by Michael Freund, The Jerusalem Post
With the Palestinian Authority teetering on the brink of financial ruin, an unlikely deliverer has stepped in seeking to save the day. The would-be rescuer is neither a wealthy Gulf Arab sheikh nor a playboy Saudi prince with money to burn, nor even a misguided European government looking to curry favor with the Muslim world. Believe it or not, it is Israel that is now scrambling to salvage the PA from folding.
Yes, you read that correctly. At the very same time that Mahmoud Abbas is defying Jerusalem by threatening to ask the United Nations General Assembly to upgrade the status of “Palestine,” Israel is trying to save his regime from oblivion.
As Haaretz reported on Monday, “Israel has taken significant steps to ease the Palestinian Authority’s financial difficulties, fearing that instability in the West Bank threatens the PA’s future.”
These have included transferring tax money to the Palestinians ahead of schedule, issuing thousands of new permits for Palestinians to work within pre-1967 Israel and removing IDF checkpoints in Judea and Samaria. The Jewish state is also said to be lobbying various foreign governments to provide additional financial aid to the Palestinians, “as several Arab countries that had pledged $300 million to the PA have yet to fulfill their pledges,” Haaretz noted.
Yossi Kuperwasser, the director-general of Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry, was even more blunt in describing the government’s attitude. In a recent interview he declared that, “we want the PA to have stability and prosperity even if we have to fund it.”
It is difficult to describe this approach as anything other than sheer folly bordering on masochistic madness.
After all, the PA has made it abundantly clear that they view Israel not as their ally but as their nemesis. So why on earth shouldn’t we just allow the PA to crumble? Consider what the Palestinians are seeking to do at the UN.
Unless some heavy last-minute pressure deters them, the PA is going to relaunch their diplomatic campaign for independence by asking to upgrade their status to that of a non-member state. And they are also pushing for a resolution that would delineate the future borders of a Palestinian state as including all of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem.
As Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat made clear, these measures would pave the way for the PA to join other international bodies, undermine Israel’s claim to the territories and reinforce the Palestinian stance that the pre-1967 borders should serve as the basis for negotiations.
Moreover, Erekat hinted, it would eventually allow the PA to bring charges against Israel at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
“The occupation will continue, the settlements will continue, the crimes of the settlers may continue, but there will be consequences,” he said, adding, “Those who don’t want to appear before an international tribunal must stop their crimes.”
In effect, the PA is tossing nearly two decades of peacemaking attempts into the bin and threatening to tar Israel as a pariah nation.
Is this really the kind of regime that we want to resuscitate financially? And what makes this all the more ironic is the fact that despite its budgetary woes, the PA continues to spend tens of millions of shekels each month providing stipends to the families of terrorists and suicide bombers.
According to a report on Israel Channel 2 earlier this month, as of May 2011 the PA was spending NIS 26m. ($6.5m.) per month on payments to families of suicide bombers. They are also laying out an additional NIS 18m. ($4.5m.) each month in payments to the families of Palestinian prisoners, including those from Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Hence, the PA provides NIS 12,000 ($3,000) on a monthly basis to the family of Abbas al-Sayed, who was convicted of planning the 2002 Passover massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya which murdered 30 Israelis.
All told, six percent of the PA’s entire budget goes toward such payments, which PA Prime Minister Salam Fayad, the darling of the West, generously chose to triple in size last year.
This means that for every $16m. that is passed along to the Palestinians, at least $1m. of it will go to supporting the relatives of terrorists who tried or succeeded to kill Jews.
This is nothing less than a moral outrage, one that only adds insult to injury for Israeli victims of terror and their families.
Israel has no business propping up the PA, which is a corrupt, authoritarian kleptocracy that foments violence and regularly engages in anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement. And we certainly should not be serving as their financial advisers and consultants, helping them to stave off bankruptcy.
If the PA insists on treating Israel like an enemy, then there is no reason why the Jewish state should not return the favor.
Instead of keeping the PA going, with all the trouble that entails, let’s do what we should have done long ago: reassert control over all of Judea and Samaria and sweep away this fetid regime.
Through its words and its actions, the PA has shown time and again that it has no real interest in coexistence or peace.
We cannot countenance the rise of a hostile entity straddling our narrow borders, especially one that refuses even to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
So let’s do ourselves and future generations a favor, and stem the tide of Palestinian statehood before it is too late.
I would be happy to see Netanyahu’s government also collapse and be replaced by a government of Zionists who represent the majority of Israelis. Wishful thinking though. It will never happen and Israel will continue to be under the thumb of the same masters.
Canadian Otter summarized the raison d’etre of the Israeli Left, who think they need to live on the Flesh Pots of the EU.The very same EU Two State Solution bureaucrats who are the successors of the Final Solution bureaucrats.
I would like to add: The first wave of the population exchange completion should be the deportation of all the original PLO, PA and descendant offshoots. They were only allowed in due to the Oslo Accords. There will be no legal basis for their remaining once Oslo is breached and nullified due to unilateral actions of “palestinians”. My suggestion would be to transfer this first wave across the borders to Gaza( a reverse disengagement). This will unite them with their brothers in Hamas. By the way all hamas affiliates and their families should also be immediately transferred as belonging to a hostile enemy at war with Israel. Fatah and Hamas can sing Kumbaya together! The obvious is always the most difficult to accept.
My understanding is that the PA is preserved so that money would not have to be expended to administratem them by Israel plus the logistics of replacing the PA admin.(perhaps the UN and EU would stop funding these costs?)
“IF”??? Why would this be surprising and why would anyone not consider them to be an enemy. There is no evidence to the contrary and all prior evidence has pointed oppositely.
Areed, but not enough to solve the problem.
It is not just the entity but also the culture and the people. There is only one solution but jews will not accept it unto it is too late. Those who perpetually seek to kill Jews, raise their children to kill jews, show no respect in the land of Israel towards Jews, maintain JEW FREE areas in the land of Jews: Such a people and culture must be banished from the lands of Israel for the safety and peace of the Jews.
Wouldn’t it be a lot simpler and easier to consoliedate all the criminal charges into one simple charge: that of transferring the hostile jew killers outside of Israel. When they are living on the other side of the borders all the usual suspects will have to deal with the actual problem of resettlement and absorption while pursuing their “suits” in court. Israels treatment of the “occupied population” would be a moot point as it will be others treatment that will have to get attention. All the issues except one will disappear. All protests and news media will have to go to lebanon, gaza or syria(later maybe also to egypt and jordan) to interview their clients. Israel will only have to focus on military strength, economic and resource independence, and diplomacy….oh and yes a fictitious suit in a fictitious court which no one will be able to enforce or will want to enforce. Their real problems will overtake their manufactured problems, no more Israel to complain to. Transfer across the borders of the 3 hostile entities based upon: completion of population exchange resulting from arab/israeli wars and precedented by transfer of jews from arab muslim warring nations, rights of jews to settlement west of jordan river enshrined in international law, refusal of arab muslim “palestinians” to coexist with jews as evidenced by their JEW FREE administration of every inch of palestine mandate territory which is under their present control(e.g. Jordan, gaza, West bank).
PART 2 –
First part was blocked for moderation.
The reasons for keeping the PA on life support:
Without the fraudulent creation of a “moderate” peace partner, the Israeli elite would lack the nucleus for the elaborate deception on which they base their plan to surrender Jewish land to the enemy. The Israeli elite, along with nations complicit with the Holocaust, continue to perpetrate this fraud on Israeli Jews.
But as the anti-Zionist fraud continues to erode with a crumbling PA economy and growing Israeli opposition to land surrender, anti-Zionists at home and abroad are getting desperate.
Signs of anti-Zionist despair are the recurrent false-flag operations in Yesha (where settlers are accused of ‘price tag’ crimes, without police ever finding any evidence to indict them), as well as shameful government expulsions of Jews from their homes. “Iron Fist” government policies are aimed at ratcheting up intimidation and harassment of Yesha Jews to keep them in line.
Anti-Zionists know that their fraudulent lie aimed at partitioning the land has run its course. It’s time to extend sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria.
TRUE REASON BEHIND the Israeli elite’s efforts to keep the PA on life support:
Without the fraudulent creation of a “moderate” peace partner, the Israeli elite would lack the nucleus for the elaborate deception on which they base their plan to surrender Jewish land to the enemy. The Israeli elite, along with nations complicit with the Holocaust, continue to perpetrate this fraud on Israeli Jews.
Key historical and legal facts that support Israeli sovereignty over Yesha and evidence of the Nazi nature of the Muslim peace partner are deliberately obfuscated by the Israeli elite and their US/EU/UN allies:
1) Israel’s legal right to Judea, Samaria, and more.
2) The Nazi history of the PLO.
3) The Nazi ideology, behavior and ultimate goal of destroying Israel and the Jews, expressed by Fatah, Hamas and other Muslim groups in the region.
4) Abbas’ own background as Holocaust denier and financial mastermind of the Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes.
http://www.justicenow4israel.com/
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/hitlers_long_shadow_over_israel.html
http://www.rosenblit.com/NAZIS%20AND%20ARABS.htm
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm
Netanyahu funds the PA in a lame attempt to keep Haaretz and other leftists of its ilk off his back. But Netanyahu will never fully satisfy the Israeli Left just as Aaron tried to stall for time with collecting gold, which the Israeli Left of his time quickly made into a Golden Calf. I always picture the Israeli Left as personified by Edgar G. Robinson’s portrayal of Dathan in the movie, “The Ten Commandments” with the EU taking the place of Egypt of Moses’ time.