PA receives $150 million US government aid package 
Ma’an News Agency - The Palestinian Authority (PA) said on Wednesday it received an additional US $150 million grant from the US State Department in March, according to Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. more

 Should the U.S. End Aid to Israel? Funding Our Decline 
Alison Weir, CounterPunch - On April 1st I participated in a debate in San Francisco that raised the question of US aid to Israel. It was highly appropriate that this debate was held two weeks before tax day, since in Israel's sixty years of existence, it has received more US tax money than any other nation on earth. more

 What Our Taxes to Israel are Funding 
Alison Weir, Greenwich Citizen - Over a month after my talks at the Greenwich Library, I find that Israel loyalists are still publishing astonishingly inaccurate tirades about me in local newspapers. While the name-calling is unfortunate, it is excellent that discussion of the profoundly important topic of Israel-Palestine is continuing. more

 The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: $3 Trillion 
Thomas R. Stauffer, WRMEA - Conflicts in the Middle East have been very costly to the U.S., as well as to the rest of the world. An estimate of the total cost to the U.S. alone of instability and conflict in the region—which emanates from the core, Israeli-Palestinian conflict—amounts to close to $3 trillion, measured in 2002 dollars. This is an amount almost four times greater than the cost of the Vietnam war, also reckoned in 2002 dollars. more

  A Conservative Estimate of Total Direct U.S. Aid to Israel: $108 Billion 
Shirl McArthur, WRMEA - Because of the uncertainties and ambiguities associated with U.S. aid to Israel, arriving at a precise figure for total direct U.S. aid to Israel probably is not possible. Parts of it are buried in the budgets of other government agencies—mostly the Defense Department (DOD—or in a form not easily quantifiable—such as the early disbursement of aid, allowing Israel a direct gain and the U.S. Treasury a direct loss of interest on the unspent money. Given these caveats, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) conservatively estimates cumulative total direct U.S. aid to Israel at $107.961 billion. more

 U.S. Aid to Palestinians Vital to Repair Effects of U.S. Aid to Israel 
Delinda C. Hanley in WRMEA - American taxpayers may be unaware that their hard-earned dollars are playing a highly visible role in the Arab-Israeli conflict. But graffiti painted on Israel’s “annexation wall” clearly spells it out: “Apartheid Wall Paid for With U.S. Tax Dollars.” U.S. aid to Israel also has been used to construct checkpoints and commercial crossings that have strangled the Palestinian economy. Israel closed many of these crossings at the height of the winter export season for fruits and vegetables. As a result, farmers in Gaza alone lost $20 million when tomatoes, flowers, strawberries and other crops rotted in trucks. In 2003-2005, before Israeli settlers withdrew from Gaza, soldiers bulldozed orchards and destroyed the region’s $27 million-a-year citrus industry. more

 Cash crisis ‘risks Palestinian collapse’ 
Richard Galpin in BBC - Essential services could collapse in the Palestinian territories if the international community carries out its threat to stop financial help once the militant Islamic group Hamas forms a new government, a Palestinian minister has told the BBC. more

 Economist tallies swelling cost of Israel to US 
David R. Fransic in the Christian Science Monitor - Since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. If divided by today’s population, that is more than $5,700 per person. more

 US, Israel resume talks on $1.2b special aid package 
Ran Dagoni in Globes - The US initiated the present resumption in the talks. US foreign aid for 2006 includes $2.52 billion for Israel. more

 Commentary: Slap in the Face 
Council for the National Interest - The complete details of the US aid package to Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority show that Congress is giving only $139.5 million to the Palestinian Authority and not the full $200 million requested by President Bush. And it's not really going to the Palestinian Authority itself, but rather to USAID approved non-governmental organizations, since Congress is loath to deal with the Palestinian Authority. more

 Restrictions Imposed On Aid to Palestinians 
Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post - In the emergency spending bill that lawmakers completed late Tuesday, the White House had sought $200 million “to support Palestinian political, economic, and security reforms,” as the president said in his February State of the Union address. But the fine print of the document gives $50 million of that money directly to Israel to build terminals for people and goods at checkpoints surrounding Palestinian areas. Another $2 million for Palestinian health care will be provided to Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, while the allocation of the rest of the money is tightly prescribed. more

 House Sets Limits on Palestinian Aid As DeLay Defies Calls of Bush, Rice 
Ori Nir in The Forward - Defying the wishes of the Bush administration, Congress approved a foreign-aid package this week forbidding any direct assistance to the Palestinian Authority and, in a rare snub, denying the president the authority to waive restrictions in the interest of national security. more

  Israel Requesting American Assistance in Financing New Checkpoints 

 The Cost of Israel to U.S. Taxpayers 
Richard Curtiss in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - In fiscal 1997 alone, Israel received from a variety of other U.S. federal budgets at least $525.8 million above and beyond its $3 billion from the foreign aid budget, and yet another $2 billion in federal loan guarantees. more

 Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush’s 2005 Budget 
Viewed through the proposed budget for 2005, President Bush has totally adopted the state line of Israel on almost every account. more

 On Middle East Policy, a Major Influence 
David Shipler in the New York Times - After several decades of growth in size and sophistication, the leading pro-Israel lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has become a major force in shaping United States policy in the Middle East. more

 U.S. Aid to Israel Subsidizes a Potent Weapons Exporter 
Jim Krane (AP) - At an arms trade fair in Paris this week, Israel showed the world’s military shoppers fruits of its high-tech arms industry, including its Merkava tank, unmanned spy planes and the planet’s most sophisticated missile defense system. more

 A Costly Friendship 
Patrick Seale in The Nation - Much of the talk in Europe these days is about how the United States and Britain were conned into going to war against Iraq, or perhaps how they conned the rest of us into believing that they had good reasons for doing so. It is now widely suspected that the war was a fraud, but who perpetuated the fraud and on whom? Everyone agrees that Saddam Hussein was a monster, but the military invasion to depose him is seen by many, and certainly on this side of the Atlantic, as illegitimate and unprovoked, and a blatant violation of the UN Charter, setting an unfortunate precedent in international relations. Henceforth, in the jungle, only might is right. more