Ian Black, Middle East editor for the Guardian UK, reported on Friday April 13, 2007 the results of a recently completed Oxfam study of conditions in the Palestinian territories. In spite of claims that some relief to the Palestinian Authority was forthcoming, conditions are reportedly worse now that when this humanitarian crisis was declared months ago.
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are suffering `devastating` humanitarian consequences as incomes plummet, debts mount and essential services face meltdown, Oxfam says in a report that calls for an immediate end to the international financial blockade of the Hamas-led government.
With poverty up by 30% in 2006 and previously unknown levels of factional violence on the streets, the Palestinian territories – occupied by Israel in the 1967 war – risk becoming `a failed state` if the punitive measures are not lifted, the charity warns.
Palestinians were already struggling to make ends meet when key donors, including the US, the EU and Canada, suspended direct aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) in April 2006. The move came in response to the victory of the Islamist movement Hamas in parliamentary elections. Israel halted the transfers of tax and customs revenue it owed to the PA shortly afterwards.
Hamas still refuses to recognize Israel, to renounce violence, or to accept existing peace agreements, the first, a red herring, the second, to relinquish all resistance to the 40 year long Israeli military occupation, and the third, a one sided demand from a country show to intentions of complying with UN Resolutions such as 242/338 or 194 concerning the more than 5 million Palestinian refugees living in camps around the Middle East.
By contrast, Hamas has hinted recently toward taking a more pragmatic approach and largely observed a strict ceasefire for the past two years. Last month, in Saudi Arabia, Hamas agreed to join President Mahmoud Abbas in forming a national unity government, which did initiate moves to ease the boycott.
That ease, however, has not reached the people in need, and many believe that much of the funding is intended to bolster Abbas’ Fatah faction to keep Hamas in check rather than to relieve poverty. None of it is apparently going into relaxing the crisis. Even then, the Palestinian Authority is presently operating on a quarter of the financing its needs monthly to maintain its activities.
An estimated one million people depend on incomes paid to 160,000 government employees.
Oxfam reported that 46% of Palestinians now do not have enough food to meet their needs; that the number of people in deep poverty (defined as those living on less than 50 cents a day) nearly doubled in 2006 to over one million; and that incomes of PA workers had fallen to 40% of their normal levels. A November 2006 poll of government workers showed an increase in poverty from 35% to 71%.
Salam Fayyad, the highly regarded Palestinian finance minister, said in Brussels on Wednesday that the boycott had `devastated` the Palestinian economy.
In contrast with the US and Israel, which have looked aside away from the humanitarian disaster occurring, Norway has agreed to resume financial assistance, while Russia, France, and other EU governments are considering renewing transfers in order to improve the lives of Palestinians. The US and Israel, in a year of one miscalculation after another, have remained recalcitrant, in spite repeated indications that the blockade has proved counter-productive.
Oxfam argues that it is legitimate for donors to attach conditions to how their money is spent, but not to advance a political agenda.
The view of Oxfam is that if aid was used corruptly or to fund terrorism then and only then should it be suspended.
“International aid should be provided impartially on the basis of need, not as a political tool to change the policies of a government,” said Oxfam`s international executive director, Jeremy Hobbs. “Oxfam opposes violence against civilians and supports Israel`s right to exist alongside a viable and independent Palestinian state. But suspending aid – and withholding tax revenue in violation of international agreements – is not an ethical or effective way to achieve these outcomes. And in this case, it hasn’t worked. Instead, parents have been driven into debt, children taken out of classrooms and whole families deprived of access to medicine and healthcare.”
Oxfam is no doubt appalled at the conditions created for the Palestinians by two of the allegedly most civilized and modern countries in the world. Democracies? Not in my book. I didn’t vote for creating a humanitarian catastrophe and I detest that it is being intentionally done in my name.
Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2055813,00.html
