Palestinian Finance Minister: We have to Stop Begging
My, my, who would have thought: a Palestinian minister who says that the Palestinians should stop begging, well, beg less that is, and, instead, should become self-sufficient. Meanwhile, he wants the West to help the PA out now, which is struggling financially.
I have said in the past that the West should not sponsor the PA until it recognizes Israel, but I am afraid that I have changed my mind. I’ve got a new proposal. What if we would promise the PA to help it out for the coming 2.5-3 years, until, say, January 1, 2010? If the PA wants us to continue doing so, it has to, by before mentioned date, officially recognize Israel, condemn terrorism, reform its educational system / rewrite its textbooks, this time without hate-filled propaganda in it, and, lastly, it has to negotiate with Israel and the West about lasting peace.
If it does not, the money flow will stop immediately. So, the PA can use its time in two ways: one, doing what we want it to do, two, becoming self-sufficient / talking other, non-Western countries into donating millions and millions of dollars every year.
Good idea?
Cross posted at my own blog.
20 Responses to “Palestinian Finance Minister: We have to Stop Begging”
Palestinian leaders are incorrigible. They do not care about their people. They want to keep them in perpetual miseries. So they can do their dirty politics.
These vile and populist Palestinian leaders vie each in empty rhetoric.
Do Palestinians realize that their children have not been able to go to school because of disturbances?
Do Palestinians realize that their import and export have come to standstill because of the closing of borders crashing with Egypt and Israel since June 25?
Do Palestinians realize that their fishing industry is suffering due Israeli blockade?
There has been no teaching except in the United Nations Relief and Works Agency schools
These are things, which require urgent attention.
There is no doubt all justice comes from God, who is its sole source; but if we knew how to receive so high an inspiration, we should need neither government nor laws.
If we give money to those people, it will be diverted (once more) to a combination of top officials’ pockets and the rest to purchase weapons to commit more criminal acts against Israel and Israelis as well as against each other.
I have to agree with DLS. Why should it take the Palestinian leaders 2.5-3 years to issue statements recognizing Israel’s right to exist and condemning terrorists? Those are things they could do today if they chose to. On the issue of textbooks and education, we could give time limits but the first two points should be non-negotiable and should be expected immediately.
And I don’t see how we could take a chance that the money would be diverted as DLS mentions.
The trouble with some carrot/stick approaches is that if you keep giving carrots you feed an enemy that you’re later going to have to have a VERY big stick to destroy. If there’s no evidence that the carrots are being accepted in the proper spirit, then all you are doing is prolonging the inevitable conflict.
C. Stanley said:
> The trouble with some carrot/stick approaches
> is that if you keep giving carrots you feed an
> enemy that you’re later going to have to have a
> VERY big stick to destroy. If there’s no evidence
> that the carrots are being accepted in the proper
> spirit, then all you are doing is prolonging the
> inevitable conflict.
To quote someone else who said this about Iran: To date, the Palestinians have enjoyed more carrots than Bugs Bunny! (Meanwhile, Israel keeps being struck with one stick after another, being asked to concede more, more, more…)
Pay attention to what CS said, when the issue of “dialogue” *gag* with the Syrians and Iranians is brought up once again. The Syrians have had a history of telling us whatever we want to hear, then continuing to do what they have been doing and want to do, while the Iranians misused the recent Iraq “stability” conference as many of us suspected it would, rather than be truly constructive.
No, not a good idea. They should get nothing whatsoever from the west. All they will do is use the money for terrorism.
The palestinians have already proven on numerous occasions they are untrustworthy. How many chances is the west and Israel going to give them?
Well, I understand the point you all are making, but I think that this might be the only way of getting the PA to cooperate. Listen, we cannot let the situation in Palestine deteriorate further – this will cause more terrorism, more victim mentality etc. We can also look at this as an opportunity.
One reason that is sometimes stated for giving carrots is that the recipient party has to know that we are serious about keeping our end of a bargain and that we are negotiating in good faith. Looking at one example, the NK ’94 agreement, we didn’t require NK to dismantle nuclear reactors until after the completion of the LWR’s that we promised, and we also made other promises that couldn’t be kept because the parties that needed to agree to these things weren’t on the same page (KEDO fell apart almost immediately and the US Congress didn’t agree with the provision to end sanctions and supply oil). I can agree with people who would say that NK then had reason to distrust us because we made promises we didn’t keep. It also seems quite obvious though that we didn’t get what we needed out of the arrangement either, and I have little faith that we would have if we had kept our part of the bargain.
It occurs to me that if the UN is to remain relevant at all, a viable role would be to provide oversight to such agreements and perhaps even provide an avenue for escrow of funds agreed upon. If there was trust in the neutrality of such a body (a big if when one considers the way the UN is currently viewed), then a hypothetical negotiation would include the US or other Western/developed nation placing funds into escrow which would be distributed to the other party according to an agreed upon schedule when certain benchmarks were met. That way the country that has made a commitment to embrace policy change in exchange for aid could feel more assured that the carrot would be there when conditions were met, and the nations that pledged financial resources would feel assured that they weren’t being milked for aid without getting anything in exchange. I have to wonder if such an arrangement might be possible between the Quartet and the Palestinians.
C. Stanley said:
> It occurs to me that if the UN is to remain relevant at all,
> a viable role would be to provide oversight to such
> agreements and perhaps even provide an avenue for
> escrow of funds agreed upon.
Do you mean like the Oil for Food program, which featured
UN corruption?
As I mentioned, trust in the UN would be difficult (and this might be an insurmountable problem). But since I don’t see any progress toward global stability or peace without an international body, my inclination would be to work toward reform of the UN (or if that’s not possible, then abandon it and start over).
The litany of failures and wrongs done by the Palestinians is absolutely true.
It is also true that Israel uses this litany to validate an unbednding and often harsh attitude.
The only trouble with an iron cast approach is that it is not working. Harsh punishment just leads to harsh revenge in a never ending cycle.
I believe that Israel would be better served by addressing the humanitarian suffering in a more nuanced way.
No matter who is at fault for what, today, now, Israel needs allies and the support of other nations. No one gets allegience just by demanding it. You have to work a bit at earning it.
Being seen as compassionate would not hurt Israel in any way. Being seen as bull-headed hurts Israel.
Appearance does matter.
The comment by AC was actually domajot speaking, I don’t know how I lost my identity.
It was said:
> Being seen as bull-headed hurts Israel.
Israel isn’t bull-headed. It constantly makes concessions to its enemies, concessions, concessions, concessions which are rewarded with more treaty or accord violations, terrorism, and hatred directed at it (while the critics say the concessions are insufficient, try to cast Israel is morally equivalent and equally culpable as its enemies, and even accuse Israel, the ever-conceding victim, of being the party in the wrong), while Israel’s “friends” frequently treat it the way the Czechoslovakia was treated by Britain and France in 1938. (That probably wouldn’t be if Israel had plenty of oil and gas reserves.)
DLS-
Let’s not throw evrything into one bag of concessions
vs betrayals.
Rather than debating who is the bad or good guy, I think progress won’t be made until all parties start thinking in terms of small, incremental steps of what strategically works for a specific problem.
Between agreeing to the Palestinians’ demand in toto and turning completely away from the humanitarian needs of the Palestinians, there lies a vast field of possibilites.
It would be an awful shame to forego the opportunities in the present in the name of past failures. That’s the mirror image of the tragedy of the Palestinians, that they could not approach their predicament in a pragmatic manner.
What exactly do you mean by ‘recognize’ Israel? Its “right to exist”, whatever that means? Its territorial claims?
Well MvdG, congratulations on being open and self-confident enough to admit you changed your mind.
I think the international community could actually learn something from Hezbollah of all sources here. When you want to give aid, you should give it personally, not just throw money at the problem.
PA needs textbooks; we write them text books and send them to them. We might need to be a bit careful here, not try to just copy US textbooks verbatum, but treat subjects like history carefully.
They need to manage their agencies? We send over (and pay the salaries of) trained political managers and help them do it.
They need to feed their people. We should have American citizens in American trucks delivering bags of grain and rice with US labels on them.
Now certainly our attitude then becomes extremely important, we have to seem humble, and have to have American personnel that can speak the local languages, and perhaps we would have to send in some other third party first like Spain or something to allow them enough time to accept the idea slowly.
This allows them to build a functioning, stable government, doesn’t allow them to funnel money into anything, be it their own pockets or terrorism, and shows them that we aren’t really a bunch of evil Satans after all.
Maybe one day you could even have Israelis drive the food trucks!
C. Stanley wrote:
> As I mentioned, trust in the UN would be
> difficult (and this might be an insurmountable
> problem). But since I don’t see any progress
> toward global stability or peace without an
> international body, my inclination would be to
> work toward reform of the UN (or if that’s not
> possible, then abandon it and start over).
There have been times when I have wondered if the UN should be relocated to Jerusalem and have the UN assume jurisdiction (and even effective ownership as well as control) over it so the two warring parties lose Jerusalem as an object of contention.
I have little faith in the UN — am too wise to have faith in any serious attempt at world government (that is a very realistic view, not the least bit conceited — as anyone who is awake knows), but could see it changed.
I would still have two bodies but work toward future development of all nations to First World status, at which point there wouldn’t be a need for an upper and lower body. For the new upper body, probably the OECD communities would be suitable as a starting point. The idea is that lesser developed nations, once they become developed and modern, would switch to the upper body. Eventually every nation would be that way and the lower body would then be dissolved.
[D]omajot said:
> Let’s not throw evrything into one bag
> of concessions vs betrayals.
Oh, Israel has been attacked without making any concessions, too.
*grin*
> Rather than debating who is the bad or good guy,
There is no real debate, anyway.
*grin*
> I think progress won’t be made until all parties
> start thinking in terms of small, incremental steps
> of what strategically works for a specific problem.
Israel has tried. For example, it abandoned Gaza while leaving structures intact. And the result?
What’s needed is for decent, normal, modern people to assume leadership on the Arab side. Israel is making some steps, such as with its security wall construction, implying a reliquishment of much of the Territories. (It has never been required to vacate all the Territories and all that is needed to establish proper boundaries is a civilized counterpart to Israel to sit down and decide where the boundaries should be.)
The Palestinian leadership is counter-productive (deserving of being attacked militarily when it supports terrorism deeper inside Israel as well as those rocket attacks, for example), and especially with its current silly refusal to recognize Israel’s existence. Israel needn’t do anything and so you’ll see an “Oriental” situation there (similar to Japan’s silence about its atrocities in the Far East, though this is for different reasons altogether), where as long as Israel’s enemies are hostile to it (or simply make it clear that any treaties are temporary truces only and any pushing back of Israel’s boundaries is merely incremental destruction of Israel) the few real refugees (those who were alive in 1946 — the descendents have no rights or legitimate claims whatsoever) will never be able to express any “right of return.” Instead, they’ll all die first still awaiting peaceful relations with Israel (and not getting them so long as their leaders remain hostile).
DLS-
In another contect, I already pointed out what was wrong with the
withdrawal from Gaza. It was done in a unilateral way, allowing Abbas no role and making him look like a weak fool standing on the sidelines. As I keep saying to both the US and Israel: shaming the enemy serves only self-gratification while it breeds resentment on the other side. Crowing, swaggering and showing off how much power you have over other’s lives is not good diplomacy.
For the present, it’s way too premature to even discuss the end-run questions of territorial borders and recognition.
What we have here is a humanitarian problem, and Israel could either do some good for itself by figuring out what it can safely do to ease the situation or it can walk away, to be followed by successive generations of newly inspired antagonists and critics.
I’m not talking about anything drastic, but being deaf, blind and mute is not helping.
Little steps can help in the meantime.
Michael,
Nothing will get a Hamas dominated PA to cooperate or concede. That having been said it is also equally unlikely that the Israelis will make any significant contribution to a peace process because they seem incapable of making any real movement on the issue of the settlements.