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.
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