As the American government seeks to end the four-decade Jewish settlement enterprise and foster a Palestinian state in the West Bank, the American Treasury helps sustain the settlements through tax breaks on donations to support them.
A New York Times examination of public records in the United States and Israel identified at least 40 American groups that have collected more than $200 million in tax-deductible gifts for Jewish settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem over the last decade. The money goes mostly to schools, synagogues, recreation centers and the like, legitimate expenditures under the tax law. But it has also paid for more legally questionable commodities: housing as well as guard dogs, bulletproof vests, rifle scopes and vehicles to secure outposts deep in occupied areas.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Simply a matter of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, or a policy of looking the other way? Looks like the latter:
Tax breaks for the donations remain largely unchallenged, and unexamined by the American government. The Internal Revenue Service declined to discuss donations for West Bank settlements. State Department officials would comment only generally, and on condition of anonymity.
"It’s a problem," a senior State Department official said, adding, "It’s unhelpful to the efforts that we’re trying to make."
Daniel C. Kurtzer, the United States ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005, called the issue politically delicate. "It drove us crazy," he said. But "it was a thing you didn’t talk about in polite company."
And besides the usual suspects like Irving "Colonization Tsar" Moskowitz and the owners of Haagen-Dazs ice cream, which I urge everyone to boycott, look who's now involved:
Take the Capital Athletic Foundation, run by the disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In its I.R.S. filings, the foundation noted donations totaling more than $140,000 to Kollel Ohel Tiferet, a religious study group in Israel, for "educational and athletic" purposes. In reality, a study group member was using the money to finance a paramilitary operation in the Beitar Illit settlement, according to documents in a Senate investigation of Mr. Abramoff, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to defrauding clients and bribing public officials.
Mr. Abramoff, documents show, had directed the settler, Shmuel Ben Zvi, an old high school friend, to use the study group as cover after his accountant complained that money for sniper equipment and a jeep "don’t look good" in terms of complying with the foundation’s tax-exempt status.
And ironically, as the long article points out, it's easier to fund west bank and East Jerusalem colonization projects under U.S. law than it is under Israeli law.
And a new report claims that the illegal settlements now effectively control 42% of the west bank:
According to the B’Tselem study, the Jewish settlements are in control of 42 percent of all the land in the West Bank, even though the built-up areas constitute only 1% of it.
The municipal boundaries of the settlements are on average 10 times larger than their built-up areas, the report says.
B’Tselem also reports that the settler population has tripled since 1993, from 110,000 to 301,200.
The organization accuses the government of violating the commitment it made to the US as part of former president George W. Bush’s 2003 road map. According to the plan, Israel promised to freeze all settlement activity.
"Israel was supposed to begin implementing its road map obligations in May 2003," the report says. "Since 2004, however, due to extensive construction in the settlements and the generous incentives Israel offers settlers, the settler population (not including those in east Jerusalem) grew by 28%, from 235,263 to 301,200 persons by the end of 2009.
http://www.jpost.com/...
With Israel planning on ending its swiss cheese "settlement freeze" announced earlier this year, http://www.jpost.com/... , the issue is, once again, squarely in President Obama's court. Will he again blink after making, what turned out to be empty threats of consequences for Israel's illegal settlement policy? Or will he actually follow through this time? One way to do so, if he does actually choose to not let Israel get away with violating the road map, as well as international law, would be to instruct Treasury to adopt regulations eliminating the colonization loophole. We'll see.