Obama Bypasses Congress, Allows Funding for Palestinian Authority

WASHINGTON, April 25 (UPI) — President Obama, citing the United States’ national security interests, Wednesday waived restrictions on funding for the Palestinian Authority.

In a memorandum sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Obama cited his authority under section 7040(b) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 2012 section 7040(a) of the Act, to provide appropriated funds to the Palestinian Authority.

The president directed Clinton to inform Congress of his action.

State Department officials last month expressed concern the department had been unable to provide full funding to the Palestinian Authority for institution-building projects as the United States seeks to rejuvenate Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., had questioned the Obama administration’s request for $147 million for the Palestinian Authority at a time when P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas has demanded preconditions for returning to the negotiations while also pushing a unilateral statehouse plan at the United Nations. She also expressed concern that $26.4 million had been requested for projects in Hamas-run Gaza.

“The administration also says we need to help ‘rebuild the Palestinian economy’ — this at a time when our economy is facing serious challenges and Americans are suffering,” Ros-Lehtinen said.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/04/26/Obama-frees-PA-funding

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Hillary’s ‘Toughest Sanctions’ on Iran Won’t Work

Secretary Hillary Clinton took to the air yesterday to boast of the “toughest sanctions” yet imposed by the international community on Iran. Recall, this administration came to office three years ago offering olive branches to the mullahs who rule Iran. President Obama even sent Persian New Year greetings to the same men who held our hostages for 444 days in Tehran in 1979-81. Our American diplomats and Marines were subjected to daily beatings and threats of execution.

These clerics were the ones who invented suicide bombing, starting with the killing of 241 U.S. Marines and Navy corpsmen in Beirut in 1983. If we think they have somehow moderated, how can we explain their latest plot to bomb a Georgetown restaurant to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. With him, possibly, hundreds of Americans could have died.

Secretary Clinton wants to give diplomacy time to work. But three years have already been wasted in merry-go-round diplomacy. These are three years the locusts have eaten. All the while, the mullahs have been building, hiding, advancing their nuclear weapons program.

While some elements of their regime talk about possibly allowing UN inspectors back in, other parts of the same regime say Iran will never give up its nuclear research. Defiantly, they say that research is for peaceful purposes. This, from a regime whose mouthpiece, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, publicly calls Israel “a two-bomb country.” He openly says he can foresee a world without Israel—and without the U.S.

Winston Churchill was surely right that “jaw jaw is better than war war.” Nobody wants a war with Iran. But the Iranian leaders have been at war with us for thirty years. They arm jihadists who have killed American soldiers in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

This administration frittered away its best chance of avoiding war with Iran when it held back from giving support to the pro-democracy demonstrators. These unarmed protesters filled the streets of Tehran after the patently rigged June 2009 elections. Then, we might have seen real regime change in Iran and with it the best hope of a peaceful resolution of the nuclear standoff.

This administration, so closely tied to MoveOn.org, quickly moved on. The blood had hardly dried in the streets of Tehran when the Obama administration was at the UN pushing for another round of sanctions.

Russia and China are not cooperating. Neither is Venezuela. This is the key to the crisis.

authored by: Ken Blackwell and co written by Bob Morrison

http://townhall.com/columnists/kenblackwell/2012/03/10/hillarys_toughest_sanctions_on_iran_wont_work

Clinton pledges support for any Israeli government

TheSecretary of State lays a wreath next to the Eternal Flame during a ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem

JERUSALEM, March 3 (Xinhua) — Visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday said that the U.S. administration will stand by any Israeli government that comes out of the ongoing cabinet-making process.

She made the pledge during a meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres in the morning, when she also stressed that the U.S. government is determined to push forward the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and realize a two-state solution.

“The government that will be formed in Israel will be committed to the peace process and to prior agreements,” responded Peres, who tasked ten days ago right-wing leader Benjamin Netanyahu with forming a new government.

Netanyahu recently stressed his intention to advance the peace process, but stopped short of committing himself to the two-state guideline. He also said the he would allow Jewish settlements in the West Bank to expand.

The former prime minister insisted in the past that peace efforts should be concentrated on developing the Palestinian economy, a stance that has been rejected outright by the Palestinians and is likely to put him on a collision course with the United States, Israel’s staunch ally.

The top U.S. diplomat will meet with Netanyahu later in the day. Local daily The Jerusalem Post quoted Israeli officials as saying that both would likely be in a “listening mode” and that no “fireworks” around either the two-state issue or construction in the settlements are expected.

Clinton is also scheduled to meet with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday, before she goes to the West Bank on Wednesday for meetings with Palestinian officials.