Kerry: Sequestration will force cuts in Israel aid
U.S. aid to Israel will be cut next year if the sequester goes into effect again, Secretary of State John Kerry testified Wednesday. "Israel got a plus-up in the budget, I think to $3.1 billion total. But that is subject to sequester, as is everything, and we’re not able to undo that," Kerry testified before ...
U.S. aid to Israel will be cut next year if the sequester goes into effect again, Secretary of State John Kerry testified Wednesday.
"Israel got a plus-up in the budget, I think to $3.1 billion total. But that is subject to sequester, as is everything, and we’re not able to undo that," Kerry testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "So there will be a plus-up, but then there will be a reduction from the plus-up. It’s still a net plus-up, but there is a sequester that will apply to everything, including Jordan, Egypt, Israel."
Kerry’s math didn’t match the State Department’s fiscal 2014 budget request, released last week, which stated that the $3.1 billion requested for aid to Israel in fiscal 2014 is only $25 million more than was appropriated for the same account in fiscal 2012, before the sequester existed. A Congressional Research Service report from March 2012 states that the fiscal 2014 request is exactly the same as the fiscal 2013 request. How much aid to Israel would be cut due to the sequester is unclear.
The State Department’s fiscal 2014 budget request doesn’t account for the sequester because President Barack Obama included his own deficit reduction plan in the budget request, which is meant to avoid the need for the sequester. But if Congress doesn’t go along with the president’s plan, the sequester will kick in again next year and force cuts across the board at State.
"Sequester, folks, was not supposed to happen. That was the theory," said Kerry, who was on the supercommittee in 2011 that failed to achieve a bipartisan compromise on deficit reduction to avoid the sequester. "And we’re living with it, and so we have cuts that we don’t want. And that’s the absence of making the policy choice itself. So, yes, there will be cuts under sequester."
The State Department’s new budget request also includes $370 million for the West Bank and Gaza, which the State Department said "will help advance a negotiated, two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by working with the Palestinian Authority (PA) to build the institutions of a future Palestinian state and deliver services to the Palestinian people."
Kerry, who has traveled to the Middle East three times in his first two months as secretary, defended the aid the PA and asked Congress to give him a chance to "find out what is possible" with regards to restarting the Middle East peace process. He warned this might be the last chance for the Israelis and the Palestinians to reach a negotiated peace agreement.
"I’m not going to come here today and lay out to you a schedule or define the process, because we’re in the process of working that out with the critical parties. But in my meetings on both sides, I have found a seriousness of purpose, a commitment to explore how we actually get to a negotiation, and we all have some homework to do. We’re doing that homework," he said. "But I can guarantee you that I am committed to this because I believe the window for a two-state solution is shutting. I think we have some period of time, in a year to year-and-a-half to two years, or it’s over."
Kerry also lamented the ongoing confusion atop the PA, which included the resignation last week of PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Fayyad will stay on as a "caretaker" for a period and will remain involved in Palestinian affairs, Kerry said, but his departure creates confusion for everyone working on the peace process revival.
"Somebody here has got to tell me who’s going to take the place of either Salam Fayyad — and now that’s up for grabs — or Abu Mazen," Kerry said, referring to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose future is also unclear.
Neither Abbas nor Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is currently convinced that the other side is going to make the concessions necessary for peace, but a recent breakthrough on economic development in the West Bank is a positive sign, Kerry said. He was clear to say that the economic cooperation was progressing on a parallel track to the political cooperation, rather than being all part of one process.
"So everybody needs to kind of not react the normal sort of tit- for-tat, stereotypical way, give peace a chance by providing some opening here for the politics and the diplomacy to work," said Kerry. "That’s what both sides need to do. That’s what I believe both sides are prepared to do. And the proof will be in the pudding."
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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