There's the Pain; Where's the Gain?
The United Nations is now asking donor countries to contribute a record $450M(U.S.) in aid to the economy-ravished Palestinians. They're in dire straits as a direct result of their successful democratic bid to elect a majority Hamas legislature, one whose prime mandate is to destroy the State of Israel. The result of which is that international economic sanctions on the Hamas-led PA has left the population bereft of their usual infusions of financial help.Poverty and unemployment, always on the high end, have exploded throughout Gaza and the West Bank. The health and education systems have been severely eroded, and the government has been incapable, as a result of withheld funds, of paying salaries to the 165,000 Palestinian workers who make up the backbone of the economy. Get that? the public service is the backbone of the economy.
Hasn't anyone there noticed that the public service doesn't generate funds, its purpose is to spend funds that government collects through taxation of industry, business and personal gain-and-expenditure. If you haven't got that kind of fiscal infrastructure, there is no economy. What the Palestinians view as their economy is charitable handouts from conscience-stricken Western countries, those same pay-outs which, mostly through the United Nations, have supported the Palestinians for over a half century.
The purpose of any government is to get on with matters critical to the needs of the people it serves. That includes vital infrastructure to deliver safety and security, a judicial system, a health authority, institutions of education, encouragement toward economic outreach to neighbouring countries for the exchange of goods and products. Instead, this government and the one preceding it has seen fit to wage war against a neighbour.
The acting Palestinian finance minister, an Hamas official, shrugs his metaphorical shoulder, informing the international community that things will chug along nicely as they are, with direct help from Arab governments, along with millions smuggled into the country in defiance of sanctions. In other words, its a mere illusion and misunderstanding; Palestinians are just fine thank you very much, and the "die, Israel" agenda will remain firmly in place.
The massive $450M the United Nations is asking for is slated for job creation, cash assistance and food aid, along with assists to the health and education system. Palestinians have always suffered deprivation of one kind or another, but those were the good old days; now the situation is truly dreadful, hence the UN move. Yet Hamas remains resolutely adamant about the continued sabotage of their own economic prospects.
This is effectively down-playing the urgent need at the present time of the Palestinian population, as well as the impact the current crisis will have on the future of the Palestinian population as a workable state-in-waiting. But because there is also an inimical impact on Israel, upon its right to survival, upon its future in the area, implacable hatred denies the good sense inherent in striving toward a workable comprimose to benefit both parties.
And the long-suffering Palestinian people, the ordinary non-combatants, the elderly, the women and children, have they no opinion? Does their animus toward the Jewish state direct them to the same sacrificial implacability as Hamas? Were they to protest their condition and recommend that in view of their failed enterprise in democratic participation which delivered them into the hands of a terrorist group intent on destabilizing the region in bloodlust and revenge, they would prefer to opt for compromise - would this endanger them bodily as traitors to the cause?
Do they silently assent to the ongoing contretemps gaining them nothing at all in the short run and likely in the long run may emperil their future generations ad infinitum?
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, December 07, 2006
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