Incoming House Foreign Relations Chair Blasts Obama For "Blank Check" To Palestinian Authority

From Jihad Watch:

Incoming House Foreign Relations chair blasts Obama for "blank check" to Palestinian Authority


"I think that's the wrong approach, when we're forcing the Israelis to make concessions and we're giving the Palestinians anything they want." Indeed. "Ros-Lehtinen: Obama wrong to give 'blank check' to PA," by Hilary Leila Krieger in the Jerusalem Post, December 17:



WASHINGTON - Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, incoming chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, blasted the Obama administration on Wednesday for giving the Palestinian Authority a "blank check" while pressuring Israel, signaling that a Republican-led House would complicate one of the major prongs of the White House's emerging strategy for moving forward with the peace process.

With direct talks between the two sides stalled, the administration announced last week it planned to intensify Palestinian state-building as a means of making progress on the ground toward a peace agreement for a two-state solution. The US has supplied hundreds of millions of dollars toward this end, with the expectation that it would now, if anything, be increasing its assistance.



But Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican who will become the chairwoman of the influential committee in January, criticized the current approach to US funding for the PA in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.



"It's a bailout for them which provides no incentives for them to reform. So they know they don't have to do a darn thing - with this administration they will get a blank check and they will always get helped out," she said of over $200 million in American funds the Palestinians received this past year alone.



"I think that's the wrong approach, when we're forcing the Israelis to make concessions and we're giving the Palestinians anything they want," she said....



Posted by Robert on December 17, 2010 12:54 PM