Humanitarian Aid or Blind Capitulation?
Yes, it's truly a dreadful situation and one which deserves as swift a solution as possible. The Palestinian population deserves better - any population does - than the current situation which sees it deprived of sufficient food, health care, safety of persons, meaningful employment; in short, hope for the direct improvement of their misfortunes let alone that of their future.Who exactly is it that has placed them in this dire condition? Casting memory back to the most recent election for representation in the Palestinian Authority, one dimly recalls an unheard-of victorymost European capitals as a terrorist organization.
Which means, of course, this was a deliberate choice by a significant number of Palestinians, to bring Hamas into political dominance of the governance of the Palestinian people, to represent them on the world stage and at home. That the fall-out of this ill-fated decision now rests heavily upon the population is hardly surprising, but they remain, along with their Hamas representatives, defiant. So why, now, is the world rushing to rescue Palestinians from themselves?
It was only yesterday that PA prime minister Ismail Haniye of Hamas once again promised that Hamas would never see its way clear to officially recognizing Israel's right to exist as a nation, despite that the quartet of Nations (US, EU, UN, Russia) insist that financial support will be withheld until Hamas renounces violence, upholds the former peace agreements between Israel and the former PA administration and ceases its declaration of intent to drive Israel from the Middle East.
The Palestinian Authority, under this Hamas government has lost billions of dollars because of the international funds cut-off. Still, the UN has declared an emergency (as such it indeed is) requiring funding in the astronomical sum of $650M for cash assistance, food, health and education and job creation - all badly needed by the Palestinian population at large. The PA has been unable to pay its 160,000 government workers whose salaries support a million Palestinians, despite millions in pledges from some Arab League members.
The EU under its own recognizance has privately funded thousands of Palestinians on a temporary basis. Israel has contributed aid to Palestinian families through the provision of expert medical treatment in pediatric care. Approximately a thousand Palestinians also receive medical treatment in Israel each month. In addition to which, despite the problems with terrorist insurgents in the Gaza strip, shipments of food, medicine and humanitarian aid have been permitted to pass through border crossings.
These stop-gap measures are clearly that, and in and of themselves do nothing to solve the larger problem. Humanitarian gestures are no substitute for a workable and mutually-agreed-upon political solution. By turning the focus on the plight of the Palestinian people - that same people who do have the option of declaring their current political situation unworkable and that they support scrapping it - the UN is falling into the Hamas-laid trap of intransigence meriting reward.
The original goal of the Quartet was clearly stated: that Hamas must recognize Israel's permanence in the Middle East, must accept that Israel and a new state for the Palestinian population can and should live side by side in peace; above all, Hamas must agree to disarm and become completely socially political not martially as is now the case.
This situation, inimical to the Palestinian peoples' well-being and intolerable to both parties' search for acceptable solutions, must be met with resolve and commitment, both of which appear to be melting away under the humanitarian stresses which the Palestinians have brought upon themselves.
posted by Pieface @ Friday, December 08, 2006
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