Sunday, December 4, 2011

Netanyahu Was Blackmailed By Germany To Release 'Palestinian' Funds

You may remember last week that Benyamin Netanyahu and the Israeli cabinet caved in to pressure and made the decision to resume the release of tax funds to the Hamas-allied 'Palestinian' Authority.The funds were suspended after the 'Palestinians' violated the Road Map and the Oslo Accords by making an attempt to bypass negotiations with Israel with an unsuccessful unilateral declaration of statehood at the UN and a successful bid to become a full member of UNESCO.

I along with many others criticized Netanyahu for folding, but I also cautioned my readers that such decisions don't happen in a vacuum and Israel and Netanyahu obtained a quid pro quo behind the scenes for acquiescing to this folly.

It turns out that Netanyahu didn't cave in at all - he was simply blackmailed.

http://www.jpost.com/HttpHandlers/ShowImage.ashx?ID=176942

According to the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, German Chancellor Angela Merkel threatened Prime Minister Netanyahu with cancelling a German agreement to deliver a sixth Dolphin-class submarine to Israel unless Israel resumed the transfer of funds to the Palestinian Authority.

Directly after Israel announced it would resume transferring the funds, a German government official announced that Germany would not only build and deliver the submarine to the Israeli navy, but pay up to one-third of the construction cost.

At the time of this writing, the sum the Germans have agreed to underwrite amounts to 135 million euros, the equivalent of $182.4 million dollars while the amount of money released to the 'Palestinian' Authority amounted to about $130 million.

In addition the new submarine, which like all of Israel dolphin subs can fire cruise missiles and support nuclear weapons enhances Israel's deterrent strike capability quite nicely, especially if things heat up with Iran.

So in retrospect, Netanyahu didn't cave. He made a rational choice and received a sixth submarine Israel needed at a 30% discount that amounted to substantially more than he was giving up to the 'Palestinians'. I would have made the same decision.

Now, why the Germans would do this is another story. Germany's ship building industry is in dire straits and they certainly needed the work. But on the other hand, Germany is one of Iran's biggest trading partners, and the new submarine might be used in hostilities that could affect that particular bottom line severely.

It may simply have been a case of political correctness run amuck and coalition politics with the German left needed by Merkel to sell the new eurozone preservation deal she's working on to the Bundestag.

( hat tip, Carl)

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