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For more on the significance of this meeting, and whether it will help smooth strained relations between Israel and the US, earlier we talked to Phyllis Bennis, a Middle East analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies.
She said that Netanyhu's scheduled speech at the US congress today is part efforts to mend ties. She also said that an increase in US military aid to Israeli could destabilize the Middle East region.
Phyllis Bennis, research fellow of Institute for Policy Studies said:"I think what we are seeing is an effort by Netanyahu to prove that his relations with the US is still bipartisan. This is clearly a political move on the part of Israeli embassy and the prime minister to convince the leaders of cap to invite him, something that they never would have done on ordinary circumstances and of course in the run-up of the US elections, where all these plays a role."
"But more important than all of these politics is the strategic changes that underfoot. This is very dangerous, because what we are seeing is that in the wake of the Iran-US agreement, which of course involved some other countries, like China as well, you have a situation where Israel claims that this is against us, we lost, so we want something to make up for it."
"And what they are now apparently asking for is which I just heard from the soundbite of Netanyahu has not been their position before. They are asking for five billion US dollars a year.What we have been anticipating is that the increase would go from the current US$3.1 billion a year to an outrageous $4.7 billion a year."
"Now we are hearing it's actually more than that. They are asking for $5 billion a year and they go straight into Israeli military. It's absolutely destabilized the region. It says nothing about Israeli nuclear arsenal, the one nuclear arsenal in the region does not belong to Iran."
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