US proactively depriving Palestinians of aid from other people
Palestine-Israel-USA, Politics, 5/8/2006

Palestinian Finance Minister Omar Abdul Razeq has warned of a regional chaos and wave of violence if the US and Europe continued to impose a financial and humanitarian blockade on the Palestinian people.

Abdul Razeq pointed out that the Bush administration was thwarting the Hamas-led Palestinian government's efforts to transfer Arab and Islamic aid money into the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"We thought the crisis was being mitigated when we succeeded in procuring enough money to pay the salaries of our employees. But then the Americans bullied the banks, barring them from transferring the money to the occupied territories," said Abdul Razeq.

He said he did not know for sure when the government would pay the salaries of some 165,000 civil servants and public employees who had not received their dues for the past two months.

"The problem is no longer procuring the money from Arab and Muslim and other friendly donors, but how to transfer the money to beneficiaries." Abdul Razeq voiced bitterness at the fact that Arab banks in the region were vulnerable to American pressure.

He dismissed the suggestion that the government had no choice but to meet the West's conditions for lifting the current blockade on the Palestinians.

These conditions include recognizing Israel, abandoning armed resistance to the Israeli occupation and accepting outstanding agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

"Which Israel would they want us to recognize? Is it Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates? Israel with the Golan Heights? Israel with East Jerusalem? Israel with the settlements? I challenge them to tell me where Israel's borders lie." Asked about Iranian financial aid and whether the Hamas-led government was apprehensive about further alienating the West, Abdul Razeq said the Iranians were carrying out their moral and Islamic responsibilities toward their Palestinian brothers.

"The Iranians are our brothers. If the Americans don't like it, it is their problem. Besides, what are we supposed to do? Starve to death?" Abdu Razeq said the disintegration and collapse of the Palestinian government as a result of the Israeli-American blockade would have far-reaching ramifications in the region.

"There wouldn't be only a financial collapse, the entire system would collapse. There would also be a lot of violence and chaos in the region. In short, it is not only Hamas that would suffer, everyone would suffer." The Palestinian finance minister said he did not think the US and Israel were interested in seeing the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.

"My impression is that they want to see a weak Palestinian government that would budge to Israeli dictates and American pressure. They want a government that would give up Palestinian constants with regard to Al-Quds and the right of return for the refugees." "And the Palestinian people will not allow such a government to survive or even see light," Razeq said.

Meantime,The World Bank reported that countering the current Palestinian fiscal crisis and its potentially dangerous consequences requires the restoration of an adequate flow of budget funds. "This would permit regular public sector salary payments, thereby dampening the demand for additional humanitarian assistance, ensuring that public services were maintained and helping preserve the functionality of the security services," WB said in a report on the Palestinian Fiscal Crisis, issued Sunday.

The World Bank said: If Israel and the donor community decide that the downside risks associated with fiscal chaos are excessive, and if they adjust their current policy stances accordingly, the fiscal situation can be retrieved-though not without difficulty, and probably not unless action is taken soon. It added that unless the the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) is in receipt of a meaningful flow of budget resources, though, orderly fiscal management will be impossible and any reform agenda will be overwhelmed by institutional disintegration.

Previous Stories:
  Abbase talks with Rice   (5/5/2006)
  Bush: No contact with Hamas till they recognize Israel   (5/5/2006)
  James Wolfensohn: West can't win by starving the Palestinians   (5/2/2006)

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