And they don’t even think there’s a whiff of irony in it:
Palestinian lawmaker Saeb Erekat, a confidant of Abbas, welcomed the EU initiative, but expressed disappointment that Palestinian workers would not receive salaries.
“Any help that will alleviate this human catastrophe is very much needed. But I had hoped that the mechanism would involve the salaries of the 160,000 workers. We don’t want to turn our society into a welfare society,” he said.
So, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars is not welfare if you take the money and turn it into salaries.
Schmuck.
160,000 civil servants in a ‘nation’ of about 3 million. What is this Washington D.C.?
Does anyone know what tangible goods the Pals produce?
Outside of getting welfare grants for having babies, and being paid for nominal “police work” by the state, do the Pals produce anything? What will happen once they achieve their Statehood? I see no end to the cycle of violence, Pals are jealous of Israel for being to able to accomplish so much on a once barren portion of land, while they waste away generation after generation waiting for the Jews to leave.
The Philistines are nothing if not a welfare society. What do the Gazans produce now that the Israeli greenhouses have been leveled TWICE? The soft drink bottling operation in Gaza shut down several years ago, AFAIR. The olive oil orchards of the West Bank were originally planted by Jewish settlers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, not earlier (the Ottoman Empire used to heavily tax the trees; the Arabs cut theirs down). So, what sustains Philistine society if not foreign aid/welfare?
chsw
I like the name you call them “Philistines,” from now on, that is what I will also use.
The rest of the Arabs do not trust these schnorers and refuse to grant them citizenship, and its NOT because they want to keep the Israeli/Phiilistine conflict open.
Palestine is the Latin term for the area the Philistines used to rule (present Lebanon, and the Mediterranean Gaza and Israeli coast) which was extended to all of the land after the Romans tried to obliterate the memory of the Jews having their own land after the Second Jewish War.
The application of Philistines to that particular group of Arabs is appropriate because – 1. They describe themselves as “Filistin.” – 2. They push their children into combat and combat areas; the ancient Philistines practiced child sacrifice. – 3. In the West, “Philistine” is a term used for the barbaric, uncultured, or illiterate. While most of the present Philistines are literate, they are barbaric by attacking children and other civilians, and the only culture they may have is that growing upon them.
chsw