[nasional_list] [ppiindia] Editorial: Funding for Palestine

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Saturday, 29, April, 2006 (01, Rabi` al-Thani, 1427)



      Editorial: Funding for Palestine
      29 April 2006
     
        
      A couple of months ago, after Hamas won the Palestinian general election 
and the US and the EU threatened to cut off aid because of their opposition to 
its policies, Hamas boldly predicted that it would find the money elsewhere. 
For a short while it looked as if it might actually happen. The Russians 
promised aid, so did Iran; Syria proposed an Arab fund; the Arab League said 
that Arab and Muslim governments could make up the difference. In the event, 
whatever funds may have been sent have amounted to almost nothing. The 
Palestinian state is now in precisely the crisis that President Mahmoud Abbas 
predicted. Some 165,000 Palestinian government-employees have not been paid 
salaries for weeks and have to beg and borrow to survive. 

      The knock-on effect is no less disastrous. Doctors, teachers, policemen 
and all the others who are on the government's payroll - the Palestinian 
Authority is the largest employer in the West Bank and Gaza - cannot pay their 
bills or anyone they employ, such as cleaners and the like. The economy is in 
dire straits. 

      Doubtless there will be many Arabs, Muslims and friends of the 
Palestinians incandescent with rage at the notion that the Americans and 
Europeans should be able to "blackmail" the Hamas government. But far more 
appalling is that the Palestinian Authority should have become so totally 
dependent on Western aid. That's asking for trouble - and trouble is what they 
have now that he who does not like the tune has stopped paying the piper. 

      The lesson that the Palestinians need to take from this disaster is that 
aid they take must have a much broader base. They cannot allow themselves to 
ever again slide into a state of neocolonial economic dependency on the US and 
EU. It is bad politics and it is bad economics. Not that they had much option. 
By default, Arabs and Muslim governments are also complicit in this disaster. 
Their insufficient giving is what has forced the Palestinians into near 
absolute dependence on Western aid. Moral support is all very well, but it does 
not pay salaries or feed mouths. 

      The absence of brotherly Arab help has already forced President Mahmoud 
Abbas - the only man doing anything serious about the crisis - to go, cap in 
hand, back to the Europeans for funds. His talks in Paris with President Chirac 
may have unlocked a door, but the outcome is far from satisfactory and is going 
to take too much time. The French president's proposal for the World Bank to 
take over responsibility for paying Palestinian salaries is a diminution of 
Palestinian sovereignty - in the same league as the idea that Jerusalem be 
internationalized. 

      The onus is on Arab and Muslim governments. They have to make some fairly 
instant decisions. There has to be much more aid to the Palestinian Authority. 
It has to be counted not in millions of dollars, but hundred of millions. It is 
needed now, not in a few months. There is no time for donor conferences and 
special committees. Palestinians, who have learned the funding lesson the hard 
way, will not easily forgive a lack of Arab and Muslim action at this desperate 
time.
     


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