Israel, China and Membership in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)

...Because the United States seems to have lost the courage of its convictions, it is losing the confidence of its allies. Instead of trying to lobby Western countries (including Israel) not to join the AIIB, America should convince its allies that it is reliable and determined. When America displays moral relativism and weakness, there are consequences. China’s success with the AIIB is one of them, and Israel made the right decision by joining this new bank.

Dr. Emmanuel Navon..
i24 News..
24 April '15..

In October 2014 China established, together with other Asian countries, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The creation of the AIIB was a consequence of China’s exasperation at America’s refusal to reform the Bretton Woods institutions (i.e. the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, and the World Bank) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). For years, China has asked to reform the IMF and the World Bank so as to reflect the global clout of the Chinese economy. But the US Congress is adamant not to yield influence, within institutions dominated by America, to a country it perceives as a threat. As for the ADB, Japan has more voting rights there than China, even though China is Asia’s biggest economy. Since China owns the world’s largest foreign-exchange reserves, it can afford to build alternative institutions and to bypass the United States.

The creation of the AIIB clearly indicates that Asia’s balance of power is swinging to China’s advantage, for this is the first time that America is unable to thwart the creation of a rival Asian financial institution. After the Asian financial crisis of 1997, for example, the United States blocked the creation of a proposed Asian Monetary Fund (AMF). Nearly two decades later, China’s will has prevailed.

Despite its intensive lobbying, America has not been able to convince its allies to stay out of the AIIB. In March 2015, Britain, France, Germany and Italy announced their intention to join the AIIB as founding shareholders. In Asia, major US allies such as South Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, and Thailand have announced that they will join the AIIB despite Washington’s pressures. Even Japan and Australia, which had originally indicated that they would not become AIIB members, are likely to join soon. In the Middle East, Israel just added its name to the list of “rebels” by submitting its application to the AIIB.

Israel’s decision to join the AIIB is but another indication of a growing Israeli readiness to defy US President Barack Obama. The looming agreement between the Obama administration and Iran raises concerns in Israel about America’s reliability. While China will never replace America as Israel’s strategic ally, Israel is definitely taking some eggs out of the American basket.

Is President Mohamed Morsi Preparing for War?

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary/Contentions..
10 September '12..

When the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate won Egypt’s presidential elections, the comforting theory pronounced by diplomats and pundits worldwide was that power would force the Brotherhood to moderate its views: Once in power, its first priority would have to be rescuing Egypt’s shattered economy, and this would force it to avoid radical steps liable to antagonize Western donors.

That power isn’t moderating the Brotherhood is crystal clear already: Within two months of taking office, President Mohamed Morsi had already blatantly violated the cardinal principle of the peace treaty with Israel–the demilitarization of Sinai–by sending tanks into the area near the Israeli border without first obtaining Israel’s permission. But now it turns out the Brotherhood also doesn’t care about the economy. It’s only Morsi’s third month in office, and he is already negotiating to spend hundreds of millions of dollars he doesn’t have on something that won’t help the economy one whit: two state-of-the-art submarines from Germany.

The price tag for a new German submarine is about $510 million, meaning two would cost over $1 billion. Thus Morsi is planning to waste more than a fifth of the $4.8 billion loan he just requested from the International Monetary Fund not on helping Egypt’s economy–the ostensible purpose for which he sought the money–but on acquiring expensive military equipment for which Egypt has no conceivable need: It isn’t currently facing a maritime threat from any country or terrorist organization, nor is there reason to think it will in the future.

A Sad Tale Of High Finance: Israel And The Palestinians:

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
02 July '12..

Who is helping the Palestinians in the financial crisis the Palestinian Authority now faces? The United States and the nations of the European Union are the largest donors. Arab nations, including the very wealthy oil producers, have never been particularly generous. Israel, of course, is almost universally reviled for its “oppression” of Palestinians.

But now we learn that it was Israel who intervened with the IMF to seek a one billion dollar loan for the Palestinian Authority. The Daily Star newspaper of Beirut reports as follows:

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel sought a $1 billion IMF bridging loan for the Palestinian Authority earlier this year, but was turned down, an Israeli newspaper said Monday in a report confirmed to AFP by a senior Israeli official.

The truth behind why the Palestinian Arabs face "worst financial crisis" ...

Israel's role in it and what it could mean to the financing of Palestinian terrorism

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
02 July '12..





The background to the revealing piece of analysis by Elder of Ziyon that follows can be found in an al-Arabiya news report headlined "Palestinian authority faces ‘worst funds crisis since founding’"


EoZ's posting starts with the AFP version of essentially the same story:

The Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank is facing its “worst financial crisis” since its 1994 establishment, the Palestinian labor minister told AFP on Sunday. Ahmed Majdalani warned that a shortfall in the delivery of aid from Arab donor nations means the PA will be unable to pay employees their July salaries or pay off debts it owes to private businesses across the West Bank. “It is the worst financial crisis experienced by the Palestinian Authority since its founding,” he told AFP... The Palestinian Authority has frequently warned it faces a massive financial shortfall that threatens its ability to pay thousands of government employees on time, or even at all. A delay in salary payments would be particularly sensitive this month, as the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan begins in mid-July. Muslims often break their daily fast at large communal meals, stocking up ahead of time on plenty of food. Last July, Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad said the government would pay workers half-salaries because it faced a shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars. He attended a special meeting of the Arab League to urge Arab donor nations to make good on aid pledges.

EoZ says:

Fresnozionism - Cosigning for the devil

Fresnozionism.org..
02 July '12..






News item:

Israel sought a $1 billion IMF bridging loan for the Palestinian Authority earlier this year, but was turned down, an Israeli newspaper said Monday in a report confirmed to AFP by a senior Israeli official.

Haaretz reported that Israel’s central bank chief Stanley Fischer approached the International Monetary Fund for the money after discussing the Palestinian Authority’s financial crisis with Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad.

Absurd, isn’t it: Israel should take a loan to support an organization that officially considers Jews the offspring of apes and pigs and which venerates ‘heroes’ like Samir Kuntar and Dalal Mughrabi whose heroism consisted of murdering Jewish children?

I suppose I can understand the reasoning of the Israeli government: if the Palestinian Authority (PA) were to collapse, it would be replaced by Hamas or worse. Israel would lose whatever leverage it has over corrupt PA officials, and there would be an end to ‘security cooperation’ (PA people arresting or helping Israel to arrest Hamas terrorists). In the short term there would be more terrorism.

But I am not sure propping up the PA is a good long-term policy for Israel. The PLO-run PA does not differ from Hamas and more extreme elements in its ultimate goal: the elimination of Jewish sovereignty and the replacement of Israel with an Arab state. Its strategy differs — it endeavors to present a ‘moderate’ image to external observers — and perhaps it is marginally more corrupt than Hamas, but that is not to say that it is less likely to achieve its objective.

Gordon - The Myth of the Palestinian Authority’s Readiness for Statehood

Evelyn Gordon
Commentary/Contentions
05 July '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/07/05/the-myth-of-the-palestinian-authoritys-readiness-for-statehood/

One great mystery of the Palestinian Authority’s bid for recognition as a state in September is why reputable agencies like the World Bank and the IMF would discredit themselves by declaring the PA ready for statehood. That assertion was belied once again this weekend, when Prime Minister Salam Fayyad announced PA employees will get only half their salaries this month because international donors have thus far coughed up only $330 million of the $970 million they pledged, and foreign aid accounts for fully a quarter of the PA budget.

As Omri noted here last month, one requirement for being a functioning state rather than a failed one is being able to pay the bills, so it’s hard to claim the PA is ready for statehood when it depends on donations that frequently don’t materialize. And the Arab states responsible for the current shortfall are serial defaulters on their pledges to the PA.

Indeed, Palestinians themselves don’t consider their government(s) functional, which makes it even harder to see the PA as ready for statehood. Last month, for instance, Gaza residents blocked access to UNRWA summer camps to demand the UN agency rebuild their houses, which were destroyed during the second intifada. They didn’t address this demand to Gaza’s official Hamas-run government. Nor did they address it to the PA, though Hamas and the Fatah-led PA recently signed a unity deal whose stated purposes include reconstructing Gaza. Faced with two Palestinian governments that could credibly be deemed responsible, the demonstrators dismissed them both as useless and pinned their hopes on UNRWA.

Compounding the problem is the fact that continued donations from Western countries – which generally do honor their pledges, and hence constitute the mainstay of the PA’s budget – depend largely on the presence of one man: Fayyad. This is widely recognized by Palestinians: A poll last month found they preferred Fayyad as the unity government’s prime minister by a two-to-one margin over Hamas’ candidate; the pollster attributed this to the belief Fayyad’s presence would reduce or eliminate the danger of international sanctions against the unity government. PA President Mahmoud Abbas also recognizes this. Indeed, he warned Hamas this weekend that its opposition to Fayyad endangered the statehood bid, because “we are subject to very sensitive and fateful conditions.” Translation: To continue donating, the West needs a government with a non-corrupt, non-terrorist facade, and Fayyad is the only man who can provide it.

It’s hard to see how the PA can be deemed ready for statehood if its financial viability depends on the continued tenure of one individual. After all, Fayyad isn’t immortal; what happens if he dies? And it’s especially hard when one partner in the unity government is adamantly demanding his ouster.

In sum, we have a would-be state whose viability depends on unreliable donations plus a single individual whom half his government wants to oust, and whose own citizens don’t see as capable of addressing basic needs. In what conceivable sense does that constitute readiness for statehood?

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The IMF and the Terror State

Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary/Contentions
07 April '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/04/07/the-imf-and-the-terror-state/

The Palestinian Authority’s campaign to bypass negotiations and gain recognition for an independent state received an important boost yesterday from the International Monetary Fund. The IMF issued a report about the economy in the West Bank and Gaza, which will be formally presented an international donors conference for the Palestinians next week in Brussels.

The report is a resounding endorsement of the policies enacted by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. The PA is “now able to conduct the sound economic policies expected of a future well-functioning Palestinian state, given its solid track record in reforms and institution-building in the public finance and financial areas,” the IMF says. Fayyad’s efforts to transform the PA from the corrupt terror state created by Yasir Arafat after the Oslo Accords has been widely praised by both Americans and Israelis. But even those who vouch for the good intentions and skill of the American-educated technocrat would have to acknowledge that he has only just begun to change the mafia-style political culture of the PA.


The IMF report makes it clear that the West Bank, run by Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah—Fayyad was appointed by Fatah—is still mainly dependent on foreign aid. As for Gaza, which is governed by the Islamist terrorists of Hamas, it remains an economic basket case. But the report, which rightly predicates future growth on the emergence of vibrant Palestinian private-sector economy, says that is “unlikely to emerge while Israeli restrictions on access to natural resources and markets remain in place, and as long as investors are deterred by the increased cost of business associated with the closure regime [in Gaza].”

The real question, though, is not whether Israel can be pressured to lift its blockade of Gaza or what security measures it employs in the West Bank, but why those policies are still necessary.

The answer comes in the form of the Palestinian missile fire from Gaza that was once again launched at southern Israel today. This morning an Israeli school bus was hit by an anti-tank missile, leaving a 16-year-old critically injured and wounding the driver. Another rocket aimed at Israel was intercepted by an anti-missile battery. These were just the latest of over 100 rockets and mortar shells fired into Israel from Gaza in less than a week. Israeli President Shimon Peres called attention to the Gaza missile attacks today during a visit to New York. For all intents and purposes Gaza is an independent self-governing entity since Israel withdrew all troops and civilians from the strip in 2005. Since then it has been transformed, Peres said, into a “terror state.”

For all of the optimism heard from the IMF about the prospects of an independent Palestinian state, the brute fact is that one of its two prospective governing parties is carrying on a war to extinguish the Jewish state and to kill as many Jews as possible in the mean time. Even in the West Bank, which has made great strides under the leadership of Fayyad (support for whom remains tiny when compared to the belligerents of the main Palestinian movements), the terror threat against Israel is palpable. Should the current autonomy of the PA be expanded to complete independence without an Israeli security presence, there is ample reason to worry that either Hamas operatives or Fatah’s own terrorists will be able to replicate the terror state in Gaza.

Right now the Palestinians appear to be counting on a United Nations General Assembly vote to recognize Palestinian statehood in all of the territory of the former Palestine Mandate that was illegally occupied by Egypt and Jordan from 1949 to 1967. It is not clear how strongly this attempt to evade negotiations will be resisted by the United States and the diplomatic quartet, or whether they will oppose it all. No doubt reports like the one issued by the IMF will be cited as a reason to drop back and permit the Palestinians to have their own way.

A two-state solution to the conflict is the worst possible idea—except for all the others. There should be no doubt that any Palestinian state endorsed by the UN will not be a liberal democracy. It will not have the free economy that Fayyad and the IMF envision. It will be a two-headed terrorist monster whose political culture will remain dedicated to pursuing the decades-old Arab war on Israel. Unless the PA agrees to negotiate a peace that recognizes Israel as a Jewish state and guarantees its security, there should never be recognition of a Palestinian state.

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