The Wall Street Journal late Wednesday criticized the Obama administration
for agreeing to fund the recently announced Palestinian unity
government - agreed to by the rival Fatah and Hamas factions, and
unveiled earlier this week - with the outlet pointing out that the new
cabinet's refusal to dismantle Hamas's military infrastructure was
difficult to square with White House assurances that Palestinian
Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas is living up to past treaties
signed with Israel. Hamas has at least 10,000 fighters and maintains an arsenal of thousands of missiles and rockets, all of which are explicitly prohibited [PDF] by the 1995 Oslo II Accords. The Journal
noted that the subsequent 1989 Wye Memorandum went even further,
obligating the PA to "establish and vigorously and continuously
implement a systematic program for the collection and appropriate
handling of" illegal weapons in areas under its jurisdiction. The unity
pact between Fatah and Hamas forgoes any efforts to take control of
Hamas's illegal forces and weapons, potentially running afoul of blackletter U.S. legislation conditioning American assistance on the PA fulfilling previously signed agreements. Top administration officials have been publicly saying
that they intend to watch the new government "very closely... to
absolutely ensure that it upholds each of those things it has talked
about" and privately complaining
that the Israelis are being hypocritical because Jerusalem is
continuing to cooperate with Palestinian security forces. It is not
clear how either of those responses could address what seems to be a
straightforward violation of multiple core commitments, any and all of
which the PA is treaty-bound to implement lest it risk losing U.S. aid.
Al-Monitor late Wednesday rounded up
announcements made earlier in the day by the leaders of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in
which Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) revealed
that they would soon be holding a series of hearings to evaluate Iran's
compliance with its nuclear obligations, a few days after the Washington
Free Beacon broke the news
that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was
potentially gearing up to back legislation aimed at increasing U.S.
leverage going into upcoming talks with Iran. The currently
stalled Kirk-Menendez bill would impose sanctions against the Islamic
republic should it cheat on its obligations during talks or, at the end
of those talks, refuse to put its nuclear program verifiably beyond use
for weaponization. Both the Free Beacon and Al-Monitor contextualized
their stories amid what the latter outlet described as "growing signs
that lawmakers are fast running out of patience." Analysis has emerged
in recent weeks that Iran is now mathematically certain
to have busted through the caps on energy exports set by the interim
Joint Plan of Action (JPA), which had eroded the sanctions regime,
despite months of promises and ongoing declarations
from administration officials insisting that violations of the
remaining sanctions would not be tolerated. Reuters on Wednesday conveyed leaks
indicating that the P5+1 global powers and Iran were unlikely to
conclude negotiations by the end of the JPA's six-month negotiation
period. The wire noted that "President Barack Obama would need to secure
Congress' consent at a time of fraught relations between the
administration and lawmakers," though nonetheless "to avoid an open
conflict with Congress, Obama would want U.S. lawmakers' approval to
extend that sanctions relief." A somewhat strange Dow Jones report
appeared Wednesday afternoon implying that Iran and the U.S. had reached some kind of extension agreement. It is not clear that the report was entirely accurate.
State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf was pressed at Wednesday's press briefing over reports - published a day earlier
by Al-Monitor's insidery Congress Pulse - that the Obama administration
has continued to delay the shipment of 10 Apache helicopters to Egypt
despite having announced in April that it would release the aircraft,
which Cairo regularly dispatches in conducting anti-terror campaigns in the Sinai Peninsula.
The Egyptians had in fact already paid for the helicopters in 2009
specifically in the context of an agreement aimed at providing the army
with resources for fighting militants in the Sinai. Al-Monitor had noted
that the delays risked "angering newly elected President Abdel Fattah
[el-Sisi]," and Harf was asked on Wednesday about the contrast between
the delay, on the one hand, and White House statements expressing
appreciation for Washington's "strategic relation" with Egypt, on the
other. Harf replied that she didn't "know the details on that" but would
be "happy to check." The controversy over the Apaches specifically -
and over a partial freeze in American security assistance to Egypt more
generally - has been ongoing since the Obama administration took the
decision to withhold some aid last October. The decision came a few months after
Sisi, in a rare public interview, accused Americans of having "turned
[their] back on the Egyptians... [who] won't forget that." It was met
with withering criticism from domestic analysts, U.S. lawmakers, and Washington's traditional Arab and Israeli allies. Sisi's recent landslide election victory was broadly seen
as an opportunity to refresh U.S.-Egyptian ties. Al-Monitor's Wednesday
report conveyed renewed frustration from the Egyptians. One official
had told reporters "what we have been trying to say for the past couple
of months or more, is that there is a dire need for the Apaches for the
operation in the Sinai... [e]verybody in the region is saying it. The
Israelis, the Emiratis, the Saudis.
The Jerusalem Post on Monday conveyed reports
from Lebanese media outlets describing a series of lengthy meetings
recently held between top Hezbollah and Hamas figures, the latest in
what has become a steady stream of indicators that the Sunni terror
group may be returning to the Iranian orbit after a period of
estrangement due to the Syrian conflict. Hamas efforts aimed at achieving reconciliation with Hezbollah and Iran emerged months ago,
amid increasingly desperate efforts by the Palestinian group to cope
with ongoing Egyptian campaigns designed to isolate its Gaza Strip
stronghold. Some observers had expressed hopes that a recently announced
unity pact between the rival Fatah and Hamas factions would check the
latter's drift toward Iran by providing it with diplomatic and financial
alternatives. That analysis has not proven particularly robust. Hamas
does indeed seem to have been given a lifeline by the deal, halting what had been a year-long downward spiral, but meetings with Hezbollah and Iranian officials have if anything picked up pace. At least one of the meetings in Lebanon had included Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah. The end of May saw Iranian and Hamas leaders meeting publicly for the first time in three years. Meanwhile Jerusalem Post national security reporter Yaakov Lappin on Tuesday quoted Israeli security sources
revealing that Hamas has substantially bolstered its indigenous weapons
production programs, and that it "creates its own weapons, and is
responsible for most of its own training." The group is widely thought
to have medium-range rockets capable of putting roughly 70 percent of
Israel's civilians in range.
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