generalspeaking

At Risk

Yet another brotherhood deal signed between Fatah (Palestinian Authority) and Hamas. There is certainly no love lost between the two. Fatah, led by Mahmoud Abbas, and considered to be 'moderate', ranks as such only because Hamas is so obviously immoderate. But not all that unusual in the Middle East. The two leaders, Hamas's Gaza leader, Khaled Meshaal, and the president of the Palestinian Authority meeting again in Cairo, to express their mutual affection for one another, have presented a unified front.

They are, in fact, unified in the degree of their determination to destroy the State of Israel; one by stealth, the other up-front by direct, violent, intransigently furious confrontation. They will forge on together, the urban legend has it in the streets of Cairo, to destroy the enemy and conquer any doubts that they are capable of mounting a lethal attack, resulting at long last in a Palestinian State impervious to disruption by any outside entity.

Which is not to say they are not perfectly capable of destroying their dream of statehood themselves. Of course there is a little problem of corruption, tribal enmities, religious sectarian conflict, and civil amateurism, in a nascent state incapable of organizing their finances, let alone the services they offer to their constituents. This is a state-in-waiting that is beset by quite a few problems, none of which have easy solutions because those who dominate the field have little interest in the practicality of responsibility.

With the possible exception of Salam Fayyad, the current PA prime minister whom Fatah continues to support and whom Hamas vehemently rejects. Which is an entirely other story. The PA is in dire financial straits, its fragile institutions ready to collapse. It cannot pay its state employees, the situation is that dire. And Salam Fayyad, the incorruptible technocrat-economist whose passion for his people's struggle is undeniable, warns of imminent collapse.

Dependent on the transfer of tax monies that Israel collects on its behalf, and has withheld, as a gesture of condemnation for the PA's recent unilateral venture to UNESCO membership, in preparation for additional such, they also now face the prospect of the European Union, the United States, Canada and Australia (for starters) withdrawing their millions in aid as a result of joining with Hamas, recognized as a terrorist entity by all these charity-sponsors of the PA.

Of course, the United States is uneasy about having been informed that the moderate Mahmoud Abbas has a neat little program whereby a policy that pays convicted Palestinian murderers $5000 in recognition of their heroism, and building them new homes as a gesture from the PA to its stalwart "resisters" of the occupation. Out of funding coming from the United States for the Palestinian Investment Fund that PA Prime Minister Fayyad founded in 2002.

No longer is Prime Minister Fayyad overseeing the fund, but Hamas is in total control of PIF assets in Gaza. Moreover, an investigation is to be launched as to whether funds were drawn from the PIF for Mahmoud Abbas's international trips hither and yon in an effort to convince UN-member diplomats to support the PA's attempt for unilateral declaration of statehood in the UN ... in direct contravention of U.S. policy.

Should, heaven forfend, international funding be cut off, the PA will not have the wherewithal to exist; it will dissolve itself for it cannot afford itself. The nascent state, representing a population that has been dependent on international charitable funding for over 60 years, as the world's longest-reigning 'refugees', insists it must be recognized as an independent state, all its instruments of statehood recognized, but it cannot afford to be a state; there is no reliable economic underpinning from within.

Strange kind of logic, that is. Hugely dependent on its neighbour Israel for water and energy resources; a good part of its economy heavily reliant upon trade with Israel, along with mentoring and co-operation, yet it refuses to recognize the Jewish State, and will not negotiate in good faith for a long-sought conclusion to the enmity between them for a final agreement on two sovereign states, side by side.

The Palestinians have no wish to surrender anything; not for them painful concessions. The pain should be unilaterally imposed on Israel, and the gain should ideally be entirely the Palestinians'. That is, should they ever reach a final decision to lay aside their covert plans to destroy Israel and live as neighbours, in peace. But the Palestinians seem functionally incapable of drawing the conclusion that to reach an agreement, concessions must be made from either side.

They have traditionally been prepared to risk everything in their vendetta against the nakba.

Labels: Charity, Conflict, Hamas, Israel, Palestinian Authority

posted by Pieface @ Friday, November 25, 2011