Punishing prospects

[Englander]

Leader
Tuesday May 9, 2006
The Guardian

International law bans collective punishment - a tenet the representatives of the Middle East peace "quartet" should bear in mind when they meet in New York today to consider the grave situation in the Palestinian territories. The US and the EU suspended their direct funding of the Palestinian Authority when the government of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, entered office last month. Their purpose was to pressure Hamas to formally recognise Israel, abandon violence, and accept agreements concluded between Israel and the PA when it was being run by Yasser Arafat and his successor, Mahmoud Abbas. The boycott has not achieved these goals. By not paying the salaries of 165,000 public employees it has aggravated the rapidly deteriorating economic crisis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It may thus achieve an undeclared and highly risky aim: the collapse of the Hamas government.

The quartet - Russia and the UN form the other half - are to discuss creating a special international "mechanism" to bypass Hamas and funnel aid through the World Bank, the IMF or the UN. Optimists hope Israel might agree to use this channel to resume its suspended tax transfers to the PA. It is unclear whether the US will back this. If it does not, the Europeans should for once be prepared to go it alone in resuming aid to the Palestinians, as Russia has done. That means cash will flow again to health and education, helping alleviate the misery and despair being reflected in new fighting between Hamas and Fatah gunmen. That in turn risks pushing Gaza, already a byword for deprivation and violence, over the edge of the abyss. The normally cautious World Bank is now warning of a "humanitarian catastrophe".

It does not take a genius to work out how to avoid this. Overall, greater imagination and flexibility is needed to handle Hamas. Having carried out 60 suicide bombings against Israeli targets, mostly civilians, it has maintained a ceasefire for 16 months. That is more important than the totemic issue of recognising Israel. Palestinians voted for it because they had despaired of progress towards a just peace under the discredited old PA regime, not because they had converted en masse to jihad. Hamas won the sort of democratic election which the US claims to be encouraging. James Wolfensohn resigned recently as the quartet's envoy because he thought the aid cutoff was plain wrong. Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has put it well:"Depriving the people of Palestine of their basic human rights just to punish their elected leaders is not a path to peace."

Link;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,1770451,00.html">Guardian Unlimited

[Behind the Aegis]

1. What a laughable article!

No collective punishment? Does that include academic boycotts or general boycotts?

The US and other nations are still funding Palestinan aid organizations. That fact seems to have escaped this author. The author also confuses the PA with the Palestinian people. The idiotic statement, "That means cash will flow again to health and education, helping alleviate the misery and despair being reflected in new fighting between Hamas and Fatah gunmen." is a prime example. Please! This seems to equate the in-fighting between Fatah and Hamas is over health and education. What a load of shit!

Despite the aforementioned load, these statements take the cake..."Having carried out 60 suicide bombings against Israeli targets, mostly civilians, it has maintained a ceasefire for 16 months. That is more important than the totemic issue of recognising Israel." Basically, "Hey, we haven't killed your civilians in 16 months, despite years of doing it, but we also reserve the right to do it in the future, per our charter!" Yes, the current "ceasefire," (despite OTHER groups doing it and Hamas doing NOTHING to stop it), is much more important than their recognizing Israel. :eyes:

What about James Wolfensohn? Did he really resign because "...because he thought the aid cutoff was plain wrong." NOPE!

Washington, 2 May (AKI) - Former world bank chief James Wolfensohn has stepped down as international envoy for the Middle East saying his role has become untenable because of the election of Hamas. "It is a very difficult movement to be able to try and negotiate any independent type of arrangements that would affect the future of Gaza and the West Bank because of the emphasis that Hamas puts on the destruction of the state of Israel," Wolfensohn said late Monday at a press conference with US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice in Washington.

--snip--

In his final report to Middle East mediators, which Reuters has viewed, Wolfensohn sharply questioned the decision of Western powers to cut off aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian government. Having invested more than one billion dollars annually to try to create a viable Palestinian state, the report asked whether those goals would not simply be abandoned. It argued that the United Nations and NGOs will not be able to fill the void if Palestinian Authority institutions collapse.

--snip--

Wolfensohn officially stepped down as the Quartet's special envoy on April 30 because of restrictions on his role now that Islamic militant group Hamas is in control of the Palestinian Authority, aides said.

source

This "article" is sorely lacking in integrity!