Dennis Ross says in op-ed that as Obama admin. and Hillary Clinton advisor he urged Israel to allow more building materials into Gaza including cement used for Hamas terror tunnels

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(parag 8), 8/8/14: "At times, I argued with Israeli leaders and security officials, telling them they needed to allow more construction materials, including cement, into Gaza so that housing, schools and basic infrastructure could be built." Israel said Hamas would misuse it, "and they were right."

8/17/14, "How Hillary Clinton Enabled Hamas’ Construction of Terror Tunnels," Algemeiner, opinion, Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn

"Much has been said and written about the terror tunnels that Hamas built in Gaza. But too little has been said about who it was that put the cement into Hamas' hands, thus making the construction of the tunnels possible in the first place. Until now.

In a bombshell revelation, Dennis Ross, the senior Mideast policy adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from 2009 to 2011, has admitted that it was he who was assigned the task of pressuring Israel to ease up on its military blockade of Gaza.
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“I argued with Israeli leaders and security officials, telling them they needed to allow more construction materials, including cement, into Gaza so that housing, schools and basic infrastructure could be built,” Ross revealed in the Washington Post on August 10. “They countered that Hamas would misuse it, and they were right.”

Not that Hillary’s State Department had been acting independently of the White House on the issue of cement. For example, Vice President Joe Biden told interviewer Charlie Rose on Bloomberg TV in 2010: “We have put as much pressure and as much cajoling on Israel as we can to allow them to get building materials” and other forbidden items into Gaza.

But now that Mrs. Clinton is attempting to distance herself from the president’s debacles in foreign affairs, Ross’ admission shows that it was she who sent her personal envoy to push for a policy that ultimately enabled Hamas to build the terror tunnels.

Israeli officials have long been justifiably concerned about the danger of dual-use items such as cement. On the one hand, cement could be used for innocent purposes such as home construction, in the hands of a peace-seeking, trustworthy government. But in the hands of untrustworthy elements – such as the Hamas terrorist regime that rules Gaza – it could also be used for other purposes. Such as terror tunnels.

President Obama recently remarked, in his much-discussed interview with Thomas Friedman of the New York Times: “Because Israel is so capable militarily, I don’t worry about Israel’s survival.” Secretary Clinton evidently shared that dismissive attitude when she sent Ross on his mission to put cement into Hamas’ hands.

It seems Obama and Clinton forgot that Israel is the only country in the world that is threatened with annihilation by a nearby regime rushing to build nuclear weapons. Israel is the only country in the world that, in the space of just 65 years, has been forced to fight four major defensive wars and five smaller ones in order to survive. Israel is the only country in the world whose next-door neighbors have built dozens of tunnels into Israel to perpetrate massacres of civilians.

Today, at least thirty-two terror tunnels later, we know that Clinton, Obama and Ross have been wrong, while Israel is right.

Hamas spent between $1 million and $10 million to build each of those tunnels, using as many as 350 truckloads of cement and other supplies per tunnel, according a report in to the Wall Street Journal, quoting Israeli military officials.

And it is “likely that there are additional tunnels” that the Israelis have yet to uncover, according to the Journal’s report.

Instead of lethal purposes, the materials used for each tunnel could have built 86 homes, or 19 medical clinics, or seven mosques, or six schools. But Hamas had other priorities.

And Secretary Clinton consciously turned a blind eye. Just as she turned a blind eye to other aggressive and anti-peace behavior by the Palestinians, such as the Palestinian Authority’s sheltering of known terrorists, its payments to imprisoned terrorists, the anti-Israel and anti-America propaganda that fills the PA-controlled media, and the anti-Semitic hatred in the textbooks used in the PA’s schools.

What are the real-life consequences of ignoring such Palestinian actions? An entire generation of young Palestinians have grown up incited to hatred of Jews and Israel, and glorifying terrorists as heroes and martyrs.

What are the real-life consequences of Mrs. Clinton putting cement into Hamas’ hands? The tunnels into Israel were used to carry out the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit and numerous other attacks in which Israelis were murdered. They were being prepared to carry out a mass coordinated attack on Israeli towns and kibbutzim this year on Rosh Hashanah.

Imagine a scenario in which a surgeon decided that she wanted to employ a controversial and risky technique. She was warned repeatedly that it was too dangerous, but proceeded anyway and in the process nearly killed the patient. Surely that would be deemed malpractice. The surgeon probably would be barred from ever again practicing medicine.

Secretary of Stated Hillary Clinton committed diplomatic malpractice. Her own top aide has revealed that it was she who put the cement into Hamas’ hands, even after Israel warned repeatedly that doing so was too dangerous. And Israel continues to suffer the consequences.
 
Another lesson of the Gaza war: Even as we condemn Hamas’s diversion of cement from the construction of housing to the construction of terror tunnels, let us not forget that it was Hillary Clinton who pushed through the policy that made those tunnels possible."

"Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn are members of the board of the Religious Zionists of America."

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Comment: Washington Post 8/8/14 article by Dennis Ross cited above doesn't mention Mrs. Clinton in Mr. Ross's credentials, only Bill Clinton and Mr. Obama:

"Dennis Ross, counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, served as President Bill Clinton’s Middle East negotiator and was a special assistant to President Obama from 2009 to 2011."  

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This Dennis Ross Washington Institute bio says Ross worked for Pres. Obama for two years and Mrs. Clinton for one year. The one year working for Mrs. Clinton must have overlapped with one of the two years he worked for Obama:

"Prior to returning to the Institute in 2011, he served two years as special assistant to President Obama and National Security Council senior director for the Central Region, and a year as special advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton."... 
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Another Dennis Ross bio doesn't mention Mrs. Clinton, says he worked at the State Dept. for 6 months at that time before moving to Obama's NSC. It's more interesting that Ross by this time was already a member of the Permanent Political Class, having served in the

Carter, 
Reagan, 
GHW Bush, and
Bill Clinton

administrations. If Hillary Clinton and Obama liked Ross's approach, so did everyone else in the Beltway going back to Jimmy Carter, the one possible exception being GW Bush:

If Dennis Ross's life reveals anything, it's that the two US political parties are in business with each other. They should be dealt with accordingly:

"Ross joined Obama's administration in January 2009 as a senior expert in Iranian policy at the State Department. His move to the National Security Council came six months later.

In his first effort to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian peace, Obama asked Israel to put a moratorium on building settlements in Palestinian-claimed areas. That request angered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who refused. The incident set the stage for cold relations between Obama and Netanyahu.

According The New York Times, Ross attempted to secure Natanyahu's acceptance of the moratorium with an incentive package that included 20 jet fighters, security guarantees, and an American promise to oppose any United Nations proposals for a Palestinian state. The offer did not sway Netanyahu, and Obama backed down.

Israeli supporters see Ross as a balance against a perceived Palestinian bias in the Obama administration.

Ross moderated Obama's May 19, 2011, call for an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan based on borders prior to 1967's Six-Day War. Any plan would include "mutually agreed [land] swaps" that altered those lines.

New York Times writers Helene Cooper and Mark Landler reported that former Middle East special envoy George Mitchell, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and other of Obama's advisors had pressed for a more comprehensive U.S. plan -- one that set definite borders and decided the fate of Palestinian refugees.

Ross argued against such a plan, saying the United States should not look like it was breaking with Israel. While many of Obama's opponents said his speech sounded like a betrayal of Israel, its call for action was apparently much more modest than expected."...

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8/8/14, "Hamas could have chosen peace. Instead, it made Gaza suffer." Washington Post op-ed, Dennis Ross

(parag 8): "At times, I argued with Israeli leaders and security officials, telling them they needed to allow more construction materials, including cement, into Gaza so that housing, schools and basic infrastructure could be built. They countered that Hamas would misuse it, and they were right. Developing Gaza — fostering a future for its people and protecting them — was not Hamas’s goal.

So long as Israel exists, Hamas will seek to fight it. It was not Israel’s opposition to the reconciliation agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) that led to this latest round of warfare. Rather, it was Hamas’s political isolation and increasingly desperate financial situation. The group was broke after Egypt closed the smuggling tunnels into Gaza, Iran cut off funding because of Hamas’s opposition to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, and Qatar was unable to send money through the Rafah border crossing, which Egypt controls."...

"Dennis Ross, counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, served as President Bill Clinton’s Middle East negotiator and was a special assistant to President Obama from 2009 to 2011."

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