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**NOVEMBER 7, 2023**
On the Prospect website
Julie Su Wants 'Basic Dignity and Respect' for Retirement Savers
A decade-long odyssey to make investment advisers act in the best
interest of their clients culminates in a new proposed rule from the
Department of Labor. BY DAVID DAYEN
Varieties of Extermination
The slaughter of bison, Israelis, Gazans, and Native Americans BY
ROBERT KUTTNER
How Banks Keep You Trapped
Financial institutions are doing everything they can to prevent
consumers from shopping around for better banking options. A new federal
rule attempts to change that. BY FREDDY BREWSTER
Meyerson on TAP
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**** Israel Plans Not to Leave
Bibi says they'll stay in Gaza. Is that what the $14 billion aid
package will end up funding?
The unending flow of god-awful news from Israel-Palestine grew
predictably worse today with Bibi Netanyahu's announcement that Israel
would stay in Gaza after the current war for some period of time.
Staying, in this context, means controlling, or more precisely, seeking
to control.
This runs counter to the Biden administration's recommendations that
the Palestinian Authority, which has nominal control over part of the
West Bank, should be assigned to that task. The problem with that
recommendation is that the Palestinian Authority is widely and correctly
viewed as a de facto agent of the Israeli government in its efforts to
suppress expressions of Palestinian discontent in the territories over
which it has jurisdiction. The other problem is that Palestinians have
experienced decades of the PA's corruption, which means decades in
which governmental aid has often not reached its intended Palestinian
recipients. Moreover, just like Hamas, the PA has not held any elections
over the past 16 years.
The rickety state of the PA's legitimacy has long been one of Bibi's
and the Israeli right's chief policy goals. As the PA does not pursue
the exterminist policies of Hamas, it's long been a potential partner
for some kind of two-state solution-the very solution that's
anathema to Israeli settlers and Bibi himself. Under Bibi's long
tenure as prime minister, Israel has steadily uprooted and isolated
Palestinian West Bank communities and rejected any possible settlement
of the conflict that the PA could support. By contrast, until last
month, Bibi's government thought it had a deal of sorts with Hamas, in
which Hamas would keep things quiet in return for Israel's continued
opposition to any two-state resolution, which made Hamas's support for
a Nakba-in-reverse appear to some Palestinians as no less likely than a
two-state deal.
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Which leaves the U.S. where, exactly? It appears that President Biden
and Secretary of State Blinken have failed to persuade other Arab
states-Egypt and Saudi Arabia, most prominently-to take some kind of
administrative role in postwar Gaza. Among America's recent
presidents, Biden stands out as no fan of forever wars (see:
Afghanistan), and is obviously dismayed at the prospect of Israel's
return occupation of Gaza, which can only foment more Palestinian rage
even if Hamas is eliminated.
Some congressional Democrats who support the president's call for $14
billion in additional military aid to Israel have raised questions about
Israel's possible diversion of some of those weapons to West Bank
settlers who are waging their own war of sorts on West Bank
Palestinians. Now, it appears likely that a chunk of that aid will go to
the Israeli army's long-term reoccupation of Gaza, which runs counter
to the policies the U.S. has sought for Israel-Palestine. Indeed, by the
time an aid package passes Congress and is delivered to Israel, the
current conflagration will likely have ended and much of that aid will
go to the very occupation against which Biden has counseled Bibi.
So, does that aid even make sense to those Israelis and their
supporters-including congressional Democrats-who understand the need
for Israel to clear out of the West Bank and move decisively to a
two-state solution? I don't think it does.
~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter
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