibility of assertion of Palestinian sovereignty,
and an attempt to trigger sanctions by accusing that Israel is
occupying another state's sovereign territory.
In the meantime, we shouldn't just look about what goes on
at the U.N. We should look out the day after, and we should
take very specific steps to avoid violence on the ground. And
this means making sure that any demonstrations are confined to
urban areas, and away from Israeli settlements and the like.
To summarize in a sentence, we should focus on the U.N.,
but we should also look at what happens the day afterwards. I
look forward to the discussion. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Makovsky follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
----------
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much, to you, sir,
and to all of our panelists. We will begin now the question and
answer period, and the Chair recognizes herself for 5 minutes.
Dr. Schanzer, you elaborate on the PA's ambiguous
relationship with Hamas, and I quote:
``Despite its ongoing feud with Hamas, the PA has
secretly allowed the jihadist group to raise funds
through an electricity scam. Electricity in Gaza is
produced by a power plant that is guaranteed by the
Palestinian Authority, but the bills are collected by
Hamas. As one former advisor to the PA confides, `The
Hamas authorities collect their bills from customers in
Gaza, but never send the funds back to the West Bank,
and the PA continues to foot the bill.' It should also
be noted that the Hamas government institutions and
prominent Hamas members simply don't pay their bills:
The PA covers them as well. In other words, Abbas
allows Hamas to raise funds by billing Gazans for
electricity that they don't generate. And because the
PA is funded by U.S. taxpayer money, we are all
enabling Hamas to raise those funds. This is a
violation of U.S. law, and it must be addressed
immediately.''
So I would like to ask the panelists about the conditioning
of U.S. assistance to the PA. Successive administrations have
failed to adequately condition this U.S. taxpayer aid, which
has led to a sense of entitlement by the PA, and a dependence
by the PA on U.S. and international assistance. This has
enabled the PA, then, to avoid taking responsibility for its
actions or its own people. If you could elaborate on the
recommendations for long-term strategy to wean the PA off of
U.S. assistance, and how do we leverage our assistance to
achieve our national objectives? Mr. Abrams?
Mr. Abrams. I think it is Prime Minister Fayyad's goal to
eliminate the reliance on all foreign assistance, and he has
talked about how much they needed 2 years ago, last year, this
year. It is actually down from about $1.5 billion to $900
million, and it is his goal to eliminate it, as it should be
our goal, so they can finance themselves.
I think you are right about the lack of conditionality.
Even on a question like incitement in textbooks, we have talked
about it, but we haven't conditioned anything on it. I think it
probably goes back to the beginnings of this, after the death
of Arafat. We were so pleased to see a Presidential election
there, and to see some new faces replacing Arafat, and to see a
reduction of the unbelievable corruption that had surrounded
him, that it didn't seem like it was as critical as it does
now.
But I think the idea of doing these investigations of
things like the electricity company in Gaza, PIF, the personal
finances of President Abbas and his family, should be part of
any aid program.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much.
Mr. Phillips. Well, I think, like many other programs that
were created in Washington, once things are established they
tend to just float onward. And I think this impending crisis at
the U.N. is an opportunity to take a harder look, to step back
and attach more conditions, not only to bilateral aid but also
to aid through the U.N.
The UNRWA, I think, is a very costly, dysfunctional
anachronism that has been around since 1949. I think that we
should look very hard at disbanding that in the future, and
turning the responsibility for aiding the Palestinians over to
the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which is much more
efficient at helping refugees.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, sir. I am just going to
cut you off, and if I could hold off on you two gentlemen. I
know you have a lot to say, but Mr. Abrams, if you could
elaborate on how closing the PLO office--which is what you were
talking about in your testimony--here in DC could alter the
PA's strategic calculus?
Mr. Abrams. The thought would be that, first of all,
candidly, it is meeting the pledge that Members of Congress
have made, that there would be a reaction to their going
forward in the U.N. What they are basically saying, if they go
forward in the U.N., is, ``The status we have, which is we work
through the PLO internationally--and the PLO has offices all
around. The PLO is a U.N. observer--that is not good enough. We
want a different status.''
So my argument is that you would be responding, ``Okay. If
the PLO doesn't work anymore for you, why do we need to have a
PLO office in Washington? If you guys don't want to work it
that way, fine. We will close it off.'' And the ability to
conduct propaganda activities, some of which, as I mentioned,
are pretty disgusting, would be diminished greatly.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much. I thank the
panelists. I am sorry I didn't get a chance to get to all of
you. My friend from California, Mr. Berman, is recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. Berman. Well, thank you very much, Madam Chair. Part of
what we are talking about is not--Dr. Schanzer makes some very
interesting suggestions regarding restructuring, examining,
investigating, oversight on the aspects of parts of our aid. A
lot of the Palestinian Investment Fund has nothing to do with
our aid, but you are pointing out, in some ways it has
facilitated some bad stuff and we ought to be looking at it.
But that wasn't really about the U.N. resolution, that was
sort of on its own, and it had its own merits as suggestions.
On the issue of the reaction to pursuing the U.N., Mr. Makovsky
has--what is the resolution they go forward with? And the Obama
administration is in a full court press to try and stop them
from going forward. And all other things aside, that ought to
be recognized.
But if they decide to go ahead, what do they go ahead with?
And you mentioned several different aspects of--is this just
another one of the troublesome, bothersome U.N. resolutions
that are going before bodies all the time, or is this something
more serious? And you have raised what makes it more serious,
more dangerous, and bad.
But if that, in the end, is what the resolution is, I have
a hard time thinking that closing the PLO office, in and of
itself, is the significant consequence to doing something which
is such a fundamental breach of Oslo, and so contrary to what
is needed to get there, that that's enough.
And I guess I would like to hear you speak a little more to
the whole question of meaningful consequences for a really
dangerous action, initiated by the--it may be the PLO, but he
is President of the PA. And that is one aspect of it I would
like you to address.
The second one is, to the extent that you folks have talked
about the U.N.--and the chairman mentioned some effective
strategy that Bush 41 took with respect to not funding
organizations that recognize the Authority as a state. If this
is a General Assembly resolution--that is what I am talking
about. I am not talking about the Security Council issue right
now. I am talking about the General Assembly resolution.
What is it? If one wants not to fund agencies of the U.N.
that accept the Palestinian state, when the General Assembly
takes that action, is that--are you guys calling for an end to
all funding of the United Nations?
Mr. Makovsky. I think that there are a couple things in
your question. On the first issue, in terms of meaningful
consequences, Elliott was explaining how the PLO is not the
lead actor anymore. And they always say, ``Well, the PLO is the
body that is to negotiate with Israel,'' but the PLO is going
in the opposite way, here. So I think I share the skepticism of
the role of the PLO. If the Palestinians are sidelining itself,
they say ``We will be a Government of Palestine. We won't even
be PLO observer status.'' So I think that has merit.
Another suggestion I mentioned is, frankly, a suspension of
high-level meetings with the United States. I mean, this
administration from day two named a Middle East envoy, George
Mitchell. It has devoted a lot of efforts in focusing on this
issue, and if the Palestinians, in that 2\1/2\ years, have only
come to the table for 2\1/2\ weeks, then I think the United
States--we are well within our rights to say, ``Well, the
President has a lot of foreign policy issues to attend to, and
if you don't value this effort there might not be a need for
meetings. We have got a lot of other meetings to hold.''
So I think that is something that would send a clear
message, while averting what we really care about, which is, we
don't want a collapse. We don't want a collapse of the security
cooperation on the ground that----
Mr. Berman. Is there a U.N. resolution that could be taken
up----
Mr. Makovsky. Yes, look----
Mr. Berman. That should not--doesn't--should reduce our
concern?
Mr. Makovsky. Yes. In my full testimony--I just didn't--I
couldn't get to it in the verbal testimony, given the time
constraints. But the European Union is working behind the
scenes to put forward, to take these--what I would call these
three poison pills that I mentioned in my remarks--out.
And if they are successful--and I am not saying they will--
they have a lot of leverage. They are 27 countries. The
Palestinians are desperate to get European support, because
they were not the ones that supported the 1988 upgrade at the
General Assembly. So they have a lot of leverage. There are
also a lot of countries that vote with Europe at the United
Nations, that could get them up to 50 votes.
They could say, ``You want our support? Fine. But this is
what it will take. You have got to remove the three poison
pills and make the declaration more aspirational for two
states, which is predicated on a bilateral negotiation and
reaching the end of conflict.''
Mr. Berman. All right. My time has expired. I am sorry I
didn't get to hear Mr. Abrams' answer, but that is because I
talked too much in the beginning.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Berman. And now Mr.
Rohrabacher is recognized, the chair of the Subcommittee on
Oversight.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes, Mr. Berman, there are some of us who
would like to cut funds to the United Nations when those funds
are not used to promote peace. Just for the record.
Five billion dollars. We have spent $5 billion, and what
have we gotten for it? I think it is a fair question that the
American people can ask, at a time when we are in a financial
crisis. We haven't gotten peace. There are still rockets being
shot from Gaza into Israel. And we haven't gotten goodwill. So
if we are giving people billions of dollars, and we are not
getting peace, and we are not getting goodwill, what the Hell
are we getting?
We are getting a feel-good position for people in the
United States who really do believe in peace, but feeling good
doesn't mean that you are going to have any progress. Let us
just note that there has been some progress made, but I don't
think you can draw that to the $5 billion that we have given to
the Palestinians.
I remember when Israel was not accepting the two-state
solution. In fact, I advocated the two-state solution, and a
lot of my Israeli friends were upset with me for doing that.
Well, now we realize that in order to have peace, there has to
be two parties that you are respecting and trying to get them
together.
Unfortunately, Israel has accepted the two-state solution,
has given up territory, but I don't recognize anything that the
Palestinians have given up. I know what we have done: We have
given them $5 billion. But what have they given up? They
haven't even given up, even the principle that they cannot
return to Israel, pre-'67 Israel, and envelop it. Meaning, to
destroy Israel. They haven't even given up that concept.
Why are we giving money to people who have not even given
up the concept that they are going to destroy Israel as it
exists? I mean, this is absurd. Have we bought any goodwill
with this $5 billion? That is the first question. Is there
someone you can point to now, who is our buddy now because we
have been giving this money? Anyone want to defend that? Go
right ahead.
Mr. Schanzer. Congressman Rohrabacher, I very much
appreciate the sentiment. And I think, if I were to
characterize the way that we have given aid, it has really been
about a transaction, and not transformation. And I think that
cuts to the heart of what you have just said.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes.
Mr. Schanzer. We have just been furnishing aid. In the same
way we furnished aid to Egypt, we haven't changed the sentiment
on the ground, so the Palestinian people still largely hate
Israel and are anti-peace. And we have allowed this to
continue.
And so what I have suggested here today, and what I think
my colleagues here have suggested as well, is that we really
need to start to squeeze the system that has been created. I
think part of the problem is that we began to do that under
President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the intifada. But
after the Hamas electoral victory in 2006, and then the
takeover of Gaza in 2007, we began to look at the Fatah/PLO/PA
apparatus as the moderates, and we gave them a free pass. And
we stopped squeezing them in the way that we should have, to
reform. And this is, I think, how we have gotten to where we
are today.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, I think this is the best example of
the phrase ``Being taken for granted.'' Here we are, providing
the--I mean, $5 billion is a lot of money. I mean, this is a
lot of money for the American people.
You know what else we could have done in this country with
$5 billion? But now, that is--I mean, we are totally taken for
granted, because we have not predicated that on specific
actions by these--by the people who are receiving the money.
Let me just note this: I believe the real peace will come,
if it ever does--and if it does, it will be predicated on
Israel giving up all of the settlements in the West Bank, and
it will be predicated on the Palestinians giving up all their
notions of ever going back to pre-'67 Israel, and the
settlement, perhaps, of some property claims that, perhaps, can
be paid for by those Arab countries that took all the Jewish
property when the Jews left and went back to Israel, and their
land was confiscated.
So hopefully, we have got to get serious about this. And we
are not serious. We simply keep doling out money to people
without any preconditions. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher. Mr.
Sires of New Jersey is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Sires. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for holding
this hearing today. I sit here. Different people come before
us. And I keep hearing the same thing all the time about this
part of the world: That we give money, and most of the people
we deal with are corrupt. Somehow, the money disappears,
especially in this region.
Are there any honest actors in the region that we could
deal with, that would put forward the money? I mean, I am sure
we could stand here and go back and forth. But the real
question that I have is this: Let's say the Palestinians are
successful in getting this through the U.N., and nothing
changes. Whatever the resolution is, nothing changes for the
Palestinian people.
What does that say about the Palestinian Authority's
leadership? Are they going to hang in there? I mean, nothing is
going to change. Because the corruption is the same, the
sentiment is the same. Nothing moves forward. There is no
treaty. There is no future. So what happens? We go through
another something else.
Mr. Abrams. If I could, Mr. Sires, I think you have put
your finger on something critical here, which is the failure of
leadership. This is a curse the Palestinians have had for 100
years. I mean, their leadership all along, even before Arafat,
during Arafat, has been marked by corruption and not by any
real desire to build, from the bottom up, a Palestinian state.
And that is what we are seeing now. President Abbas seems
to be concerned--he is the guy who lost Gaza, and he seems to
be concerned now with trying to get some kind of unity with
Hamas, to reunite everybody, get this resolution in the U.N.,
and then maybe call it quits and retire, and retire with--we
will investigate this, I guess, but a fair amount of money that
the family has gotten.
So I think this is a huge problem for us, and of course it
is a greater problem for the Palestinians, that they have never
had--with I think the sole exception of Prime Minister Fayyad--
a leader who is really trying to build from the bottom up.
Mr. Sires. Mr. Phillips?
Mr. Phillips. If I could just add, I think one of the
tragedies of this situation is that there was an opportunity
for a possible peace settlement, but under the leadership of
Yasser Arafat, I think the PLO squandered that opportunity, and
I think he played fast and loose with his agreements, and never
fully delivered on his promise to halt terrorism, and other
things.
And now, in his stead, we have President Abbas, who as a
protege of Arafat, has only limited ability to break with
Arafat's legacy. And although I think he gives some commitments
to a two-state solution, it looks more like a two-stage
disemboweling of Israel. If there is going to be a Palestinian
state, then refugees should be returning to that state, not to
Israel. And there is a fundamental inconsistency there.
Mr. Schanzer. In answer to your question, sir, I think one
of the problems is just the ideology of Palestinian
nationalism, over the last 100 years, has unfortunately been
more about the destruction of something rather than the
creation of something--i.e. the destruction of the State of
Israel, and not the creation of a viable Palestinian state. And
there have been fits and starts in this regard, but they have
never really undertaken a serious effort to build a state that
is viable.
In terms of what we are looking at right now, I would liken
what Abbas has done at the U.N. to having thought through the
first 10 or 15 games of a chess match, but without having any
idea how to end it in a victory. And so what I heard from
people in Ramallah last week was that there is a great fear
that, after this political theater has passed in New York this
month, Palestinians will wake up and look outside their homes
and see that nothing has changed, as you mentioned.
And that could actually lead to, not an intifada against
Israel, but what we might call an ``intra-fada,'' where we
would see something like the Arab Spring come to visit the West
Bank. And this could obviously have a very serious impact on
U.S. interests there, because a weakened Palestinian Authority/
PLO apparatus would certainly give rise to Hamas. So this is
something that we are watching now. We could be watching the
self-destruction of Abbas' PLO.
Mr. Makovsky. I would just like to say, I would like to
respectfully disagree with what you have suggested, that if
Congressman Rohrabacher--I think this is not a long-term view
of what has been going on there. Under the Yasser Arafat era,
corruption was rampant. All the Palestinian polling said that
even the Palestinians knew this.
What Fayyad has done is fundamentally different. He has got
it all audited. The U.S. Government looks at this. You have a
situation that the Israeli military, everyone says that the
effort against corruption is 100 times better today than it was
during the Arafat era.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't be vigilant. We should
investigate if there is the PIF, which is not a U.S. aid
issue--we should be vigilant about that and try to improve it,
but let us not pretend that things are the same as they have
always been.
We have seen a marked change for the better, and we should
make it even better. And we should also talk about the lack of
Arab support for the Palestinian Authority. That deserves a
hearing in and of itself.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr.
Sires----
Mr. Sires. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen [continuing]. For your questions. Ms.
Schmidt is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Schmidt. Thank you. Mr. Abrams, public reports indicate
that Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, who
represents the Quartet, a diplomatic group focused on the
Middle East that is made up of the U.S., European Union, United
Nations, and Russia, is looking for a new basis for Israeli-
Palestinian negotiations. He hopes that the Quartet's statement
will cushion or shift the Palestinians membership bid toward
talks. What do you believe are the essential components of any
Quartet statement? Could you elaborate?
Mr. Abrams. Yes, I think your description of what Blair is
trying to do is quite accurate. And I think, basically, what he
is trying to do and what the Quartet is trying to do is get
Prime Minister Netanyahu to agree to some version of ``We will
start negotiating from '67 lines,'' and get the Palestinians to
agree to some version of the term ``Jewish state.''
And he figures if he can get that balance, he can get them
back to the negotiating table. And then, with that agreement in
hand, in the next week or two, Abbas does not go to the U.N. It
is a valiant effort. I just think it is probably not going to
work.
Ms. Schmidt. Thank you. And what do you believe are the red
lines for Palestinian activities, as it pertains to their
efforts in the United Nations? Could you elaborate?
Mr. Abrams. Well, as has been said here, I think they
should not be doing this at all. If they are going to do it,
then the question becomes, what is the content of the
resolution?
The worst thing could be if it has in it anything about
borders, refugees, or Jerusalem. I say that because if you have
a U.N. resolution that says, for example, ``There is a
Palestinian state exactly on the '67 borders,'' that kills
negotiations. Because in the future, no Palestinian negotiator
is going to be able to take less than the U.N. has already
given him. So I think those are the three things that have to
be out of any resolution.
Ms. Schmidt. Thank you. Mr. Phillips, what are the so-
called--the Arab Spring was just mentioned. What do you see
would happen in the region if the Arab Spring occurs in
Palestine?
Mr. Phillips. Well, I think one of the drivers in terms of
Palestinian domestic politics behind this rapprochement between
Hamas and the PLO is a fear that both could be threatened by a
Palestinian Spring. I think there is a lot of pent-up
dissatisfaction in Gaza, with Hamas, much more than is
generally reported in the West, and that Hamas is seeking
protection from such popular repudiation by going along with
this political theater at the U.N. General Assembly, and trying
to get out ahead of it and refocus popular discontent against
Israel. I think it is part of the same old scapegoat strategy.
Ms. Schmidt. And I have a couple more things. As we see it
played out in the polls of the administration regarding the
potential showdown are not working at present. What could we
have done to have avoided this situation, and what should the
administration do to correct it? And I will open that up to all
four of you in the 1\1/2\ minutes I have left.
Mr. Schanzer. If I may, I think that the administration,
respectfully, has handled this rather poorly. We have known
about this UDI, Unilateral Declaration of Independence, for
more than 2 years. Salam Fayyad laid this out in 2009, with a
deadline of September 2011.
There have been moments along the way where, admittedly,
the President has come out very squarely and said that this
runs counter to peace. But at the same time, this
administration has taken steps to encourage this action. The
vilification of Israel for building in the West Bank, and this
campaign against Israel over the last year or 2, I think, has
certainly encouraged the Palestinians to believe that this was
all being done in the name of their national project.
When the President announced his peace process last year
around this time, he indicated that he hoped to see an
independent Palestinian state by September 2011, certainly
giving a nod to, again, Fayyad's plans. And then, earlier this
year, the President upgraded the PLO offices to the equivalent
of an Embassy, allowing the Palestinian flag to fly over
Washington. These were all indications that the President
supported this maneuver in some way or another, and now is
asking for this to end.
Ms. Schmidt. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Ms. Schmidt. Mr.
Deutch of Florida is recognized.
Mr. Deutch. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Mr. Makovsky, can
you respond to Dr. Schanzer's suggestion that the
administration has waged a campaign against Israel over the
past year?
Mr. Makovsky. I have been critical over the over focus on
settlements for the first 2 years of the administration. I feel
time was wasted. We ended up boxing in Abbas no less than we
boxed in Israel. And we focused too much on the symptoms, when
we should be going for the cure. I wish the administration
would have been giving its speech in May, they would have done
it 2 years earlier.
But I wish, before the administration would have given that
speech, it would have gone to Brussels, and London, and Paris,
and said, ``Look. We are about to take a big speech. What are
you going to do? We are willing to administer tough love. Are
you willing to administer tough love to the Palestinians? You
never have.''
And when Elliott correctly mentioned the valiant effort by
Tony Blair, I think we would have been in a much better
leverage position if we would have gone before the speech to
the Europeans, saying, ``We are about to do something big here
in Washington, but we are not going to do it unless we know the
Europeans are going to do something comparable, that they are
going to give a corollary speech, given either by Lady Ashton,
or Sarkozy, or Merkel, or whoever.''
That would have strengthened our bargaining position. I
fear that the Europeans have basically taken our concession, so
to speak, and put it in their pockets. And therefore Tony Blair
doesn't have many bullets this summer, and that is sad. So I
think those, to my mind, are the two major--the major mistakes.
The over focus on settlements for the first 2 years, instead of
trying to actually solve the problem, and not using the moves
we did make to leverage European concessions, which really
would have changed the landscape as we would have approached
the whole U.N. business.
Mr. Deutch. Could you speak to the administration's
actions, the past--starting, perhaps, at the United Nations,
with the veto of the Security Council resolution, and forward?
I understand you are looking back to the start of the
administration. Could you talk about the efforts at the United
Nations, starting then and proceeding through the current
efforts with the Quartet?
Mr. Makovsky. Are you talking about the February veto on
settlements, or the speech of Obama last year?
Mr. Deutch. The veto of settlements.
Mr. Makovsky. You know, the administration did veto it, but
a lot of the buzz around the veto, the way it was done,
frankly, basically dissipated it. It was a time when the Arabs
were focused on the Arab Spring, and the administration feared
this would be a huge distraction and lead to demonstrations
against the United States, which it didn't lead to it, because
the Arabs were more focused--they were more preoccupied with
their own problems.
So I think the administration--I understand their concerns,
and they were thinking worst case scenario. It didn't
materialize. Again, this summer the administration wanted to do
the Quartet. That was the main strategy. And the administration
actually has not aligned behind--when Congressman Berman asked
me about an alternative resolution idea, the administration has
not come out in support of that.
Basically, the administration wants to be aligned with
Israel, and is not offering its support. And that is why the
Europeans are actually the key actors. The U.S. main bid was
the Quartet. That was the main focal point to get us off this
issue at the U.N. in September. But it is a little too little
too late, because the Europeans have not found the incentive to
cooperate sufficiently with the United States.
They always have their reasons, of course, but I think that
that was--we didn't maximize our leverage, and so ostensibly
that wasn't a U.N. move per se, but that was our main bid, was
earlier this summer. And I think when we didn't get that thing
nailed down on July 11th in the Secretary of State's office
with the Quartet members, frankly the closer we get to the
U.N., it dwindles. U.S. leverage dwindles. Everyone is staking
out their own positions, and isn't stopping Abbas. So I think
things could have been done differently.
Mr. Deutch. At this point, though, as you point out, Mr.
Makovsky, the criticism--your criticism seems to be that the
administration's position is, in supporting Israel at this
point, rather than looking for some other alternative and
leaving that to the Europeans. Are you questioning that?
Mr. Makovsky. No, I am not questioning at all. I think
President Obama said, ``This is a principal position for this
administration, that this issue of the Palestinians is not
settled at the U.N., it is settled at the table.'' And I think
the President is 100 percent right.
Mr. Deutch. All right. Does anyone--do any of the other
witnesses doubt that that has been the administration's
commitment?
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. We will have to wait for that
response.
Mr. Deutch. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Deutch. Mr. Chabot,
the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South
Asia, is recognized.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I will direct this
to any of the panel members that might be interested. As I had
mentioned in my opening statement, I had recently returned from
a trip to Israel and the West Bank.
I was actually in Ramallah, discussing with Prime Minister
Fayyad his tremendously important state-building effort, when
the reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah was being
signed, without his blessing and probably without even his
knowledge. At the meeting that we had with him--we happened to
hear about the reconciliation later on that evening, and he
certainly didn't seem to know anything about it. I can't vouch
for that, but that was the impression that I had.
Since then, several potential cabinet formulations have
been discussed which would result in his replacement as prime
minister. That is Prime Minister Fayyad. As we all know,
Fayyad's integrity and competence has been essential in
building the credibility of Palestinian institutions, which for
a very long time were bottomless pits of corruption.
One question that comes to mind is how we can ensure Fayyad
does not get forced out of office. As I ask that, though, it
occurs to me that if the gains achieved under his leadership
are dependent on his leadership, perhaps we have already lost.
How should U.S. aid policy be adjusted if Fayyad is no longer
the Palestinian Prime Minister, and are any gains in the West
Bank sustainable after he is gone, taking into consideration
what we have seen Palestinian leadership in the past, and other
than Fayyad in the present, be?
And whoever would like to take it--maybe we will start with
Mr. Abrams.
Mr. Abrams. I would be very pessimistic about how much of
the gains will stick. On security and on financial probity, he
is not a one-man band, but he is a leader. And without that
leadership at the top, I think it will start to crumble. How
should we respond to it? I think we should talk to the other
aid donors who are significant, which is primarily the
Europeans, the EU and the individual countries, and a couple of
others, like the Saudis.
And so that we are all sending the same message to the
Palestinians, including to President Abbas, saying, ``Don't do
it, because we don't trust where the money is going to go after
he is gone.'' I think that is actually one of the reasons he is
still there. The Saudis, among others, told Abbas, ``Don't do
it.''
Mr. Chabot. Thank you. Anybody else like to take a stab?
Yes, Mr. Makovsky?
Mr. Makovsky. No. I mean, I am very happy with your
question, because, I mean, my point is, there has been this
huge improvement because of his leadership. And it is not about
supporting one man and tying yourself to a man. It is tying
yourself to a set of principles that he has represented. If he
goes, and his successor is more like the Arafat era, then I
would be more of the view of Mr. Rohrabacher and the gentleman
we heard from before, that the U.S. should reexamine it.
But I think, when he is making all these gains for
transparency, and trying to create an ethos of accountability,
which is not easy, because Yasser Arafat--let us be honest--
left a very toxic legacy. But he is building schools. He is
paving roads. He is opening health clinics. He is reforming the
security services, making it professional. He is getting the
preachers out of the mosques who are calling for Jihad. He is
doing everything that any person, not just the United States,
would want a Palestinian Authority to be like. If his ethos of
accountability is somehow returned to the past, then I would be
for a reexamination myself.
Mr. Chabot. Okay. Yes, sir?
Mr. Schanzer. I will add just one thought to that, and that
is that, as much as I agree with David about how much Prime
Minister Fayyad has accomplished, I would say that in recent
years, that progress has been undercut significantly by Abbas
and his cronies. In other words, Mahmoud Abbas has been taking
away some of the power that Fayyad had, and so the impact that
Fayyad has been making--and admittedly, it was good progress--
you get the sense now that some of that transparency is being
wiped away.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you.
Mr. Schanzer. And so we need to do everything that we can
to ensure that we empower Fayyad, and to take power back out of
the hands of Abbas and put it into the hands of Fayyad. If we
don't do that, I do fear that ultimately we are headed toward
disaster.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you. Let me just follow up, and I have
only got a short period of time here, but Prime Minister Fayyad
has made it clear that he does not support this campaign at the
U.N., and yet they are apparently going to go forward with it
without him. What does this tell us about his political--not
his economic--influence or lack thereof? And I guess the panel
would agree that that tells us that he doesn't have a heck of a
lot of political influence. Is that correct? I think everyone
is nodding. Madam Chair, I have exhausted my time. I yield
back.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you for noting the nod. Mr.
Connolly is recognized.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Mr. Abrams, good
to see you again. I listened with great interest to your
understandable disgust with certain statements attributed to--
or that most certainly came out of the mouth of the PLO
representative. But your prescription was, ``So let us close
the PLO office in Washington,'' which every President has used
the waiver authority for, Democratic and Republican, since we
granted it, and make him PNG.
What would be the consequences of doing that, though, in
terms of U.S. leverage, our ability to try to continue to urge
the two parties to the table, and so forth?
Mr. Abrams. In my view, it is a symbolic step that would
show the people running the PLO how angry you are in Congress,
and the United States is. It doesn't foreclose the possibility,
if they ever really want to negotiate peace, to do it.
I can tell you that when we started looking at the after-
Arafat period, in 2002 and 2003, in the Bush administration, we
had people fly in from Ramallah, and we talked to them. People
who were close to the then-Prime Minister Abbas. You could
continue to have those conversations. But they would lose their
perch here in Washington, and it would, in a sense, be the
price they paid for defying the President and the Congress and
going ahead in New York.
Mr. Connolly. What about Mr. Makovsky's suggestion, if I
heard his testimony correctly, that unwittingly, certainly,
that could play into the hands of Hamas, which is the last
thing in the world we want to do?
Mr. Abrams. Well, the collapse of the PA institutions, and
particularly security institutions, could, I think, play into
the hands of Hamas. Closing the PLO office, though, I think
would not.
Mr. Connolly. You would agree, would you not, though, that
as we look at our options, we do need to take cognizance,
however frustrated and upset we may be--we do need to take
cognizance of unintended consequences that strengthen the hands
of forces we would prefer be weakened, not strengthened?
Mr. Abrams. Absolutely. And unintended consequences that
end up hurting Israel or Jordan.
Mr. Connolly. Mr. Schanzer, I saw you shaking your head.
Did you want to comment?
Mr. Schanzer. Absolutely. I agree with Elliott that I think
closing down the PLO offices, given the fact that this is an
Abbas initiative, is something that should be considered by
Members of Congress. I think it is also worth noting here that
there may be some unintended consequences for the Palestinians
as a result of this UDI.
According to some of the legal opinions that I have heard,
first of all, the PLO could be relegated to some sort of a
secondary authority, if and when a Palestinian state is
declared, so that the road may be paved for us to really
downgrade relations with the PLO nevertheless.
And then also, we heard earlier about UNRWA, this U.N.
agency. If, in fact, a state is declared, to a certain extent
the Palestinians living inside the West Bank who claim refugee
status would have to relinquish those claims. So there are
unintended consequences that we could play to, in terms of how
it might impact the Palestinians, as well.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you. Mr. Makovsky, okay. Despite our
best efforts, despite a veto at the U.N. Security Council, the
UNGA, sort of eerily reminiscent of the whole China vote many
years ago--I am old enough to remember--votes Palestinian
statehood. It is the day after. What are our real options,
besides expressing frustration?
Mr. Makovsky. Like I said in my testimony, I am very
concerned about what happens on the ground. And to be blunt,
neither the Israel Defense Forces nor the Palestinian
Authority's Security Services have vast experience in crowd
control. And if there is going to be a lot of demonstrations
going on, my--even though I don't think Abbas, given what he
says and his record, is at all interested in spearheading
violence--nobody accuses him of--his biggest critics, anywhere,
would not say that he plays a double game with violence.
So I don't think that is really something to be concerned
about. But you know, when you gather all these people, you
don't know if you are unleashing dynamics you cannot control.
That is why I think there needs to be strong security
cooperation on the ground. I think the U.S. Security
Coordinator who is there now, General Moeller, needs to play a
role before the U.N. vote, during, after. This may go on for
weeks. This is an asset of the United States.
Mr. Connolly. But if I could interrupt you for just 1
second, because we are running out of time. But is it the
posture of the United States, the day after, to take a hard
line position that we are not going to recognize this act, and
therefore in no way, shape, or form, even inferentially, will
we in any way recognize the statehood outside of the
multilateral----
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Another very good question whose
time will await the answer.
Mr. Connolly. Oh, cheap. Just say yes or no.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Go ahead, Mr. Makovsky.
Mr. Makovsky. Look, we will only recognize--the United
States will only recognize a state that is a result of
bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority. Any administration, Democrat or Republican, I am
confident will be of that view.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Poe of Texas is recognized. He is the vice chair of the
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
Mr. Poe. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for being here,
gentlemen. I see this playing out maybe not so good for Israel
and the United States. One dynamic that I believe is taking
place is the unfortunate commitment of the United States toward
the Nation of Israel. It seems to me in the last few years
mixed signals have been going to the Israelis. Mr. Netanyahu
said as much when he spoke before a joint session of Congress.
And personally, I think that little family rift, if we can
use that, is being noticed by people all over the world. And
maybe this is coming to the U.N. with that in the background.
That is unfortunate. I think the United States--Congress
obviously has shown a strong support, bipartisan support for
the Nation of Israel, and I think we should continue to send
that message.
To get to the U.N., I agree with Ambassador Dore Gold,
Israel's former U.N. Ambassador, when he said, ``If there was a
resolution whose first clause was anti-Israel and whose second
clause was that the earth was flat, it would pass the United
Nations.'' I think it is true. There is such a bigotry against
Israel in the United Nations as a whole. This is what we are
faced with under this Palestinian issue.
Mr. Phillips, why do you think withholding funds to any
U.N. organization that admits Palestinians as a state, or
grants it a non-member state observer status, is a good move?
Mr. Phillips. I think it is a good move because it would
help minimize the damage to possible future peace negotiations.
And I think one of the great dangers of this kind of a U.N.
unilateral strategy is that it could lead the Palestinians to
conclude that they don't have to negotiate with Israel, that
they can sit back and wait for further Israeli concessions.
And I think one of the mistakes of the Obama administration
was not only to, I think, set a very unrealistic deadline for
coming to some kind of framework agreement by September 2011,
which tremendously raised expectations, but also their very
public friction with Israel, which led the Palestinians and
other Arabs to believe that the U.S. was going to deliver
concessions, and they didn't need to negotiate, which is one
reason why President Abbas has only agreed to about 2 weeks of
negotiations since Prime Minister Netanyahu came to power.
And I think that, unfortunately, the impact was raising
expectations so high that when the U.S. wasn't able to deliver
and Abbas felt that we had lured him out on a limb and then cut
off the limb by stepping back and failing to deliver on the
settlement issue, that part of the bitter fruit of that policy
is coming to fruition now.
Mr. Poe. So you think that the U.S. should just withhold
funds to states that support the statehood of Palestinians?
Mr. Phillips. I think that we should be cutting back our
funds for U.N. organizations that contribute to this very----
Mr. Poe. Specifically, what U.N. organizations? That is my
question.
Mr. Phillips. I would say all organizations that take those
actions.
Mr. Poe. I believe this resolution has to be resolved
between the Palestinians and the Israelis. They have to solve
this issue, not the U.N. They have to solve it. Of course, the
Palestinians aren't motivated to talk to Israel when they have
got the U.N. on their side, going to do the deed for them. You
know, you made a comment about Israel's concessions. You know,
that's always been, ``Well, let us give land for peace.'' Well,
Israel has continued to give up land, and they still have no
peace. Pretty soon, they are going to be out of land.
All right. One more question, Mr. Abrams. You suggest
Congress should wait and see how the U.N. votes. Well, we know
how they are going to vote. Is there something we can do to be
proactive, rather than be reactive about this situation? The
United States of America, what should we do now?
Mr. Abrams. I think this hearing is important, because they
are listening. They are listening to this, and they are hearing
all of you say if they go ahead with the resolution, and
particularly with a resolution that has terrible content, that
you are going to cut them off.
Mr. Poe. Maybe they will have that ``Earth is flat'' part
in the resolution. Maybe they will put ``The earth is flat'' in
that resolution.
Mr. Abrams. It will still pass. They do have an automatic
majority, that is true. As the Israelis say, anything the
Palestinians put forward, they get the automatic vote of every
Muslim State, and Israel gets the automatic support of every
Jewish state.
Mr. Poe. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. That is a small group, there. Thank
you so much, Mr. Poe. Mr. Ackerman is recognized for 5 minutes.
He is the ranking member on the Subcommittee on the Middle East
and South Asia.
Mr. Ackerman. Two questions just raised, of what we can do
now. I wish someone would have thought before of what we should
have done then, before we got this far down the road with this
idiotic pursuit of the Palestinians, to raise the bar so high
of the expectations of its people that it is going to be a
total disaster for them when they do not get, from the U.N.,
what they think they are going to get, and aren't prepared to
handle the consequences.
I wish somebody, before this thing went so far down the
road, understood that in life, we don't get to pick our choices
and then choose among them, but we have the choice only of
picking between the realistic choices that are presented to us.
I wish somebody was a chess player, among all the people
playing the piddling game of checkers, and could play chess on
a three dimensional basis, and offered up a solution or a
choice that was much better than we are looking at presented to
the U.N. right now, and in that choice said, ``Why don't we
embark on a process of negotiation between the two sides,
starting almost anywhere?'' Any line, as long as it included a
proposal that there would be exchanges or swaps between the
parties, that they would have to mutually agree to before they
decided. But it had to be negotiated between the parties.
I wish somebody would have thought of that, because I think
that is a much better choice that we would have had at that
moment, rather than the choice that is facing the U.N. right
now. At least there would have been an alternative that offered
a degree of hope of the parties getting back to the negotiating
table. But alas, I guess that was not to be.
I guess there was nobody around on the whole planet who
thought of offering the choice as an alternative, preemptively,
to the parties sitting down, using a line to start with that
was really inconsequential, because you were going to arrive at
a different situation once you did the swaps.
But here we are. My question, first, is, should not there
be a clause, if we could affect the resolution that the
Palestinians are going to bring forth, a clause that said,
``Once this resolution is voted on, immediately the parties, in
order for this to be effective, must sit down and negotiate
face to face?'' What is wrong with that? Dr. Schanzer?
Mr. Schanzer. You raise an excellent point. And one of the
things that the Foundation for Defense of Democracies has been
doing over the last several months is advocating for just that.
Unfortunately, what we have seen over the last several months
is that this is seen as a binary choice for members of the
U.N.: Either you support a Palestinian state or you don't.
And what we think is the right move, and I think what you
have just expressed here really dovetails with that, is that
there should be some language in this resolution that says that
the U.N. member states view with favor the creation of a
Palestinian state, but that that state needs to be negotiated
with Israel, and the borders need to be ultimately decided by
the two parties, and that there needs to be recognition of
Israel as a Jewish state.
In this way, the Palestinians can have their moment at the
U.N., which is I think what they seek here, but ultimately some
of the impact of this, the legal impact that David mentioned
earlier, could be diluted. And why that was not forwarded by
official channels up until very recently is something that is
very troubling. And it is even more troubling to think that,
ultimately, what is going to happen--and this is, by the way,
part of the Palestinian plan right now--is that when this UDI
goes through and the United States vetoes this, the impact will
be that the Arab world, where we have gone to great pains to
support their revolutions, whether in Egypt or Tunisia or Syria
or elsewhere, will look at the United States as if it is an
anti-Arab initiative.
Mr. Ackerman. I don't have a lot of time left. Let me just
add, because I do want this on the record, I just want it to be
known that there are those of us who have been in the vanguard
of supporting a two-state solution and promoting the just
solution that the Palestinians are entitled to, with safeguards
for the security of Israel, and trying to get our European
friends on board.
That there are some of us who strongly believe that people
have to live with the consequences of their actions, and that
there are those of us who are thinking that maybe a total
cutoff of all aid to a group that is pursuing this course of
action, which is very ill-advised, is willing to consider
cutting off everything.
And if they are willing to consider putting their future in
the hands of the United Nations, perhaps they should look to
try to find the kind of aid that would come with whatever U.N.
resolution there might be, from their friends in the United
Nations. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much, Mr. Ackerman.
Mr. Fortenberry is recognized. He is the vice chair of the
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights.
Mr. Fortenberry. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you,
gentlemen, for coming today to this important hearing. I had a
question that Mr. Connolly asked, but I think it is an
important question and it deserves a little bit more
consideration, because he was only able to ask it late and you,
Mr. Makovsky answered it in terms of what the day after looks
like.
Sadly, here we are in a reactionary position, as Mr.
Ackerman alluded to, without many options. The reality is,
after a General Assembly passage of some sort of recognition
here, what is our next hearing going to look like? But instead
of just focusing on the morning after, with the possibility of
things looking the same, or people in the streets, project out
in terms of the geopolitics, into the future, as to how this
shifts things significantly, or not. Please start.
Mr. Makovsky. Look, the issue of what are the geopolitical
implications of this--if it goes through as the Security
Council--they go to the Security Council, which they know they
are going to hit a U.S. veto, and the only way to do that is to
poke the U.S. in the eye, because they know the result, and
because they want a negative result for the U.S. in the Arab
World.
That could be serious. If they avoid going to the U.N.
Security Council and try something else at the General
Assembly, where they don't face that hand going up on Aljazeera
and al-Arabiya around the world, then it could look
differently.
The Arabs are preoccupied with their own problems right
now. But this issue is evocative. So I think it depends a lot
on how the Palestinians play it. Are they out to embarrass the
United States by going deliberately to the Security Council,
while we have all been focused on the General Assembly?
That could aggravate the response in the region. And
getting to Congressman Ackerman's point of where was the
forward thinking in all of this, I think in a certain way, the
U.S. has been--the administration has been betwixt and between,
because what happened is, is that the United States did not
want to be seen--the administration--as favoring an alternative
resolution that would take out the three poison pills that I
keep referring to from my testimony, because it would be
viewed, in the Congress and other parts, as stepping away from
Israel, that by trying to reshape the resolution, that would be
deemed as, ``Well, you say you are against the U.N., but you
are really trying to reshape something at the U.N.''
So the administration put all its eggs, so to speak, on the
Quartet's statement this summer, in trying to keep the
Europeans and have some trans-Atlantic unity, even if we
thought it couldn't stop Abbas.
So I think in the administration, and how they have been
trying to think about this, is they have been focused about
trans-Atlantic unity, and they have been concerned that the
perception that they are working behind the scenes to reshape
the resolution would be interpreted, I think, as weakness by
the Republicans. And so that actually has led them from
stepping back and maybe not having the influence that they
could in reshaping the resolution, and putting all their effort
on the Quartet.
Mr. Fortenberry. So it is my fault?
Mr. Makovsky. I did not say that it is your fault, at all.
I did not say that it is your fault at all. But maybe there are
some efforts that have been kept Top Secret, and we will find
out afterwards that the U.S. was doing things behind the
scenes, but it was so worried about the way it would be
perceived outwardly that it didn't maximize its efforts.
So I think those were always the two strategies to avoid
the full thrust of what we are dealing with now: Either a
Quartet statement or an alternative resolution that would take
out the poison pills.
Mr. Fortenberry. Thank you.
Mr. Makovsky. But how the Arabs deal with it--I think if
the Palestinians want to poke America in the eye, the U.S. will
have to see that accordingly. Because that will be done just to
stir up Arab reaction.
Mr. Fortenberry. Thank you. Mr. Abrams?
Mr. Abrams. Very briefly, sir. I think this does stem, in
part, from a gigantic mistake the administration made at the
very beginning. It believed that by distancing us from Israel,
it would increase our influence on the Palestinians and the
Israelis. In fact, it has diminished our influence with the
Palestinians and the Israelis, and we now see a situation where
we are more distanced from Israel, and your position, the
position of the President on this resolution is crystal clear,
and they are just not listening. They are not paying attention.
Mr. Phillips. If I could just add, I think that the
administration's efforts to distance itself, even, has greatly
disappointed the Palestinians in the long run. Because they
interpreted that as the administration coming around to their
position. And today, the Palestinian Authority is running radio
ads that are replaying the words of President Obama about
having a Palestinian member state in the U.N. And they are
trumpeting that as the Obama promise.
And I think part of the problem here is a tremendous
disconnect----
Mr. Fortenberry. I once--I am sorry to cut you off. I once
saw an editorial cartoon in which someone from the region, with
an arm in his hand, was standing on a pile of skulls and said,
``I won.'' We have got to move beyond what appears to be
irrationality.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much, Mr.
Fortenberry. Mr. Rivera, my Florida colleague, is recognized.
Mr. Rivera. Thank you, Madam Chair. My question is for Mr.
Abrams to start off. The Palestinian Authority, instead of
returning to talks with Israel, is engaging in diplomatic
warfare against Israel. They have launched a campaign outside
of direct negotiations in order to win admission as a full
member to the United Nations, and are setting preconditions on
final status which are supposed to be resolved through direct
negotiations.
What has this administration done to prevent the
Palestinian Authority from following through with their
diplomatic warfare against Israel and their campaign? And is
there more the U.S. could or should be doing to dissuade the
Palestinians from proceeding at the U.N.?
Mr. Abrams. Well, sir, I think the administration has tried
jawboning. That is, it has talked, publicly and privately, to
the Palestinians and asked them not to do this, and probably
used you in Congress as an argument that there would be a
penalty to pay.
But it has been too little, too late, I think. And I do
think the Palestinians received a wrong message early on, that
they didn't have to negotiate with the Israelis because the
administration would distance itself from the Israelis and then
deliver the Israelis.
So they have not been interested in negotiations, really
almost from the very beginning. It is very late at this point,
and I think the only thing you can do is to make it clear to
them, as you are doing today, that there will be a serious
price to pay.
Mr. Rivera. Well, speaking of that, and a serious price to
pay, specifically on foreign aid, what should the implications
for U.S. assistance be if the Palestinians continue with their
efforts? And do any of you think that the Palestinians realize
that their efforts could jeopardize U.S. assistance? I will
start with Mr. Abrams, but anybody on the panel that wants to
chime in.
Mr. Abrams. I think they do realize it, but maybe they
figure you won't go through with it. And maybe they figure they
can get it made up by the Qataris, or some other donor who will
step in. But the utility of this hearing, I think, is driving
home ``This is a serious business.''
Mr. Rivera. Mr. Makovsky, I saw you nodding.
Mr. Makovsky. I think I would just like to put forward the
suggestion that I feel that it is not getting enough focus. And
you are powerful people. Imagine if you had part three of this
hearing, and would start inviting some Arab Ambassadors to
here. And you would start asking, ``How is it Mr. Turki al-
Faisal writes to the New York Times that they are giving $2.5
billion, when Salam Fayyad says they have only received $347
million?''
It is a little over a tenth of what Turki al-Faisal says
that they have given to the Palestinians. The United States has
been far more generous than any Arab state, and the U.S.
Congress should put some focus on that. Why does Qatar get away
with murder in this country by funding Hamas? Is it because of
a U.S. Air Force Base in Qatar, and the U.S. Congress isn't
focusing on the fact that Qatar is supporting Hamas?
Why isn't there more attention to this? This, I think,
would be a very strong signal. ``We want to help the
Palestinians, but we are astonished that you Arabs don't do
more to help the very people that you claim are your brothers,
and yet when it comes to the money, the United States is the
single biggest donor to the Palestinian cause.''
I think that repositioning for the U.S. Congress would be
fantastic. It would draw attention in the Arab media, around
the world, to the lack of Arab support. It would embarrass
them, and they should be embarrassed.
Mr. Rivera. Mr. Schanzer?
Mr. Schanzer. Well, I agree with everything that David has
just said, and I think it would draw attention to an issue that
has not been covered enough. But I also have to mention this,
that if you invite the Qataris, and you invite the Saudis, or
perhaps the Iranians, to backfill some of the aid that is not
given to the Palestinians, what you are doing is inviting bad
actors to influence the Palestinians in ways that could further
upset the balance of power in the region.
We already know that Qatar has been financing Hamas. We
know that Iran covers a great deal of the budget of Hamas. In
other words, these countries have been fomenting violence in
the region, and I have deep concerns about inviting them to
begin to backfill some of the aid that might go unfulfilled by
the United States.
Mr. Rivera. And Mr. Phillips?
Mr. Phillips. I think, unfortunately, one of the long-term
problems in this conflict is that many Arab states use the
Palestinian issue only as a club to attack and undermine
Israel. They are not so much interested in building a
Palestinian state as they are in destroying an Israeli state.
And this really becomes clear when you look at the
disconnect between Arab promises and delivery of aid. I think
according to the New York Times, of $971 million pledged for
this year, the Palestinian Authority has received only about
$330 million as of midyear, with many Arab states in large
default.
And this has led the Palestinian Authority to cut its wages
this month to half wages for the Palestinian bureaucrats, and I
think one of the good impacts of this kind of a hearing, I
think, is to possibly lead the Palestinian Authority leaders to
reconsider what is going to happen when their----
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you. Oh, finish that sentence.
Mr. Phillips. Just that they are not going to be able to
count on the financial assistance of their friends to the
degree that, perhaps, they expect.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mr. Phillips.
Thank you, Mr. Rivera. Another dear Florida Colleague, Mr. Gus
Bilirakis, a.k.a. Just Ray. Inside joke.
Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate it very
much. I would like to ask a question for the entire panel. It
is offensive to me that the U.N. Relief and Work Agency, or
UNRWA's, stated goal since its inception in 1950 is essentially
to keep the Palestinian people in a refugee status.
Mr. Abrams, as you noted in your testimony, it seems that
UNRWA has done nothing but perpetuate refugee status for the
Palestinians forever. Would the panel agree with me that we
should finally end the nearly $4 billion of aid that we have
already wasted on UNRWA? I would like to hear from the entire
panel, please.
Mr. Schanzer. I can start. I will say this, that UNRWA
needs to end now. It is an absolute waste of money. Rather than
solving the problem, it perpetuates it. UNRWA sees the
Palestinian refugees as clients, rather than refugees that need
to be settled. Every other refugee problem has been addressed
appropriately in history since World War II. The Palestinians
remain a dagger in the back of Israel, and it is a political
issue, it is no longer a humanitarian one.
One thing that has been suggested, that I think is a very
good idea to consider, is the U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees. That is the body that handles every other refugee
problem. I think that this portfolio should be given back to
the UNHCR, and to leave UNRWA to its own devices. It is
interesting that UNRWA understands right now that it is under
pressure. They recently opened an office here to try to lobby
for more funds and influence here in Washington. This is a
corrupt organization that must be shut down.
Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you.
Mr. Makovsky. The UNRWA issue is--I share a lot of the
sentiments, but here is the problem: Ask the Israelis if they
want UNRWA shut down. I think their answer will be no, because
they will end up feeling they have to pay for all these
Palestinian citizens, for their schooling and the like, and
this has been their view for a while now. And we can't ignore
it.
There are a lot of problems with UNRWA, although I would
still rather have people go to their summer camps than to the
Hamas summer camps in Gaza. But let me just say, we did a study
at The Washington Institute by someone who actually once worked
at UNRWA called Fix UNRWA, and I would urge people to go to our
Web site, to look at James Lindsay's study.
And he made a couple of very practical moves. Remove from
the UNRWA rolls citizens who have this oxymoronic status of
citizen-refugees. That doesn't exist in any other relief
agency. Second, make the focus more on needs-based assistance,
and not on an entitlement for refugees who don't need the
assistance. And also, depoliticize the institution in terms of
its political statements.
There are a lot of things that could be done to fix UNRWA
if you can't end it now. We all would look forward to the day
where you phase out UNRWA and it is no longer needed, but at
least it has to be trimmed down and focused on its original
mission. And the mission has really changed in a very, I think,
disastrous way coming forward. But we should just be careful
that the remedy is the right remedy for today.
Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you. Mr. Abrams?
Mr. Abrams. Well, in a sense, I think they are both right.
That is, I think you should demand the reforms of UNRWA
starting immediately, and should start the process of shutting
it down and turning all of these responsibilities over to the
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you. Mr. Phillips?
Mr. Phillips. I would agree with Mr. Schanzer. I think it
should be folded into UNHCR. And I wish it could be fixed, but
I don't think it can. And if there is a silver lining in the
cloud, if this Palestinian pseudo-state comes into being, then
it should bear the responsibility of acting like a government
and supporting these refugees, since it claims that it is
capable of fulfilling all the responsibilities of a state.
Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. I yield
back, Madam Chair.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much, Mr. Bilirakis.
I am pleased to yield to Mr. Sherman of California, the ranking
member on the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and
Trade. Five minutes.
Mr. Sherman. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Instead of talking
with Israel, the Palestinian Authority has launched a campaign
outside the negotiating process to win recognition this
September at the United Nations General Assembly. Palestinian
statehood efforts at the United Nations undermine efforts at
peace, and reject the principle of solving the conflict in
terms of direct negotiations between the parties. The Obama
administration, I hope and I am confident, will make it clear
to the Palestinians that we will veto any resolution creating a
Palestinian state in the U.N. Security Council.
I think that is a given. And at the same time, the
administration needs to press the PA to return to the
negotiating table. Does the PLO fear the collapse of its
governing body if U.S. funding were to end? Mr. Abrams, or any
other witness that indicates an interest?
Mr. Abrams. I think they probably worry about it, but not
very much. I think they probably feel, in the end, you won't do
it. And if you cut them back, they will make it up from some
other donor, maybe Europeans or the Arabs.
Mr. Sherman. Does anyone else have a comment?
Mr. Phillips. I would just say, I don't think they are
worried enough. But they should be worried, because the U.S. is
one of the--in fact, it is the leading bilateral aid provider
to the Palestinian Authority. And these Arab states aren't
going to be willing to, in the long term, on a reliable basis,
make up the funding, I don't think.
Mr. Makovsky. I would just add that I think this issue has
been controversial within the Palestinian circles. Salam Fayyad
gave an interview, I believe to the Financial Times in June,
making clear that this was not the way to go. He is not the
only one among the Palestinians who has criticized the move.
This has been viewed often as a legacy issue for Abbas.
Someone asked, ``Does that mean he has no influence?''
Well, they have always had a demarcation of responsibilities.
He deals with more domestic governance and improving
institutions and economic life, and Abbas deals with foreign
policy. So I don't think it speaks to Fayyad's weakness, as it
really does to the way there's a division of labor between
them.
But I think many among Abbas' even inner circle question
the wisdom of this move, but he has basically, I think, staked
himself on this because he--there was an issue called the
Goldstone report, which I think you are familiar with.
Mr. Sherman. You mean the one that Mr. Goldstone withdrew,
in effect?
Mr. Makovsky. Right.
Mr. Sherman. Yes.
Mr. Makovsky. The one he withdrew and retracted. But there
was a time that Abbas felt that this was not good for him,
because he was seen as a cheerleader, actually, behind the
scenes, urging Israel to attack Hamas. And he just wanted to
shelve this whole idea of an investigation in Geneva. The Arab
Ambassadors said, ``We are with you, we are with you,'' and
then he said he would withdraw it, and then he was attacked for
being a traitor by Khaled Mashaal, and Aljazeera played it
every hour, and his grandson said, ``I hear in school, they say
you are a traitor, grandpa.''
So I think his response is, ``I am never going to be out-
Goldstoned again, and no one is ever going to be able to do
this to me, that I am not seen as pressing the interests of the
Palestinians to the max.'' But I think in those circles, there
is a lot of questioning whether this is wise, for the reasons
we have been saying here.
Mr. Sherman. And I think that the Palestinian Authority is
probably more familiar with our foreign policy experts and our
State Department than our Congress and our people. And if they
really understood this democracy, they would recognize that the
possibility of a cutoff is far greater than anyone would know
from a foundation conference on this issue.
What would be Israel's likely reaction to an action taken
at the General Assembly that recognizes so-called Palestinian
statehood? Doctor?
Mr. Schanzer. Yes, Congressman Sherman. Having chatted with
a few people in Israel last week, the sort of nuclear option
that the Israelis would consider, should this UDI go through,
is something that the Israelis have done before, and that is to
withhold the value added tax, that is the VAT. And that is
about $100 million a month that contributes to roughly half of
the Palestinian budget each year.
And so the Israelis have indicated that, if the UDI
language is disagreeable enough to them, that they would
consider doing that while the U.S. Government considers its own
cutoff. There, you are looking at somewhere in the vicinity of
$1.5 billion, or close to three quarters of the total budget of
the PA. So you are looking at, perhaps, an imminent collapse.
Mr. Sherman. Well, if Aljazeera covered our town halls, the
Palestinians would understand just how popular aid to the
Palestinians is in this democracy. And I yield back.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mr. Sherman. Mr.
Duncan of South Carolina is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Duncan. We are just about finished, guys. Thank you for
your patience, and thank you for being here today. And I am
going to direct my question--is it Dr. Schanzer, is that how
you pronounce it? Okay.
First off, let me just say how saddened I was this weekend
to recall the scenes of the Palestinians celebrating after the
9/11 attacks. This is a group, the Palestinians, that we give a
tremendous amount of U.S. aid to annually. Along that line, I
am deeply concerned about the Palestinian Authority's relations
with the terrorist organization Hamas. And that is going to, I
guess, permeate everything that I think about with regard to
Palestinian statehood and U.S. taxpayer dollars going to assist
with the Palestinian Authority's mission going forward.
We were over in Israel back in August, and had an
opportunity during that time to travel over into the West Bank.
And I remember some good things that I saw going on in the West
Bank. In the city of Bethlehem as an example, we saw a USAID
sign over a construction project that was going on right there,
and so I do know that some good things are going on.
So don't think that I think all USAID projects and money we
give to the Palestinian Authority is being wrongly spent. But I
did see some past projects in the city of Jericho that Yasser
Arafat built, that I think my constituents would raise their
eyebrows on, and say, ``Was that a good use of U.S. taxpayer
dollars being spent, the aid that we give to the
Palestinians?''
And so while we were there, we met with the Prime Minister,
Fayyad, and I applauded him at that time for the transparency
efforts, bringing in a world-renowned CPA firm to audit the
money going to the Palestinian Authority. So I applauded him,
and I thanked him. But I am concerned that his lessening or
diminished role going forward is going to allow that
transparency to continue.
And then I read in your comments about the Palestine
Investment Fund, and some moneys that may be missing from that.
Continued oversight of USAID, or U.S. aid, period, to the PA
and the PIF, the possibility of an accounting audit of that
fund, I think we have got to be good stewards of taxpayer
dollars, and we have got to have an accounting, whether it is
U.N. money or whether it is money given directly to the
Palestinian Authority or projects through USAID.
What do you think the prospects are, going forward, that we
are going to have transparency, auditability, so that I as a
congressman can tell my constituents that the aid that we do
give to countries all over the world, particularly the PA, is
going to be accounted for?
Mr. Schanzer. Thank you for that question. And I think the
answer is, right now, given this hearing and the urgency, I
think, expressed by the American people, that is something that
we must demand if aid is to continue. And I think that is not a
foregone conclusion, but if aid is to continue, then we need to
have strictures on those funds, and we need to have a better
accounting of exactly how they are spent.
Some of the other things that I didn't include in my
testimony today is, there could be a bleed of PA and PLO funds.
So we could be seeing, for example, this unilateral declaration
of independence, and all the diplomacy that went behind it,
President Abbas may have been flying around and spending a
great deal of U.S. taxpayer funds in order to pursue this.
And so what we need to have is a greater accounting of
Abbas' office specifically, because I believe that he is the
problem. And if you can do that while continuing to work with
Fayyad, I think you have got a fair shot at getting better
oversight over the PA.
Mr. Duncan. Do you think that the lessening role of the
Prime Minister going forward is going to hamper those efforts?
And what do you see? Are they trying to keep him down, to keep
the transparency out?
Mr. Schanzer. Well, absolutely. I mean, his role has been
diminished. And I think you can sense some frustration with
some of the public statements that Fayyad has made. And again,
we need to do our best.
We saw a good bit of this during the George W. Bush
administration, where there was an attempt to really elevate
his stature. That has stopped, and we have relied almost
entirely on Abbas' efforts. And now we have seen that Abbas is
actively undermining U.S. interests. And so what we really need
to do is squeeze Abbas more than we have in the past.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you. Madam Chairman, I will yield back.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mr. Duncan. And
we have a wonderful wrap-up questioner, my good friend, Mr.
Eliot Engel from New York, ranking member on the Subcommittee
on the Western Hemisphere.
Mr. Engel. Well, thank you. Thank you very much, Madam
Chair. And thank you for those kind words. I listened to your
testimony, gentlemen, with interest, even before I came to the
room. And you all seem to--what struck me is that there is a
lot of agreement in what you are saying. And I agree with what
you are saying.
Let me first say that when the President of the United
States talks about settlements or '67 lines, it is not helpful
at all. I know he said '67 lines with swaps, but it is just, to
me, giving the Palestinians one more excuse, one more
precondition to refuse to talk to Israel. And I think that that
is the bottom line, here.
I think that the Palestinians going to the U.N., the way I
see it, sets back the cause of peace or a two-state solution
for years and years, maybe even decades. Because what
Palestinian leadership down the road can ever accept, in a
negotiated treaty with Israel, less than what the United
Nations has given them? And what Israeli Prime Minister--I
don't care left, right, center, or whatever--can ever accept
anything near what the U.N. is apparently going to say?
So to me, this dooms peace. Yesterday was the 18th
anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Principles on
the White House lawn. I was there when Rabin and Arafat were
there. My wife was 8 months pregnant with our youngest child. I
remember, it was very, very hot. And we all had some great
hope.
How the times have changed. It seems to me, and I would
like your comment on it, that by going to the U.N., the
Palestinians are in the process of tossing aside the Oslo
process, and the process underlying Oslo. Because Oslo was two
states working together and negotiating. Going to the U.N.
unilaterally, to me, tosses out Oslo.
And I would take it one step further, and I would like your
comments on that as well. I think it tosses out Resolution 242.
I said this to Bibi Netanyahu. I was in Israel last week, came
back. You know, land for peace. Land for negotiated peace. That
was 242. Well, this is not land for peace.
This is totally--it is land for nothing. Where is Israel's
peace in all of this? So I just think that it is part and
parcel, again, of the hypocrisy of the Palestinian Authority,
the hypocrisy of the United Nations, and the nonsense--and
quite frankly, I think that Congress and I, at least speaking
for myself, are fed up. I don't think I am prepared to send one
red cent more to the Palestinian Authority unless they prove to
me that they are serious about peace with Israel.
So I would like Mr. Abrams.
Mr. Abrams. I would just say, Congressman, that President
Abbas could address this if he wanted to. If he goes ahead with
this vote, the day after the vote he could say, ``Okay, I have
got my symbolic vote. Now, without preconditions, I want to sit
down and negotiate.'' I suspect, unfortunately, he won't do
that. And by refusing to do it, by insisting on the kind of
preconditions he has had for 2 years, he will, I am afraid, be
proving your worst fears are perhaps right.
Mr. Phillips. Yes, I share your concerns. I think one of
the problems we are facing now is the Israeli withdrawal from
Gaza opened up space for a terrorist organization to infest,
and that has become an even greater threat. I think Oslo
essentially boiled down to land for the promise of peace, and
that promise was never kept.
Mr. Engel. And you know what is interesting? The terrorist
organization that is there, down the line, even if there is a
rapprochement between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, it
is very interesting about how Israel is then supposed to
negotiate with an entity who denies its very right to exist.
I mean, people can criticize Israeli policy, but one thing
you can't criticize the Israelis for: They are not stupid. And
I think it is an absolute insult to ask any country to
negotiate with a terrorist entity that denies their very right
to exist, their whole reason for being is to destroy you, and
somehow or other Israel is supposed to negotiate peace with
them. It just makes me scratch my head. Yes?
Mr. Schanzer. Just one quick thought on the legal status of
Oslo. I mean, I know we spoke earlier about the question of
refugees and where that leaves them, the question of the PLO.
Certainly, Oslo has always been the framework for our aid here
in this country, and it was always based on bilateral
negotiations to end the conflict.
This is certainly circumventing that, and it is certainly a
very valid legal predicate for cutting aid, should Congress
wish to do so.
Mr. Engel. And by the way, we also--I also met with Fayyad,
who said to me that he thinks the Palestinians going to the
U.N. is the stupidest thing that they could possibly do.
Mr. Makovsky. We all agree that we all think it is negative
that they are going to the U.N. I keep referring--I don't know
if you were here for my testimony. I talked about the three
poison pills, components, why Israel will not react so benignly
to such a declaration.
But I also feel that an aid cutoff that will lead, in my
view, to Fayyad's resignation, is going to help Hamas. And so I
just think we have to be mindful that we don't help the people
we want to hurt, and we don't hurt the people we want to help.
Mr. Engel. I think they are exing Fayyad out anyway. I
don't think he is long for this world, and I think he thinks he
is not long for this government.
Mr. Makovsky. Well, I think--I disagree with the idea that
he is ineffective, or his role has been phased out. He has
built much more in the last 4 years than any of us could have
dreamed, and it is the success of the U.S. Congress, actually,
that has been supportive of him. And I just think we have to be
careful, not pulling the plug on him. But clearly, without him
we are in a different position.
Mr. Engel. He is the best they have, and that is why they
are exing him out, in my estimation. Thank you.
Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much to all of our
colleagues. And thank you for excellent presentations by our
panelists. The committee is now adjourned. Thank you.
[Whereupon, the committee was adjourned at 12:19 p.m.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
Material Submitted for the Hearing RecordNotice deg.
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
|
NEWSLETTER
|
|
Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list
|
|
|
