Palestinian hope held hostage

Economic sanctions are keeping Palestinians from building a life.

By Salam Fayyad, SALAM FAYYAD is the minister of finance in the Palestinian unity government.

March 31, 2007

TWO WEEKS AGO, I became the minster of finance for a people whose economy has all but collapsed. It was the start of business for the new Palestinian unity government, born after months of tricky on-again, off-again negotiations and amid economic sanctions, bloodshed and misery.

The government came together after a bad year for the struggling Palestinian Authority. Our economic difficulties grew much worse during that period, in the aftermath of a free and fair election that brought Hamas to power. Because Hamas' political platform did not conform to key elements of the peace process, including Palestinian recognition of Israel's right to exist and a commitment to renounce violence, the international community imposed sanctions on the Palestinian Authority.

Although much of the discussion leading to the formation of the unity government has focused on these two commitments, their validity should not have been much in question. After all, these commitments were made by the Palestine Liberation Organization, the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, in a crystal-clear and binding agreement in 1993, and no Palestinian government has the authority to revoke them. In fact, the unity government's platform explicitly states that it will honor all PLO agreements, which, to be sure, include these two commitments.

As someone who has long worked for peace and reconciliation with Israel — a peace based on mutual recognition of each people's rights — I have always subscribed to the PLO's political program and all the commitments it embodies, including the recognition of Israel's right to exist and the renunciation of violence. I still do. My top priority is to lead the effort to end the economic sanctions and to restore the integrity of our public finance system.

A harsh and painful year after the onset of the sanctions, staggering poverty and unemployment rates prevail. Today, almost two-thirds of the Palestinian population lives in poverty, with per-capita income at 60% of its level in 1999. But as Thomas Jefferson said: "If we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair." As a Palestinian, I have a duty to hope and to work tirelessly to make the dreams of my people a reality.

We Palestinians dream of living normal lives. We dream of an end to the days when Palestinian farmers in the West Bank watch their crops destroyed to make way for Israeli-only roads, an end to the days when Palestinian children must brave Israeli military checkpoints to get to school and an end to the days when Gaza's 1.4 million Palestinians are sealed inside their territory, cut off from the rest of the world. Like all people, we deserve freedom in our own land. We deserve democratic, transparent and accountable institutions. And we deserve to live in peace and economic cooperation with all our neighbors, including Israel.

Over the years, the international community has encouraged and supported Palestinians in building democratic institutions to serve as the foundation of our future state. Donor assistance helped pay for the building of schools, hospitals and roads in addition to supporting good governance and providing the know-how to create a functioning administration.

In my previous term as finance minister, from June 2002 to December 2005, I played a leading role in establishing transparency and accountability in government finances through the introduction of a series of deep, wide-ranging reforms that helped bring our public finance system up to international standards. These included the consolidation of all government revenues in the Ministry of Finance, the elimination of extra-budgetary spending and the regular publication of detailed financial statements.

Since the international sanctions were imposed, aid has continued to flow, which has helped prevent starvation. But by channeling funds so that they bypass the Ministry of Finance, donors have unintentionally contributed to reversing these institution-building gains. The money coming in can no longer be traced, and we cannot ensure that it is not being misappropriated.

Also, our dependence on foreign-aid handouts is increasing while our economic development is stifled. In 2005, for example, only 16% of European Union aid to Palestine was classified as humanitarian. Last year, that figure rose to 56%.

We do not aspire to be a beggar nation, dependent on the world to feed our people. We have the capacity, education and talent to build a thriving economy and a strong democracy. But we cannot do so while Israel seals our borders and withholds tax revenue it owes us, or while U.S. banking regulations prevent banks from handling government business.

In order that we may begin again to develop the institutions and systems that will make us self-reliant and that will buttress the foundation of our future state, the sanctions must be lifted.

The U.S. has long acknowledged — as has the entire world community — that the formation of a viable, independent Palestinian state on the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip is the way out of this nearly 60-year-old conflict. But until the international community demonstrates the political will to help bring about a comprehensive settlement — one that will grant Palestinians the freedom to build our own economy and institutions in our own land — we will all continue to pay the price. Despair will continue to erode hope. And, lest we forget the words of Jefferson, hope is indeed "as cheap, and pleasanter."

Part and parcel of the settlements

12/03/07

A PALESTINIAN VIEW

by Ghassan Khatib

Israel is currently having an easy time expanding its settlements and constructing the separation wall that is snaking its way in and around the occupied West Bank.

Partly this is due to the ongoing internal Palestinian problems that have distracted the focus of Palestinian leaders from their struggle against these colonialist Israeli policies.

Partly it is due to the absence of any firm international commitment to the principles of international law under which both the wall and Jewish settlements in occupied territory are illegal.

In the Palestinian perception the separation wall is, at least where it veers into occupied territory, a part of the overall settlement project. If there were no settlements, the wall could have been built on the green line and cause no Palestinian objections. But Israel is building part of the wall inside the occupied territories because of the existence of settlements. Thus, the wall is part of the settlement project.

The ongoing construction of the wall has been aided by the rather weak attitude of the United States and Europe, the only parties with influence on Israel. These parties have singularly failed to impress upon Israel that commitment to international law and the findings of the International Court of Justice are important factors determining the relations of these countries with Israel. This leaves the impression that neither the US nor the EU cares whether Israel abides by international legality.

This is a regrettable repetition of history. In the mid-1990s, Israel's illegal settlement program in occupied territory was the single most damaging blow to the peace process, and the international community's failure to seriously address the settlement issue was a major contributing factor.

There have been several other negative consequences of the wall. In many areas, the wall has created enclaves that have almost completely curtailed any freedom of movement for Palestinians inside them. Access to health and education services has been sharply reduced, as has the ability of a majority of Palestinians to exercise their right of worship, particularly in Jerusalem. The increased hardship resulting from the wall has also caused more anger and further radicalization among Palestinians.

The repercussions for the economy have been predictably dramatic, exacerbating the general economic deterioration. The most damaging economic consequence is the transformation of the economic boundaries between the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel from a soft into a hard border. Over the last 40 years, the Palestinian economy became completely dependent on Israel, and now, with little to no access to the outside world as a result of Israeli restrictions and the occupation, the economy has no possibility of recovery.

Occupied East Jerusalem, meanwhile, is one of the primary victims of the wall. The wall neither separates Jerusalem from its immediate environs nor East Jerusalem from West Jerusalem but rather separates different neighborhoods of East Jerusalem from each other and most of the city from the West Bank.

To describe this wall only in security terms as Israel does is so misleading as to be bordering on the absurd. The wall is constricting any political horizon by unilaterally taking land away from Palestinians, thus destroying the possibility that a viable Palestinian state can emerge and devastating any possibility of economic recovery.

The Hamas-led government has shown an impressive commitment to the current ceasefire. With the possible return of international attention to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the resumption of political contacts between the two leaderships, it is time that this wall is tackled head on.

The lead must come from the Palestinian leadership, which should work to persuade the members of the Quartet to take action and pressure Israel to abide by international law, whether as expressed by the International Court of Justice or in UN Security Council resolutions.

The wall must be removed and replaced by confidence-building measures that can improve the Palestinian economy and bring back hope of a peaceful end to Israel's occupation. Only that way can both sides' legitimate aspirations be achieved successfully. - Published 12/3/2007 © bitterlemons.org

Ghassan Khatib is coeditor of the bitterlemons family of internet publications. He is vice-president of Birzeit University and a former Palestinian Authority minister of planning.

Palestinians: The Crisis in Medical Care

Volume 54, Number 4 ·

Feature

1.

"Nothing is changing," says Dr. Jamil Suliman, a pediatrician and now the director of Beit Hanoun Hospital in Gaza. On a quiet January morning, he shows me a clean and well-equipped emergency room, modern X-ray facilities, a pharmacy, and a basic yet functioning laboratory. Dr. Suliman oversees a medical team of more than fifty doctors. But the outlook for the health and well-being of his community, three quarters of whom live in accelerating poverty, is not good.

Beit Hanoun sits close to the border of Gaza, a twenty-five-by-five-mile strip of land that is one of the most densely populated and impoverished regions in the world today. As a meeting point between Asia and Africa, Gaza has been fiercely fought over for centuries. With the dismantling of Israeli settlements on the strip in 2005, this tract of land is now wholly Palestinian. Yet its people have hardly any control over their lives, their movements, or their economy. And so Gaza's troubles have not receded.

Gaza exists in a cage. I entered through the Erez checkpoint at its northern tip. Armed Israel Defense Forces and bored young military conscriptees control the cylindrical steel turnstiles and electric gates that greet visitors. After walking through a three-hundred-meter camera-laden concrete tunnel, one exits into a landscape of bombed homes, blasted roads and bridges, and fields torn apart by armored vehicles. The debris of Palestinian life lines the road into Gaza City. Vans loaded with young Palestinian members of armed militias pass by freely. Men carrying Kalashnikovs stand at most street corners in the center of the city. Gaza feels like a lawless place under permanent siege.

March 15, 2007

By Richard Horton

--MORE--

Letter from Jerusalem

17 February 2007

Dear Friends,

Embedded in this message is my latest letter from Jerusalem. Please feel free to distribute it as you choose. I do ask that you attach my contact information as you send it out. If you would like to be added to the mailing list, just drop me a brief message. Thanks for your prayers and support.

Friends, the government of Israel is afraid – very afraid. No, the administration does not fear for its existence, its security, or even the loss of its annual gift of $3.1 billion, no strings attached, from the United States. Rather, its anxiety is growing that it may actually have to negotiate its borders, the continuation of its illegal settlements on Palestinian land, its total control over Gaza, its stranglehold on Jerusalem, before it has eaten all the land, water, and roadways it can digest politically. Israel’s creeping occupation of the land still remaining to the Arab inhabitants of historic Palestine before 1967—just 22% of that area, by the way—is based on its ability to keep its tactics just below the level of international sensitivity and outrage.

Thus, it is always to its advantage when Palestinians are seen by the rest of the world as causing a violent crisis or confrontation. So, just what is happening now? In January 2006, Palestinians elected their legislators. To just about everyone's surprise the Hamas party gained a clear majority. While a bewildered Hamas—which never believed it would be forced to govern at the present—wandered through the first weeks, and a dazed, defeated Fatah pondered its future, Israel and the United States leaped into action. First Israel announced that it would impound $55 million per month in funds that belong absolutely to the Palestinian government, thus making it impossible for the new Hamas government to pay its workers. Then the United States proclaimed that it would not deal with Hamas in the smallest transaction, imposing draconian restrictions on any entity who worked with Palestinians using U.S. funds. Israel followed these initial steps by refusing to allow Palestinian legislators even to meet in a body. Then they arrested 38 Palestinian legislators and imprisoned them. Those men remain in Israeli prisons to this very day, and they have never been charged with a crime. Then came the harshest step of all: Israel reduced the flow of food and medical supplies into Gaza to a trickle, just large enough to stave off starvation and epidemic. Previous to these actions they had announced to a "grateful" world that Israel had ended its occupation of Gaza, neglecting the tiny detail that its armed forces maintained absolute control over air, land, sea, commerce, and borders of Gaza. It was a more brutal occupation than existed before the so-called "disengagement" of 2005. One Israeli "journalist" had the gall to write in a local newspaper that Palestine had been given a Sovereign State. Some even believed her. Everybody seemed to ignore the injustice inherent in these acts, because the all-powerful mantra of "Security" was chanted every time a question was raised.

My question at this point is a simple, rhetorical one: Is there any doubt that Israel and the United States were consciously pushing the Palestinian people toward civil conflict? They were eminently successful – for a while. For a time there was open warfare. Innocent and guilty people alike suffered mightily. Far too many died. But now that is ending. Fatah and Hamas have agreed on a way to move forward together. Predictably, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has already voiced her skepticism. Both Israel and its great ally the United States are nervous. The cessation of hostilities means that the specter of internecine violence will no longer provide a ready excuse to avoid substantive negotiations. They are afraid that, as I mentioned above, their tactics may well exceed the world's level of tolerance. People might learn that Hamas is not the only party or entity to claim the whole of historic Palestine for its religion. Nearly a dozen years earlier the Likud Party declared that all of that same land belonged to Israel and the Jewish people. Or people may support the demand that Hamas "recognize" Israel's right to exist, but they may also make a reciprocal demand that Israel and the United States "recognize" a Hamas-led government as the legitimate, elected representative of the Palestinian people. If there are no scenes of bloody violence the world may seize this moment to demand that negotiations begin in earnest for lasting peace with real justice for all.

All of us can understand when people are afraid. We, as God's people, will stand solidly with them, but we must not, we dare not stand with any who would use the tools of the oppressor to drive away our hopes for peace. Now is the time for all people who see worth in all others to join together in the direction which will result in two states, two peoples, with security and justice and freedom for both.

And yet one thing more: the issues I spoke of above are the kinds of questions that will only be resolved when all sides agree to respect the others and to work together for answers acceptable to all. If I remember my history correctly, that's the way we have always acted when we truly desired peace with justice.

Russell O. Siler, Pastor
English-speaking Congregation
Lutheran Church of the Redeemer
Jerusalem, Old City
thesilers@earthlink.net

The Mecca agreement gives the west the chance to end its blackmail and recognise Palestinian rights

Our unity can now pave the way for peace and justice

Khalid Mish'al
Tuesday February 13, 2007
The Guardian

A historic new phase in the Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence has begun. Last week's Mecca agreement between Hamas and Fatah will pave the way for the first ever truly Palestinian national unity government. Hamas and Fatah, joined by all the other Palestinian factions, will now seek to rebuild Palestinian society following the destruction brought upon it by Israeli occupation and resume the campaign for our national rights.

We are determined to make sure that the recent internal fighting, which appalled our people and dismayed their supporters around the world, becomes history. We firmly believe that it would never have happened had it not been for foreign intervention and the brutal sanctions imposed on our people by Israel and its allies. The crisis would not have existed had international and regional powers respected the results of last year's democratic elections in Palestine.

The Mecca agreement has laid the foundations for a power-sharing process that will produce a functioning government capable of attending to our people's needs. It will also pave the way for rebuilding the PLO to include all the factions and become the legitimate representative of all Palestinian people. The partnership born out of the Mecca meeting is possible because of the consensus among the Palestinians that their primary objective is to win their freedom, and that their struggle should be solely against occupation. It is now up to the international community to respect this accord and the will of the Palestinian people.

We Palestinians have been the victims of invasion, occupation and oppression for almost a century. Yet we have been constantly blackmailed to make concessions and give up yet more of our legitimate rights. Since the elections of January 2006 our people have been boycotted and punished by the international community for exercising their democratic rights. In the meantime, Israel has continued to kill and detain Palestinians on a daily basis, demolishing hundreds of houses and making thousands homeless.

Today Israel has more than 11,000 of our brothers and sisters in jail and continues to deny millions of refugees the right to return to their homeland. It has defied international law by proceeding with the construction of the apartheid wall and building settlements on land expropriated from Palestinians. Meanwhile, excavation resumed last week in the compound of al-Aqsa mosque, and on Friday the mosque, to which access is denied to Palestinians below the age of 45, was invaded by Israeli troops who wounded scores of worshippers.

Now that Hamas and Fatah have agreed to form a national unity government, the international community has no excuse to maintain the siege against our people. We know that many governments around the world are unhappy with these sanctions and want to see an end to them. The Palestinian national accord achieved in Mecca envisages the establishment of a truly sovereign and independent Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in June 1967 - with Jerusalem as its capital, the dismantling of the settlements in the West Bank, the release of all Palestinian prisoners and the acknowledgement of the right of the refugees to return to their homes.

Once translated into reality, this vision will pave the way for real peace in the region. There must be no more blackmail of Palestinians, for there is nothing else they can give away. Global powers should have learned by now that neither sanctions nor any other form of pressure or bribery will force the Palestinians to abandon their struggle for freedom and independence.

All previous peace proposals have failed because they were intended to impose an unjust pro-Israel settlement on our people, and were based on the assumption that the Palestinian struggle was a form of terrorism that the Palestinians had to renounce. The attempt to divide Palestinians into moderates and extremists or peacemakers and terrorists has failed. Now we are united in our determination to seek an end to oppression and occupation.

So, will the international community seize this historic opportunity, require Israel to respect our rights and stop hindering this attempt to turn the Palestinian national agreement into a reality? Or will it remain weak and ineffective in the face of Israeli intransigence and risk alienating not only Hamas but also Fatah and all the other Palestinian factions?

If the latter is the choice, the outcome will be dire indeed: the entire Middle East region will be driven towards another cycle of bloody escalation that may last for many years to come - and an entire Palestinian generation, which might not be willing to accept what we accept today, will be left profoundly embittered.

The west needs to wake up and realise that time is no longer on the side of Israel and its policies of occupation, destruction and expansion. Time no longer favours the continuation of policies biased towards Israel. It will not serve the best interests of the west to support Israel while it continues to terrorise our people, occupy our land, violate our basic human and national rights and encroach on Muslim and Christian holy places. Such blind support has proven to be very costly for the west and will increasingly damage its vital interests.

It must be understood by all that the people of Palestine have the key to both peace and war in the Middle East. There can never be peace and stability in the region without settling the Palestinian question. And that can only be achieved by ending the occupation and recognising our people's rights.

· Khalid Mish'al is head of the Hamas political bureau

khmishal@gmail.com

The outside world has to grasp that Palestinian infighting is the product of an intolerable blockade

We are being suffocated

Sami Abdel-Shafi in Gaza City
Saturday February 10, 2007
The Guardian

It was a surreal but telling reflection of how lonely Palestinians have become as their leadership has seemingly been pushed into breakdown and failure, while Israel watched from the sidelines. Late one night, I was suddenly yelled at to stop my car, turn the lights off and roll down the windows. Two masked men, without any identifying insignias, closed in from the sides; one pointed his machine gun at me while the other, two steps behind, shouldered a loaded rocket-propelled grenade launcher. That was a week last Thursday, hours after fierce clashes erupted between Hamas and Fatah, ending the seventh ceasefire between the factions, and ushering in the deadliest power struggle yet.

To Palestinians it seemed sadly clear that the moral credit of their cause was being eroded: how must it look to the outside world that they had flip-flopped in one year between democratic elections and internecine violence?

A day before this incident, a House of Commons development committee report warned of drastically deteriorating conditions in the occupied territories as a result of the US-led economic embargo in the wake of last year's elections. The report questioned the proportionality of Israel's own blockade and its implications for the prospects of a lasting peace. The Palestinian infighting only underlined the sense of those warnings.

The militiamen I had run into had no clear lines of authority. One turned out to be a recent accountancy graduate who had never been able to find a job and had been given no weapons training. Many such armed men simply need an income. Without any means to provide for their families, they join one of the many security outfits to secure a salary. The international community needs to grasp the dire consequences of maintaining what is the largest regional prison in the world: Camp Gaza Strip.

Thursday's agreement between the leaders of Fatah and Hamas in Mecca has contained the conflict and Gaza is now calm. But as Palestinians resumed constructive dialogue, Israel employed its classic approach of shifting the pressure between Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem. For Israel to have begun an inflammatory dig at one of the entrances to the holy city of old Jerusalem - on the first day of the talks in Mecca - was clearly not without calculation. Yesterday, the morning after the Palestinian agreement had been reached, Israeli forces attacked Jerusalemites protesting at the project and barred Muslims from the al-Aqsa mosque.

Despite all this, the Quartet (the group, consisting of the US, EU, UN and Russia, entrusted with advancing Palestinian-Israeli peace) still appears unable to accept that no positive developments can be hoped for as long as the Gaza Strip remains sealed off, or the West Bank wall continues to be built. The current stance of the US and the EU is in practice an endorsement of Israel's policy of blockading the Gaza Strip by land, air and sea, and gobbling up West Bank and east Jerusalem territory. This can only guarantee the flight of the very people the international community says it counts on to forge peace: Palestinian "moderates".

It is one thing for the Quartet to demand a Palestinian rejection of violence, but unless pressure is brought to bear on Israel to release its military grip from the Palestinian territories - which long predates the election of Hamas - it will suffocate Palestinian hope and show that the world is only chasing a phantom of peace. No political initiative can compensate the suppression of an entire people's potential to develop in freedom.

· Sami Abdel-Shafi is the co-founder of Emerge Consulting Group, a management consultancy in Gaza City

Text of Mecca Accord for Palestinian coalition government

Now Israel will get it's double agents in Gaza to reignite the Fatah-Hamas conflict. This will be Israel's pretext to send in the Military and pacify those naughty Palestinians. The U.S, U.K., Saudi Arabia, etc. can say, "See our intent was to broker peace, but the Palestinians screwed it up. The Israelis are big hero's saving the day." And the same shit goes on and on... After all, got to have a pretext to maintain and expand one of the world's most powerful militaries in the region.
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Text of Mecca Accord for Palestinian coalition government

Text of the Palestinians' Mecca Accord, which came in the form of a letter from President Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, designating Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, of Hamas, to form the government:

"In my capacity as the head of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the president of the Palestinian Authority ...

a) I designate you to form the upcoming Palestinian government within the time specified under the basic law (five weeks.)

b) After forming the government and presenting it to us, it should be presented to the Palestinian Legislative Council for a vote of confidence.

c) I call upon you as the head of the upcoming Palestinian government to commit to the higher interests of the Palestinian people, to preserve its rights and to preserve its achievements and to develop them, and to work in order to achieve its national goals as was approved by the Palestine National Council, the clauses of the Basic Law and the National Reconciliation Document ... Based on this, I call upon you to respect international resolutions and the agreements signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (referring to peace accords with Israel)."

‘Quartet’ Corners PLO, Hamas Into Critical Options

Feb 6, 2007

By Nicola Nasser


In Washington on February 2, the Middle East Quartet of peace mediators promised the Palestinian people more of the same devastating status quo, perpetuating their 40-year old Israeli occupation, prolonging the international siege imposed on them, exacerbating their internal divide, and thus cornering them into a situation that they can only shake off either through civil war or unconditional surrender to the U.S.-backed Israeli-dictated fait accompli, unless their national sense of accountability could prevail to make mutual compromises into national consensus.

The Quartet statement read to reporters by the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon boils down to promising them only more of what the U.S. former president Jimmy Carter recently summed up: “In the last six years there has not been one day of good faith, substantive negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians, not one day.”

“Recognizing the critical need to end the Palestinian/Israeli conflict,” the Quartet pledged to support efforts to put in place a process with the goal of ending the occupation that began in 1967 and creating an independent, democratic and viable Palestinian state, living side by side in peace and security with Israel, and reaffirmed its commitment to a just, lasting, and comprehensive peace based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338,” the statement said.

It was a positive introductory comprehension of the end goal, which Ki-moon and his co-mediators – the High Representative for European Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana, European Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Russian and German counterparts, Sergei Lavrov and Frank-Walter Steinmeier -- immediately shot in the feet by the “road map” they adopted to reach that goal.

They failed to incorporate any reference in their statement to the UN Security Council resolution 1515, which commits them and the international community to the so-called two-state solution, although it was a non-binding resolution because it wasn’t adopted according to Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

Then they evaded any time-tabled commitment to reviving the peace process. True they “welcomed” the 23 December summit of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli premier Ehud Olmert and their trilateral meeting with Rice, scheduled for February 21, but the upcoming meeting according to the Quartet will be only a “dialogue” and to Rice’s on record statements will be “informal.” The Quartet’s pledge “to give active follow-up to these meetings and to remain closely engaged” sounded hollow and meaningless.

The Quartet also “noted the continuing importance of the Arab Peace Initiative,” which envisions an all-comprising and comprehensive solution for the conflict with Israel, but failed to suggest an international peace conferences, some dubs as Madrid II -- a key demand by the Arab League, the PLO and Palestinian Authority (PA). Israel has rejected both the Arab Initiative and the conference idea.

The international mediators “called for continued international assistance to the Palestinian people,” and “encouraged … the development of the Palestinian economy,” but, in obvious self-contradiction, did not lift the Israeli and U.S.-led siege imposed as a collective punishment on the PA and people.

Hypocritically, “the Quartet called for Palestinian unity,” but fomented the Palestinian divide by urging donors to selectively “focus on preserving and building the capacity of institutions of Palestinian governance,” while at the same time maintaining the diplomatic, economic and political isolation of the democratically elected Palestinian government and ignoring Russian, Qatari and British parliamentarian demands to engage the PA government shortly ahead of their meeting.

Similarly, “the Quartet expressed its deep concern at the violence among Palestinians,” but failed to commit its U.S. member to refrain from fueling the violence with money, training and weapons to one side of the infighting in a declared pledge to oust an elected government or coerce it into accepting the Israeli preconditions to lift the siege.

Then the Quartet concluded with reiterating “its call for the Palestinian Authority Government to commit … to non-violence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations,” ignoring the fact that the PA government, regardless of whether led by Fatah or Hamas, is an institution mandated according to Oslo accords to manage the Palestinian apolitical autonomy and is only an administrative tool of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the political authority who sets the PA’s terms of reference and still committed to the aforesaid “principles,” a strict commitment pressuring it into the brink of civil war.

Palestinian Options

The disappointing outcome of the Quartet meeting rules out any early resumption of “formal” peace talks, leaves the Palestinian people and leadership divided on the verge of civil war under the pressures of both the occupation and siege, thus leaving the divide with only one option: Individual and collective dialogue to review the deadlocked and futile peace process as well as the yet un-delivering violent and non-violent resistance, which both have almost reached a standstill.

Palestinian pollster Khalil al-Shikaki in a surveyed analysis dated February 1 (www.pcpsr.org) concluded that President Abbas has four options to break through the Palestinian impasse: 1) to form a national unity government, 2) to organize early presidential and legislative election, 3) to fire the Hamas-led Palestinian government and form an emergency one, and 4) to resign. Al-Shikaki ruled out the last three options as counterproductive to the “Palestinian vital interests” and could lead to more infighting. However his preferable first option could not “completely end the siege and boycott in a short period.”

The only breakthrough left is mutual compromises. According to al-Shikaki, Hamas’ flexibility in dealing “positively” with the Quartet’s three conditions to “respect” the signed accords, recognize Israel as a “fait accompli” and agree to an open-ended truce makes the first option “viable.” The Fatah-led PLO has yet to reciprocate by giving priority to national consensus more than to the Israeli-drafted and Quartet-adopted three conditions. Palestinian national unity will lead in the end to break through the siege.

All sides of the Palestinian divide, the Israeli Occupying Power and the world community should adapt to the fact that the 40-year old monopoly of Palestinian decision-making by Fatah came to an end on January 25, 2006, when Hamas broke into the role of a principal decision-maker by a landslide electoral victory that empowered it with dominant executive and legislative powers, and sooner or later the Islamic Resistance Movement will gain a parallel dominance in the PLO, a democratically-clinched right that Hamas in its defense has tactically contributed to the ensuing bloody power struggle.

However 12 months on, the unity government has failed the national bilateral and multilateral dialogue as well as Islamic and Arab mediation efforts, including Qatari, Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian and Islamic mediators; several ceasefire agreements have so far collapsed on the security approach. The latest Saudi Arabian good offices are also expected to stumble on the same approach, which foiled previous similar efforts.

Fatah’s Revolutionary Council, chaired by Abbas in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Sunday, suspended a three-day session in waiting for the outcome of the Mecca-hosted talks between Abbas and Hamas’ leader Khalid Misha’al on Feb. 5, but warned the PLO will go for the Hamas-rejected presidential and legislative election in June if the two leaders failed to agree on a unity government based on the Quartet’s three conditions, which practically will sooner or later doom the outcome, because Hamas views its subscription to the Quartet’s agenda as a carte blanche for the Quartet, Israel and the PLO to resume their 15-year old counterproductive and futile so-called “peace process.”

The PLO and Fatah leadership insists on Hamas accommodating the Quartet conditions as a Palestinian obligation to lift the siege, which Hamas says was only tightened after its electoral victory and was in place before that as a mechanism to pressure the PLO into accepting the comatose former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon-initiated long-term interim arrangement of a transitional Palestinian state on 42 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Both Hamas and the PLO have recently unequivocally rejected this Israeli unilateral plan. The Quartet’s silence or vague stance on the arrangement and their promised “informal” revival of high-level Israeli – Palestinian “dialogue” should provide enough common ground for a PLO-Hamas consensus.

The deadlocked peace process, the paralysis of the PLO and PA institutions, the inability of the Palestinian presidency and government alike to rule the autonomous 42 percent of the Israeli-reoccupied West Bank or the militarily-besieged Gaza Strip, the zero sum situation where the Palestinians have neither an “armed struggle” nor popular non-violent resistance save for seasonal symbolic expressions and where the erosion of public trust in both leading movements, according to latest Palestinian public surveys, threatens to render the Palestinians leaderless, all have locked the Palestinian national liberation movement in its current impasse.

The ensuing divide has led to bloody street battles that embroiled both the Fatah and Hamas security executive forces in a militia-style power struggle in mutual self-destruction, taking down with them what government institutions the PA has built since 1993, including public services infrastructure like power stations, universities and police and intelligence stations, especially in Gaza Strip - - as this mission was left for the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in the West Bank - - amid mounting and widening popular outrage, security chaos exacerbated by the crushing economic siege, popular loss of hope deepened by the Quartet’s latest unpromising meeting, helplessness of Arab and Islamic brothers who are too preoccupied to rush for rescue with the several battle fronts opened by turn once by the U.S. and then by Israel.

All these and other factors are creating the ideal environment to look for survival in a new anti-occupation uprising that might sweep away also the autonomy and both protagonists who are wasting their energies in a struggle over who manages the Palestinian prison, according to the Palestinian-Arab Israeli MP, Azmi Bishara, in a recent article.

However, joining of the Oslo political institutions by Hamas, accompanied by the two-year old strict commitment to a unilateral truce, was an indirect declaration of a change in course and tactics that confused the movement’s declared strategy among supporters because of the contradiction between rejecting the Oslo status quo and being incorporated into its institutions, let alone being embroiled in bloody power struggle over who leads them.

Similarly, the dead end the negotiations with Israel has reached, the meager results the negotaitions have produced, the insistence of the PLO on holding the Palestinian self-determination hostage to the whims of the Israeli-U.S. good faith and its determination to commit Hamas to the same futile course – which deprived the PLO even of the limited autonomy it was offered on an interim basis until July 1997, provided a “legitimate” PLO cover to slicing Jerusalem off the occupied territories and isolating it as inaccessible for Palestinians, and doubled the colonial Jewish settlers to more than 450.000 since 1967 -- have eroded the PLO’s credibility.

Salam Fayyad, the former PA Finance Minister and a founder of the new Third Way political party alongside Hanan Ashrawi who are both incumbent MPs, described the current status quo to the Seventh Annual Herzliya Conference in Tel Aviv on Jan. 24: “The nature of relations today between Israelis and Palestinians has reached levels of micromanagement, where Israel is involved in the minute details of the lives of Palestinians. It is important to remember that the entirety of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is ruled by military orders – not by politics, logic, or reason – but by military orders with (Israel’s) “security” dictating the rules of the game.” To hell of course with Palestinian security!

Both sides have all the compelling reasons to backtrack and bend on individual as well as collective reviews of the status quo.


Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

UN plea for millions in Palestinian aid amid fears of economic collapse

· Half of population going short of food, agencies say

· Senior officials warn of breakdown of government

Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
Friday December 8, 2006
The Guardian

A Palestinian man receives food aid in Khan Yunis refugee camp. Photograph: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters

UN aid agencies launched their biggest appeal for funding to tackle the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territories yesterday, asking for $453m (£231m) for next year and warning of a weakening in the Palestinians' ability to govern.

Senior UN aid officials in Jerusalem said there were clear signs of a worsening economic crisis. Around two thirds of the 4 million Palestinian population were living below the poverty line and half the population were "food-insecure", meaning they could not afford the basic foods to meet dietary needs. Unemployment was running as high as 40% in the Gaza strip and at around 25% in the West Bank.

Most of the money will be spent on emergency food aid and economic recovery, including job programmes. Kevin Kennedy, the UN humanitarian coordinator, said the crisis was not only an economic collapse but was also tied to an increase in closures and access restrictions imposed on the occupied territories by the Israeli government and to continued conflict, internal political fighting and a breakdown of law and order.

The UN has warned there has been a gradual weakening of the Palestinian Authority. The crisis results from an international boycott imposed in March after the Hamas militant movement won elections and formed a government. Israel has since withheld $60m a month of tax revenues that should go to the Palestinians.

Although some of that money has been spent paying the Palestinian bills of Israeli electricity and water companies, the Israelis have now withheld nearly $600m.

The international community, under the Quartet of the US, the UN, the EU and Russia, has also halted direct funding to the Palestinian government, saying it must recognise Israel, halt violence and accept past peace agreements. The freeze means salaries for 160,000 government workers have largely gone unpaid.

Mr Kennedy said the UN programme was not trying to replace the Palestinian Authority, but he added: "Obviously the longer the current situation continues, with further deterioration, a lack of salaries, people on strike, continued military conflict on both sides, [the] further [the] weakening of the Palestinian Authority and its institutions."

The Quartet has proposed that Israel begin passing on the tax revenues it owes via a system called the temporary international mechanism, which channels money to the office of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, a leader of the more moderate Fatah party, and not directly to the rival Hamas government. But so far Israel is withholding the revenues.

In the past year the UN said there had been a 40% increase in the number of barriers and checkpoints across the West Bank. In addition, there have been continued closures of the crossing points for people and goods out of Gaza. Under an agreement negotiated last November, Israel was to open up the main crossing points to relieve the economic crisis. But the crossings have in effect been closed, with Israel citing security concerns.

On top of the economic crisis and the restrictions on movement, in recent weeks talks between Mr Abbas and Hamas to form a coalition government appear to have entirely broken down.