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Israel Buys More U.S. F-16s as Palestinian Economy Plummets
JERUSALEM, Sept 7 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israel has signed a two billion-dollar contract with an American firm to buy 52 F-16I jets, the Israeli press reported Friday, as a new report issued by the U.N. shed light on the "disastrous" effect Israeli restrictions in the West Bank and Gaza have had on the Palestinian economy.
News agencies reported that the agreement between Israel and Lockheed Martin, signed Thursday, is an amendment to an earlier Israeli order for 50 jets with an option to purchase more, the
Jerusalem Post reported Friday.
The deal is for the same two-seat F-16I configuration as in the previous order, with deliveries expected between 2006 and 2009, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Most of the funding will come from the nearly two billion dollars in annual U.S. military aid to the country, the
Post said.
"Israel's sixth acquisition of F-16s demonstrates their continued confidence in the F-16I to satisfy their future defense needs," Lockheed Martin president Dain Hancock said.
Israel is believed to have the largest fleet of F-16s - one of the most advanced fighter-bombers in the world - outside of the U.S., with the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv reporting in 1995 there were 250 in Israel's aerial arsenal.
The deal comes a week after a U.S. government watchdog agency announced that it is investigating the sale of U.S.-made arms to Israel amid growing concern over Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian resistance activists, and its use of heavy weaponry.
According to the U.S. Arms Export Control Act, such weapons can only be used for "legitimate self-defense", the paper said.
There is growing unease in Washington over what Israel calls "targeted killings" the Israeli government's euphemism for assassination - of more than 60 Palestinians suspected of involvement in resistance activities.
After Israel's assassination of senior Palestinian leader Abu Ali Mustafa, using American-made Apache helicopter gunships, Washington said such tactics could only "inflame" the situation, reported
The Independent, a U.K. daily.
The U.S. has reportedly warned Israel that a report on its non-defensive use of American-provided arms may have to be sent to Congress as a precursor to some sort of freeze on sales.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher refused to detail the U.S.'s complaint, but said: "We have made clear our opposition to targeted killings. It's not a question of the weapons so much as it is a question of the event.
But "We do think that the use of heavy weaponry in populated areas runs a high risk of civilian casualties, and we have been opposed to it," he told ABCNEWS.
Burt Palestinian civilian suffering under the Occupation is not limited to direct, deadly attacks. According to a newly released U.N. report, total losses to the Palestinian economy, as a result of Israeli closures and an economic blockade, in the Territories could reach $2.5 billion.
U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Terje Larsen painted a bleak picture of the deteriorating conditions since the Palestinian Intifada (uprising) began in September 2000.
Direct income losses sustained during the first nine months of the crisis range from $1.8 billion to $2.5 billion, said Larsen.
While joblessness had been steadily declining between 1997 and September 2000, "the crisis has completely offset these gains with core unemployment reaching 26.9% at the end of the first quarter of 2001."
Unfavorable labor market conditions are engendering a sense of hopelessness, according to the report, which states that, "increasingly, Palestinian workers are giving up all attempts of even looking for work."
The fiscal revenue base of the Palestinian Authority is also in serious jeopardy. The report blames this trend in part on the fact that Israel has refused to hand over taxes collected on behalf of the Authority.
Even with international support, the Authority's budget deficit for 2001 is anticipated to amount to $371 million. "Without the fiscal support of the international community, the Palestinian Authority institutions would not have been financially sustainable," added the report.
The uprising is also taking a heavy toll on social services, with the Palestinian health care system "under severe strain from the increased burden of caring for thousands of wounded, especially those with debilitating injuries," the report said.
At the same time, closures have limited access to health care services and impeded the flow of supplies to hospitals.
Education is also hard-hit, with reports indicating that 190 schools have been temporarily closed, while 1,300 students from Gaza have been unable to reach their universities in the West Bank.
The World Bank predicts that by the end of 2001, 50% of the population will be living below the poverty line, news agencies reported.
According to the report, recovery will be difficult. "The rapid and sustained deterioration of the Palestinian economy suggests that recovery will take longer than after previous periods of economic recession even if the conflict is ended soon and mobility restrictions are lifted completely," it states.
The Israeli blockade has barred tens of thousands of Palestinian workers from commuting each day to jobs in Israel, though there has been an increase in the number of Palestinians entering Israel illegally from the West Bank, Larsen said.
Israel says the blockade is necessary to prevent attacks against Israelis, but the Palestinians call the measure collective punishment.
Meanwhile, Moscow reiterated its support for the Mitchell plan, which outlines steps towards a peace that would restore basic rights to Palestinians and move towards a two-state solution, when the Russian foreign minister told a visiting Palestinian official that occupied Arab territories should be returned.
Igor Ivanov told a visiting senior Palestinian Authority (PA) official, Mahmud Abbas, Friday that the peace process must include "the Palestinians' right to self-determination and the creation of its own state, as well as the return of occupied Arab territories."
The top Russian diplomat repeated Moscow's support for the peace plan drafted by former U.S. senator George Mitchell and stressed that Russia, a co-sponsor of the decade-old peace process, saw only a political solution to the conflict.
"This problem can be settled only in a political way", Ivanov said, quoted by ITAR-Tass news agency, adding that Russia is "deeply worried by the dramatic development of the events in the Middle East, in the first place in the Palestinian territories."
Russia "supports the Mitchell plan, [and] takes account of the initiatives put forward by Egypt and Jordan," he said.
"Such rights of the Palestinian people as the right to self-determination, the creation of its own state, as well as return of refugees should be implemented," he emphasized.
"For the sake of reaching these goals, Russia will act in a coordinated way with the second [Middle East peace process] cosponsor, the U.S., with European countries and the leading Arab states," Ivanov said, Itar Tass added.
Separately, Moscow announced that President Vladimir Putin's top Middle East envoy, Vladimir Vdovin, would leave for the region on Sunday to hold a new round of talks with both Palestinian and Israeli authorities.
Palestinian sources informed Russian news agencies earlier Friday that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat would shortly make another visit to Moscow, AFP added.
Ivanov's meeting with Abbas came one day after the completion of a three-day visit to Moscow by hardline Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Putin struck a cautious tone, though, during his meeting with Sharon, refusing to add his voice to widespread international condemnation of Israel's hardline policies in its clampdown on an the almost one-year Palestinian uprising in the region.
Meanwhile, tension was high Friday following another day of Palestinian bloodshed that cast a shadow over plans for a meeting between Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Arafat.
In the West Bank city of Nablus, more than 2,500 Palestinians turned out Friday for the funerals of Omar Subuh and Mustafa Alounbus, two Palestinian activists murdered Thursday by Israeli forces, AFP reported.
Israeli helicopter gunships on Thursday killed the two Palestinian activists, one a member of Arafat's Fatah movement and the other from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), whose leader was recently assassinated by Israel, AFP reported.
The Israeli occupation army confirmed the strike and said it had missed its target, Raad Mohammad Raaf al-Karami, a Fatah official in the West Bank town of Tulkarem, whom the Israelis blame for several attacks.
Palestinian sources said he managed to jump from the car in time. Israel had been seeking his assassination. Israeli helicopters shot three missiles at Karmai, 27, who was in the front passenger seat of a four-wheel-drive Nissan as it traveled near the Nur Shams refugee camp, on the outskirts of Tulkarem in the West Bank.
The first missile just missed the vehicle, prompting Karami and his driver to leap out. The second missile scored a direct hit, killing the two 20-year-old activists in the back: Subuh and Alounbus.
The smoking vehicle was reduced to charred and twisted metal. "While I was running away, they shot the third missile at me, but it hit beside me, and fragments hit my eye," said Karami, adding that he hid in a nearby car parts store until the helicopters left.
"This will not scare me, this will push me to take revenge," Karami said. "I'll keep resisting until the liberation of Palestine."
Karami said Israeli forces lured him to the area by opening fire in the direction of the refugee camp, anticipating that Karami and his fellow resistance activists would race to the scene in defense of the camp people.
Israel admitted it was after Karami: "Unfortunately, we did not achieve our main goal," said Gideon Meir, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official, news agencies reported.
Later on Thursday, an Israeli soldier was shot dead and a female comrade wounded on the Israeli side of the border near Tulkarem, in an operation claimed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, led by Karami.
In the funeral Friday, where the slain bodies wrapped in the Palestinian flag were carried through the streets of Tulkarem, the crowd fired shots in the air and chanted calls for revenge for the murders, witnesses said.
Their killing brings to 769 the number of dead since the start of the Intifada, including 590 Palestinians and 157 Israelis.
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