Once again, the world has shown that the Palestinians need not uphold a single portion of their end of the Road Map, or any other agreement, for the world to fawn at their feet. The sum total of Palestinian Pledge Week: $7.4 billion dollars for the next three years. And what do they have to do for it?
Promise to be better.
What is Israel supposed to do? Why put her people at risk for the sake of the Palestinian economy. No, really.
World leaders at the conference urged Israel to ease limits on Palestinian movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, following up on a warning from the World Bank that without an easing of the sweeping physical and administrative restrictions donors may be wasting their money.
Oh, and Israel is also supposed to stop building houses for Israelis if the Palestinians deem them to be on Palestinian property. Never mind that no agreement regarding the borders of the Palestinian state has been reached, let alone hammered out. It’s Israel’s fault that the Palestinians are suffering. Because Israel shouldn’t be building the fence and manning the checkpoints that stopped the wave of suicide bombings that were coming sometimes two and three per day in the bloody, bloody spring of 2002.
I have not forgotten that spring. Neither have the Israelis. The world, however, has. And certainly the AP has no sense of history.
Israel has been reluctant to lift scores of roadblocks in the West Bank, many of them put there by the Israeli military amid the street violence and suicide bombings by Palestinian militants that followed collapse of the last peace talks seven years ago.
The restrictions have left the Palestinian economy, always dependent on international help, in much worse shape since then.
You see? It isn’t the suicide bombings that caused the problem. It’s the checkpoints that were put into place to stop the bombings.
Say, let’s take a look at the donors. Because you know, those Arab and Muslim nations—the ones who talk incessantly about their Palestinian “brothers” and who are the first to offer weapons and money for weapons, what are they pledging?
United States: $555 million for 2008, though about $400 million has not been approved by Congress.
Arab League members: $1.3 billion over three years, including $500 million from Saudi Arabia and $300 million each from United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.
European countries: more than $3 billion, including $650 million from the European Union alone in 2008, probably similar levels for 2009 and 2010.
Key European donors include Britain, $500 million for three years, pledged with conditions; Norway, $420 million over three years; Spain, $360 million over three years; France and Sweden, $300 million each over three years; and Germany, $290 million over three years.
Wow. Saudi Arabia pledged $500 million dollars over the next three years. That’s really generous from the state that produces 10 million barrels of oil per day, especially when oil is going for more than $90 a barrel. Wow, that’s more than half a day’s oil production pledged over the next three years! Holy cow, those Saudis couldn’t be more generous! And Kuwait too, gee!
The Saudi largesse towards their Palestinian brothers speaks volumes about how much they really care about helping the Palestinian economy. Probably about as much as they care about women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.
I take it you’re expressing outrage and not astonishment, Meryl. Nothing new here. What does the world require? From Jews, deeds. From their enemies, words.
Considering we are pledging lots of money to Hamas-ruled Gaza we don’t even require words from them, for Hamas still insists on Israel’s destructin and the genocide of the Jews.
I suspect the Muslims think of all this money they are receiving as jizya. The Euros and others pledging the money probably think of it as buying off people who would otherwise strike them with terrorism. Paying Danegeld is really stupid, deluded, and naive, but then a lot of the people in the upper reaches of the EU, the State Department, and outfits like the Quai d’Orsay and the British Foreign Office seem to be really stupid, deluded, and naive. And the more I see of Condi, the more she looks that way too. To analogize the situation of the Palis with that of American blacks under Jim Crow is idiotic, and gets the situation entirely backwards. It’s the Palis who are analogous with the night riders, and have been for decades.
If the rest of the world really wanted to make progress on peace there they would cut off the Palestinian Arabs completely. If they had to work or starve they would not have time to pursue the genocide of the Jews they so fervently desire. If they wanted to succeed they would finally have to make peace with Israel. But nobody has the brains to adopt this, the one chance to bring peace without a bloodbath. The Muslims will bring on a bloodbath, and the people donating money to the PA and Hamas are just encouraging this. Most of the blood will be Arab, by the way.
And if they preferred to starve instead of work to feed themselves, having been accustomed to receiving welfare and not working? Hey, it’s no scales off my sitz-platz.