8 Million Iraqis Need Urgent Aid: UN

Wednesday, 18 April 2007

The United Nations warned on Tuesday, April 17, that nearly eight million Iraqis were in dire need of aid, while international relief groups urged world countries, particularly war allies Washington and London, to accommodate millions of Iraqis fleeing their violence-ravaged country.
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"Up to eight million Iraqi civilians are in urgent need of humanitarian relief," UN humanitarian chief John Holmes told a conference on Iraq's displacement crisis in Geneva, reported Agence France Presse (AFP).
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"That is around four million more than those who are internally or externally displaced."

There are also four million Iraqi refugees and displaced people, about 2 million in Syria and Jordan and 1.9 million inside the war-torn country.

Holmes asserted that millions of people are facing "a basic survival crisis" in oil-rich Iraq, urging the world to shoulder its responsibility towards traumatized Iraqis.

"Iraq is not just a deeply controversial political and security issue, but a profound and no doubt lasting humanitarian crisis affecting millions of civilians."

A poll conducted jointly by ABC News, the BBC, and German TV network ARD showed on Monday, March 19 that four year after the invasion, two-thirds of Iraqis see a gloomy picture for their future and have lost all confidence in their "liberators".

It found that basic necessities were lacking in Iraq, with 88 percent of respondents saying the availability of electricity was either "quite bad" or "very bad".

About 69 percent gave similar responses for the availability of clean water, and 88 percent for the availability of driving or cooking fuel.

The UN Development Program (UNDP) and an Iraqi government agency said on Sunday, February 18, that a third of Iraq's 26 million people live in poverty.

It added that the living standards of Iraqis have been deteriorating after a thriving economy in the 1970s and 80s.

Open Borders

In a related development, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged world countries Tuesday to keep their borders open to the growing flood of Iraqi refugees.

"I hope this conference will galvanize international support to provide them with more protection and assistance and I hope it will mobilize resources in establishing much needed protection space," Ban said in a video message.

"For neighboring countries this means keeping borders open and upholding the principle of no forced return," he elaborated.

Some 800,000 Iraqis have fled their homes since February 2006, according to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Up to 50,000 Iraqis their country every month.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the World's largest relief agency, praised Syria and Jordan for generous reception to Iraqis refugees.

But it warned that infrastructures in those countries have reached their limits.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned Tuesday that some of Iraq's neighbors were "closing off escape routes" for refugees by introducing restrictions, including a seven-billion-dollar high-tech barrier Saudi Arabian was building on the border.

About 95 percent of fleeing Iraqis remain in the Middle East, but the number of Iraqis reaching industrialized countries, mainly Europe, surged by 77 percent (22,200) in 2006, according to UNHCR data.

The US-based HRW singled out the US and Britain for harsher criticism.

"The United States and the United Kingdom bear a particular responsibility to help people displaced in and out of Iraq," said Bill Frelick, refugee director at HRW.

"They undertook a war that has directly caused thousands of deaths, widespread fear and suffering, and forced displacement."

AMSI Net- Agencies

Even as Africa Hungers, Policy Slows Delivery of U.S. Food Aid

April 7, 2007

MULONDO, Zambia — Traveling to school in wobbly dugout canoes, Munalula Muhau and her three cousins, 7- and 8-year-olds whose parents had died from AIDS, held onto just one possession: battered tin bowls to receive their daily ration of gruel.

Within weeks, those rations, provided by the United Nations World Food Program, are at risk of running out for them and 500,000 other paupers, including thousands of people wasted by AIDS who are being treated with American-financed drugs that make them hungrier as they grow healthy.

“Not to put too fine a point on it,” said Jeffrey Stringer, an American doctor who runs a nonprofit group treating more than 50,000 Zambians with AIDS, “but it will result in the death of some patients.”

By CELIA W. DUGGER

--MORE--

Pakistan's $4.2 Billion 'Blank Check' for U.S. Military Aid

After 9/11, funding to country soars with little oversight

By Nathaniel Heller, Sarah Fort and Marina Walker Guevara
Data analysis by Ben Welsh

WASHINGTON, March 27, 2007 — In the three years after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, U.S. military aid to Pakistan soared to $4.2 billion, compared to $9.1 million in the three years before the attacks — a 45,000 percent increase — boosting Pakistan to the top tier of countries receiving this type of funding.

More than half of the new money was provided through a post-9/11 Defense Department program — Coalition Support Funds — not closely tracked by Congress.

--MORE--

Pakistan's $4.2 Billion 'Blank Check' for U.S. Military Aid

After 9/11, funding to country soars with little oversight

By Nathaniel Heller, Sarah Fort and Marina Walker Guevara
Data analysis by Ben Welsh

WASHINGTON, March 27, 2007 — In the three years after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, U.S. military aid to Pakistan soared to $4.2 billion, compared to $9.1 million in the three years before the attacks — a 45,000 percent increase — boosting Pakistan to the top tier of countries receiving this type of funding.

More than half of the new money was provided through a post-9/11 Defense Department program — Coalition Support Funds — not closely tracked by Congress.

--MORE--

Poor Iraq. First the lies and now, even worse: more help

After years of deceit, we are expected to believe things are getting better. What this country really needs is to be left alone

Simon Jenkins
Wednesday March 21, 2007
The Guardian

We are bid to celebrate the fourth birthday of a lie. In 2003, they lied about Iraq's weapons arsenal. They lied about Saddam Hussein's "imminent threat" to Britain. Some of them lied that he was involved in 9/11. Today, steeped in the psychology of denial, they lie that things are really fine, are getting better, are better than before, are on the turn. There might have been mistakes, but there was no Great Mistake.

What of those who pretended not to lie, who slunk to the back of the room, said it was not their department, "trusted Tony", did what they were told, kept their heads down? This was the Downing Street set that covered their lies by jeering at critics and boasting they were so clever they could "write their own narrative". They hired Hutton and Butler to "handle the truth", which they carefully "did not kill but did not strive, officiously to keep alive".

Britons should not celebrate the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Celebration is for those lucky Iraqis entitled to feel genuinely better for four years of freedom from Saddam, the salutary boon to the otherwise calamitous affliction visited on their country. The important anniversary is not that of the past but of the future. Can March 2008 see five years of western intervention finally reversed and a silver lining appear on the black cloud of Mesopotamia?

The "surge" programme initiated last month by General Petraeus in Baghdad is the first intelligent thing the Americans have done in four years. By swamping neighbourhoods, monitoring entry, patrolling streets and giving personal protection to residents and tradesmen, troops are able to restore some order to portions of the city. Petraeus is replacing vigilantes, militias and corrupt police with his own soldiers. He cannot reverse the ethnic cleansing that is fast partitioning Baghdad into Sunni and Shia quarters, but he can stabilise what has occurred. He can fortify the ghettos.

After four years of disorder there can be little hope that such security might last. On Day 1 it might have reassured and stabilised Baghdad. On Day 1,460 it is too late. Iraq is gripped by the most rudimentary street-based gang warfare, in which security lies not in soldiers but in families, guns, walls, streets, barricades and only faces you can recognise. To call this a "civil war" is pointless, a misnomer. It is Guelphs and Ghibellines out of the Corleone mafia.

The Americans cannot possibly find tens of thousands of troops needed to police every block in Baghdad for months, let alone years. That Petraeus had to bring Kurdish peshmergas down from the north to support his surge speaks volumes of the uselessness of the Iraqi army and police. Embedded journalists visiting bases in Sadr City and elsewhere report that militias are simply waiting for the Americans to leave. It makes a change for Americans to be protecting Iraqis, after two years of pretending to train the Iraqi army. But the most the surge can do is give some Iraqi neighbourhoods a breathing space and Washington a few nice pictures. The Iraq police, that fine flower of Pentagon nation-building, is beyond parody as a plausible force of law and order.

Turning the armed gangs into some sort of disciplined corps over the next year holds the key to civil security in Iraq. For the 2 million Iraqis in internal and external exile to return to active economic life requires them to feel safe in their homes and streets. Foreigners cannot guarantee that, nor can any national army or police. They are not trusted. The coming year must see parleys between local commanders, sheikhs and religious leaders, neighbourhood alliances, deals and treaties. Such crude life-and-death negotiations will be the only shreds of civil autonomy left to the Iraqis after four years of occupation, all that is left to them with which to rebuild their civic institutions.

The greatest fallacy of the coming year is that America or Britain might have any role to play in making March 2008 happier than 2007. While American search-and-destroy patrols roam Anbar province, al-Qaida cells will continue to recruit insurgents from abroad and foment sectarian hatred. While American tanks crash down streets and shoot up villages, they brutalise all they touch. The arrogance that only by staying can we ensure that "things get better" or that "civil war is averted" is now beyond obscenity. There may be an embassy to protect or an airport to defend. But the presence of foreign troops on Iraq's streets and Iraq's soil is a humiliation and a provocation alike. They are in occupation but not in power.

Whether or not Iraq is now progressively "partitioned" is largely a matter of terms. It has not been a unitary state for 10 years and is certainly not so today. It is a nation of a thousand neighbourhoods, each with degrees of anarchic sovereignty. The 2005 constitution, recently refashioned, divided up Iraq's oil wealth on reasonably fair terms.

Different legal codes are likely to be introduced for Kurdish, Sunni and Shia regions, with women repressed in the south. But even then some vague confederacy may survive the Iraqi craving for nationhood.

Economies recover, the more quickly the sooner they are left in peace. The hoodlums and gangsters now rich on American aid will harness the oil exports and eventually find a vested interest in protecting infrastructure and utilities. Religious segregation will enable the ghettos to feel more secure. Business will emerge from the bottom up, and doctors, teachers and merchants will start to move back from Amman and Damascus, once they hear that their old homes are safe and the Mahdists and Badrists are confined to barracks. Economic activity will return to the streets, as it has done to Beirut.

The one thing that would speed this day is for everyone just to leave Iraq alone. Last week, the opposite happened. A nightmare convocation of 13 nations, including Americans, Britons, Russians, French, Syrians, Iranians, Chinese, Saudis, Jordanians and Egyptians, piled into Baghdad to congratulate each other on their courage in descending amid the carnage and declare their eagerness to help Iraq. They talked trade, security, borders, aid, oil, refugees and working groups galore. They patted each other on the back and went home. Poor Iraq, I thought. First the lies and now, even worse, they must suffer more help.

simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk

Poll: Forty percent of American voters believe the Israel Lobby has been a key factor in going to war in Iraq and now confronting Iran

Related

Israel, U.S. begin discussions on renewal of foreign aid package

The Bush administration this week asked Congress for $2.4 billion in financial aid for Israeli security needs, the highest amount possible under America's current agreement with Israel.
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Question: Do you strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree that the work of the Israel lobby on Congress and the Bush administration has been a key factor for going to war in Iraq and now confronting Iran?

Method: Conducted by Zogby International of 1,036 likely voters from 10/10/06 through 10/12/06.

The Results:

Strongly agree	16%	Agree	39%
Somewhat agree	23%
Somewhat disagree	18%	Disagree	40%
Strongly disagree	22%
Not sure	22%

Comments:

A new poll commissioned by the Council for the National Interest Foundation shows that a significant number of Americans are wary of the power of the Israel lobby, and believe it is behind the invasion of Iraq and the current belligerent tone of the White House and Congress toward Iran.

The poll, which was carried out by Zogby International, reveals that 39% of the American public "agree" or "somewhat agree" that "the work of the Israel lobby on Congress and the Bush administration has been a key factor for going to war in Iraq and now confronting Iran." However, a similar number, 40%, "strongly disagreed" or "somewhat disagreed" with this position. Some 20% of the public, or more than one in five, were not sure.

The poll suggests that the espionage charges against two employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the publicity given to a new study of the power of the Israel lobby by two mainstream academic professors has had an affect on people's awareness of the lobby.

The academic study, done by Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard University, was published in the London Review of Books in March 2006, and was the subject of a recent debate at Peter Cooper Union that included Professor Mearsheimer, Prof. Rashid Khalidi (Columbia University), and Prof. Tony Judt (New York University) and three influential pro-Zionists, Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross, and Shlomo Ben-Ami.

The poll's details show that 46% of Democrats tended to believe that the lobby was influential in the decision to go to war in Iraq while 45% of Republicans tended to believe it was not.

Along religious lines, while Protestants tended to be evenly divided on the role of the Israel Lobby in the Iraq invasion, 49% of Catholics tended to see the lobby's hand in the invasion, while 77% of Jewish Americans overwhelming disagreed with the premise. Among ethnic groups, Hispanics (53%) believed that the lobby's role was influential.

Among age groups, 50% of those between the ages of 18 and 29 agreed that the Israel lobby had a hand in forming the current pro-war policy. As one might expect, those who call themselves progressive (49%) or liberal (52%) also agreed in the role of the lobby, while "moderates" (42%) and "very conservative" (44%) people disagreed with the idea, as did a significant percentage of college graduates (44%).

Eugene Bird, president of CNI Foundation, commented about the poll, "It demonstrates the need for widening the circulation of information about the role of the Neocons and the pro-Israel lobby in the corridors of power during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003."

Some 1,035 people participated in the poll, which was conducted in every part of the country.

• Read the Zogby press release (Doc).
• Read the full, cross-tabulated results (PDF).

They need Salvation from Army

By JUAN GONZALEZ
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER


Dayna Price and Princess Usanga, tenants of Salvation Army building at Gramercy Park, are getting kicked out by the top service organization, which plans to sell building.

Salvation Army plans to put Parkside Evangeline, at Gramercy Park, and Ten-Eyck Troughton, on E. 39th St., up for sale, which means residents must go.


The Salvation Army, the second-largest charity in America, is quietly evicting nearly 200 women, many of them elderly and low-income, from a pair of 18-story Manhattan buildings.
Tenant leaders at the two single-room occupancy hotels, the Ten Eyck-Troughton Residence on E. 39th St. and the Parkside Evangeline at Gramercy Park, say officials from the charity have been harassing them for months and have already frightened many long-term residents into moving out.

On Tuesday, lawyers for the charity hand-delivered 30-day eviction notices as a prelude to selling the buildings.

State Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan), a former tenant advocate, says the Salvation Army is callously trying to cash in on Manhattan's sizzling real estate market. She claims the group is taking advantage of the charity's exemption from rent-stabilization laws. Those laws would normally give tenants certain protections from eviction in a building sale.

The clear implication is that the Salvation Army is being downright greedy.

"That's a very negative way of looking at a service organization," said Laura DeBuys, director of communications for the Salvation Army of Greater New York. "We're going to redeploy our assets and move them to where they can do the most good."

The 276-unit Gramercy Park building could go for more than $100 million, while the larger Ten Eyck building is expected to fetch a slightly lower price.

The buildings were originally donated to the Salvation Army decades ago specifically to provide housing for women of modest income. Many of the residents are working women who pay between $1,000 and $1,200 a month for a room, with tenants sharing common bathrooms for each floor.

"We're all being harassed," said Princess Usanga, president of the tenants association at the Parkside. "Some of these women have been here for 20 and 30 years. Where will they go?"

You would think the charity had enough money, considering they got a $1.5 billion grant a few years ago from Joan Kroc, widow of McDonald's magnate Ray Kroc. The money was earmarked to build 25 community centers around the country, DeBuys said.

But now the Salvation Army says it must raise more money to operate those centers, one of which will be on Staten Island.

New York is notorious for having some ruthless landlords, but several housing advocates said this week they have rarely seen the kind of tactics used by the Salvation Army.

About 8 p.m. Wednesday, for example, Ellie Van Savage heard a loud knock at the door of her tiny rented room in the Ten Eyck Residence for Women.

Van Savage opened the door to find the building's manager and four total strangers standing in her doorway.

One of the strangers - a Salvation Army lawyer - handed her a 30-day eviction notice. Another stranger who was carrying a video camera then proceeded, without uttering a word, to film Van Savage receiving the notice.

"I was totally shocked and shaken by the whole thing," Savage said yesterday.

The same day, nearly 200 other women at the Ten Eyck and the Parkside Evangeline Residence were confronted with the same knock on the door, the same 30-day eviction notice, and the same Fellini-like stranger with a video camera.

Michelle Leone also got a nighttime visit. She's a U.S. Navy veteran battling cancer.

"I was sick most of last year so the Salvation Army wouldn't accept me in any of its other residences without any income," she said last night. "I can't sleep worrying about being homeless."

The charity relocated some of the oldest residents to another SRO it owns on the upper West Side, but has offered no relocation assistance to most of the women.

"We're dealing with each resident on an individual basis," DeBuys said, but she refused to explain what kind of help the charity was offering.

"They fund-raise at Christmastime to prevent people from being evicted from their homes, and here they are evicting all these women themselves," Krueger said yesterday.

Originally published on January 19, 2007

US accused of using aid to sway votes in UN security council

Heather Stewart, economics correspondent
Sunday December 17, 2006
The Observer

The US uses its aid budget to bribe those countries which have a vote in the United Nations security council, giving them 59 per cent more cash in years when they have a seat, according to research by economists.

Kofi Annan, the outgoing UN Secretary-General, expressed his frustration at the power the US wields over the UN in his parting speech last week. In a detailed analysis of 50 years of data, Harvard University's Ilyana Kuziemko and Eric Werker provide the clearest evidence yet that money is used by the council's richest member to grease the wheels of diplomacy.

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Anti-poverty campaigners reacted angrily to the findings. 'Aid should go to the people who need it, not as a political sweetener,' said Duncan Green of Oxfam. 'In recent years most rich countries have been making progress on this, but showering bribes on developing countries just because they sit on the UN security council is clearly a step backwards.'

Charities often complain that the US uses its aid as a political tool, and this new evidence of what the authors call 'vote-buying' will raise fears about whether the surge of aid money that was promised at last year's Gleneagles G8 summit will be fairly spent.

Ten of the 15 seats on the security council are filled for two years at a time, by rotation. Kuziemko and Werker found that, in years when they have a seat, countries get an average of more than £8m extra in foreign aid from the US.

'I don't think it's surprising this goes on; but I wonder whether countries being aware that it goes on might have some salutary effect,' Kuziemko said.

Countries with a security council seat also receive an average of £500m extra from the UN itself, most of it channelled through its children's fund, Unicef, over which the US traditionally has been able to exert control. President George Bush recently provoked controversy by appointing a close political ally, former Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, as Unicef's chief.

When there is a controversial vote in prospect, the premium for countries with a security council seat is even higher. US aid surges by as much as 170 per cent, bringing in a £23m windfall, while the UN spends an extra £4m.

'Some countries serve on the security council during relatively calm years, whereas others, by chance, are fortunate enough to serve during a year in which a key resolution is debated and their vote becomes more valuable,' the authors say. They highlight controversial resolutions over issues including the Korean War, Suez, the Falklands and Kosovo - though the period they study does not include the notorious 'second resolution' over the invasion of Iraq, which never came to a vote.

David Woodward, of the New Economics Foundation, who is writing about the paper for a forthcoming edition of the Lancet, said the findings suggest the UN should be radically reformed.

'As long as one country wields such influence, there will always have a degree of control over what goes on, and they will be likely to abuse that.'

'The biggest obstacle, in both the IMF and the World Bank, as well as the UN, is that the countries that now have power can use that power to block reform - and they do.'

Documents
Volcker commission report on UN oil-for-food

Useful links
UN website
Wikipedia: Kofi Annan

SOS Children's Villages - USA - Conflict breaks out near SOS Childr

Conflict breaks out near SOS Children's Village in south Sudan

12/12/2006 - Fighting has broken out in recent weeks in the area surrounding SOS Children's Village Malakal, located in the war-torn southern region of Sudan, where warring factions are mounting strikes against each other with tanks and guns.

Ali Mahdi, director of SOS Children's Villages Sudan, said that although SOS Children's Village Malakal is not likely to become a direct target, it is in close proximity the Malakal airport, one of the areas of heavy fighting. Most of the fighting involves ground troops, and there are currently no air strikes in the vicinity of the children's village. However, there is a threat that some of the fighters may hide or take refuge in the SOS Children's Village, which would make it a direct target for opposing fighters.

Although the security situation in Malakal is worsening, it is not likely that SOS Children's Villages Sudan will evacuate the village and move the children to Khartoum. It would be too difficult to transport the children without compromising their security. Currently, SOS Children's Village Malakal is not facing any severe shortages of essential goods. Mr. Mahdi is very concerned nonetheless.

"The deterioration of the security situation in Malakal is affecting all aspects of life: in markets, shops and schools. The government offices are closed and that means difficulty in getting goods to Malakal," said Mahdi. "We transferred some food to the children's village for storage, and we sent the village director some money to stock up, but we don't know what will happen in the future."

SOS Children's Villages Sudan will provide emergency relief for the local community, such as cholera medication and emergency hospital units for the children's hospital in Malakal. There is already an SOS Emergency Relief Programme in the area, which will be extended with the renewed conflict.

Conflict in Darfur

Conflict has also flared up again in the unstable Darfur region of Sudan. SOS Children's Villages Sudan is currently operating an emergency relief programme in the Abu Shok Refugee Camp in Al-Fashir. The SOS Emergency Relief Programme includes three psycho-social centres that provide counselling and therapy services for all family members, as well as training and awareness sessions for mothers. Ali Mahdi remains cautiously optimistic and reports that even though the situation in Darfur is bleak, it is important that SOS Children’s Villages Sudan continue the project.

With the current conflict, SOS psychologists and social workers have moved out of their residences in the guest house in Al-Fashir, and have found accommodations with co-workers from the area. Communication is very difficult between SOS Children’s Villages in Khartoum and the emergency relief programme in Darfur. The Abu Shok refugee camp is now under curfew in the evening and it is dangerous for anyone to leave the camp.

Related Links:

SOS Children's Villages in Sudan

Withholding funds from Palestinians 'criminal': Carter

Related

US Congress approves "screw the Palestinians" bill...
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Canada's withholding funds from Palestinians 'criminal': Carter

Last Updated: Saturday, December 9, 2006 | 12:20 AM ET

CBC News

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter says the decision by Canada and other nations to withhold money from the Hamas-led Palestinian government is "a crime."

Israel and western donors such as Canada have demanded Hamas renounce violence, recognize Israel's right to exist and accept past peace agreements. Hamas, which is committed to Israel's destruction despite its stated offer of a long-term truce, rejects the conditions.

"It's a crime against the people of Palestine," Carter told CBC News in an exclusive interview from New York.

"For Canada and others to punish the Palestinian people because they voted for their candidates of choice, I think is literally a crime."

The statesman and prolific author defended his harsh criticism of Israeli policy in his latest book, saying he hopes to erode the "impenetrable wall" that blocks the U.S. public from seeing the plight of Palestinians.

'Apartheid' questioned

Jewish groups have launched petitions criticizing Carter's use of the word "apartheid" — the system of legal racial separation once used in South Africa — to describe Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

Continue Article

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"There is in many ways a much more serious deprivation of human rights among the Palestinians because of this ill-advised policy than even there was in South Africa," he told CBC News.

"I deplore the Palestinian suicide bombings as much or more than anything than I do what Israel has done against the Palestinian people. It's horrible on both sides and should be eliminated. But you have to look at the facts."

He said that by the time Hamas was elected in January, the Palestinian authority had already been brought to bankruptcy and couldn't pay police officers, firefighters and government employees.

Carter also said the Israeli response to the capturing of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah last summer was "excessive beyond what was needed."

Carter, who has led efforts to monitor several elections in the Palestinian Authority since leaving office, said bringing peace to the Middle East is the most important commitment in his public life.

His top-selling book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, has been criticized by pro-Israel groups and led to the resignation, announced this week, of Kenneth Stein, a Carter Center fellow and a longtime Carter adviser.

Carter's latest book has drawn stern rebukes from current Democratic leaders such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean.

"With all due respect to former president Carter, he does not speak for the Democratic party on Israel," Pelosi said in a statement.

Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, said he intended the book to provoke debate on Israeli policy that has been stifled by the news media and others, who have been "almost unanimously silent," and lamented the lack of debate over Israeli policy in the U.S.

"It's almost a universal silence concerning anything that might be critical of current policies of the Israeli government," he said.

The book follows the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, starting with Carter's 1977-1980 presidency and the Camp David peace accord he negotiated between Israel and Egypt.

With files from the Associated Press

US Congress approves "screw the Palestinians" bill

Related

Withholding funds from Palestinians 'criminal': Carter

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US Congress approves bill to 'isolate' Hamas Thu Dec 7, 11:51 PM ET

The US Congress approved a bill barring US aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority as long as the Islamist movement refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist and renounce violence.

The legislation also calls on Hamas, which won control of the parliament in January elections, to recognize past peace agreements with Israel.

The US House of Representatives passed the bill, already approved by the Senate, on a hand vote.

The bill forbids visas for members of the Palestinian Authority as long as it is led by Hamas or as long as the radical movement refuses to accept the US Congress's demands.

The legislation, which now goes to President George W. Bush for his signature, allows, however, the continuation of humanitarian assistance and other aid permitting moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, of the Fatah faction, to continue his work.

The bill is a slightly different version from a text the House backed in May that was opposed by the Bush administration. The new text allows the administration to bypass the interdiction in the name of US national security.

Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (news, bio, voting record) said Hamas's electoral victory in January "was a tremendous blow to US efforts to bring peace and security to the region."

"The US must isolate the Hamas-led government financially and diplomatically through implementing this bill," she said.

International aid to the Palestinians was partly suspended following the Hamas election victory, plunging the Palestinian territories into deep crisis.

The so-called Middle East quartet -- United States, Russia, United Nations and European Union -- has set three conditions on Hamas, which it deems a terrorist organization, for the resumption of aid: recognition of the state of Israel and past Israeli-Palestinian accords, and renunciation of violence.

U.S., Iraqi troops seal off Haditha - residents

08 Dec 2006 17:44:18 GMT

More BAGHDAD, Dec 8 (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi troops have sealed off the city of Haditha in Anbar province, in the heartland of the Sunni insurgency, and have warned residents to keep off the streets and stay indoors, officials and residents said on Friday.

The U.S. military said troops were manning checkpoints and building a sand berm to crack down on insurgents in Haditha and in neighbouring Barwana. It said U.S. troops were protecting "the population and good citizens of Haditha".

But residents in Haditha, which is at the centre of a U.S. military investigation into the deaths of two dozen civilians in November 2005 by U.S. Marines, said electricity has been cut off and that no food is being allowed into the city.

Schools have been forced to close, they said.

While the U.S. military has acknowledged it shut down electrical power in the area during recovery efforts following the death of four U.S. troops last week when a Marine helicopter came down, it has blamed current power losses on "maintenance requirements" at a nearby dam.

"This is the sixth day Haditha is without electricity," one resident said on Friday.

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.

UN: LARGEST EVER EMERGENCY HUMANITARIAN APPEAL FOR PALESTINIANS

UNITED NATIONS

NATIONS UNIES

For immediate release 7 December 2006

LARGEST EMERGENCY HUMANITARIAN APPEAL FOR PALESTINIANS

JERUSALEM, 7 December 2006 – Twelve UN agencies together with 14 NGOs operating in
the occupied Palestinian territory today launched an emergency Appeal for $453.6
million to help meet increasing Palestinian humanitarian needs in 2007. It is the largest appeal for emergency humanitarian assistance ever launched in the occupied Palestinian territory and the third biggest in the world.

“We have been compelled to launch a larger Appeal in the face of the increased need
among the Palestinian population”, said Kevin Kennedy, the UN’s Humanitarian
Coordinator. “It is particularly aimed at assisting the most vulnerable Palestinians,
including children who make up about half of the population”.

“Two-thirds of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are now living in
poverty. Growing numbers of people are unable to cover their daily food needs and
agencies report that basic services such as health care and education are deteriorating and set to worsen much further”, he added.

The rapid deterioration is linked with the fiscal crisis facing the Palestinian Authority that has been unable to pay its 160,000 staff, on whom another one million family members depend for support. In addition, Palestinians are subject to increasing restrictions on their freedom of movement, limiting their access to jobs, markets, health services and schools.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen Koning AbuZayd says, “The loss of life, livelihood and security in the oPt is most distressing. It is increasingly difficult for people to cope in such a volatile and unpredictable environment. UNRWA strives to provide services that enhance the human potential of the refugee population. However, we must go beyond this crisis to be able to help people regain the hope and optimism required for building a stable future. Providing the support outlined in this appeal will be a large step in the right direction.”

Most of the 2007 emergency funding sought will go towards addressing poverty through
emergency employment programmes, and expanding food and agricultural aid. Agencies
will also support the Palestinian institutions that deliver health, education and psychosocial services. This year’s Appeal also includes a new protection sector in response to the increased death toll and vulnerability of Palestinian civilians.

“Humanitarian assistance can cushion a deteriorating situation, but it ultimately cannot stop the decline,” said David Shearer, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). “Ultimately only a political settlement can generate a significant improvement,” he added.

“We are anxious to help the most needy maintain their dignity and have income. But the humanitarian community is not in a position to provide the full range services offered by the Palestinian Authority – and has no ambitions to do so”.
For more information please contact
Chris Gunness, UNSCO, 054-5-627-825
Allegra Pacheco OCHA – 0545-627-848
Johan Eriksson, UNRWA, 054-240-2632

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