Over 152,000 people are employed by the PA, their salaries support approximately one million people -- or 25% of the Palestinian population. These people operate 62% of primary health clinics, all the major general hospitals bar one and 75% of primary and secondary schools.
Without PA salaries, poverty rates are predicted to increase sharply, conservatively, to 74%. Since 2000, poverty rates increased from 22% to 56%.2 Palestinian Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth is anticipated to drop to negative 25% in 2006 compared to 5% positive growth in 2005.
At the same time the non-payment of 70,000 armed PA security personnel could lead to a highly volatile security situation and in turn to a possible rise in criminality. The level of insecurity will in large part determine the depth of the humanitarian crisis and could undermine the humanitarian response. And, while this is likely to be most acutely felt in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, if past patterns are any indication, the violence may also spill over and be directed at Israel, including the targeting of Israeli civilians.
News today that Israel is finally going to release $100 million to Abbas comes with these conflicting messages:
Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said the money would be earmarked for humanitarian needs and a U.S.-backed program to strengthen Abbas's presidential guard.
It will not be used to make long-overdue salary payments to Palestinian public sector workers, hard hit by a Western and Israeli embargo of the Hamas-led government, they said.
Abbas aide Saeb Erekat said the funds would be channeled to humanitarian projects and the private sector, but declined to say if any would go toward boosting Abbas's security.
And Hamas officials are predictably angry:
Since Hamas defeated Abbas's Fatah movement in parliamentary elections last year, Israel has withheld nearly $500 million in Palestinian tax revenues, money that would normally be used by the Palestinian Authority to pay government workers.
The decision not to allocate funds for salaries angered Hamas, which said the money should be distributed by the Palestinian finance ministry.
"We reject any Israeli conditions on regaining this money. This money belongs to the Palestinian people," Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas told reporters after Friday prayers.
Earlier this month, it was announced that the US government plans to give Abbas $86 million - once again with the focus being on strengthening Abbas' presidential guard:
The U.S. money, subject to congressional approval, will provide Abbas's presidential guard with training and non-lethal equipment, including vehicles and uniforms, people familiar with the plan said.
Israeli officials said Washington had already helped to organize shipments of weaponry to the guard from Egypt and Jordan, and that the latest was made last week.
[...]
The money for the presidential guard was initially earmarked for U.S. aid programs in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, but those programs were "canceled or suspended after Hamas took power earlier this year," the U.S. document said.
Officials familiar with the plan said the money would not be used to pay the salaries of members of the guard.
So, here we have an American administration that has given lip service to its so-called road map and is now boosting Abbas' military capabilities in order to take down the democratically elected Hamas government.
Abbas's presidential guard currently has about 3,700 members. With aid from the United States and its allies, Abbas hopes to expand it to 4,700 members in 12 to 18 months. Palestinian sources said it could grow to 10,000 members.
Hamas says its own "Executive Force" has nearly 6,000 members and will also be expanded. Hamas receives funding from Iran and other Islamist allies.
It wasn't enough that the US stoked a sectarian civil war in Iraq. Now it's planning to do the same thing in Palestine because it seems the only thing this American administration understands is military force and it continues to promote it even in the face of the stark reality that encouraging people to kill each other doesn't solve any problems. It always creates new ones but diplomacy doesn't exist in the Bush administration's dictionary and the Olmert government should know better after their horrendous fiasco in Lebanon last year which has brought renewed pressure to bear on Olmert to resign.
Abbas announced on Friday that he would push for early elections:
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said Friday that if the latest round of unity government talks with Hamas fails he will call early elections, but acknowledged that Hamas could emerge the victor once again.
"We say either there is a (unity) government or elections," he said after a meeting with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "Elections don't mean we want to throw Hamas into the sea. It has been elected and can be elected again."
In that case then Abbas is preparing for Plan B: the use of military might. Meanwhile, the US and Israeli governments can just sit back and watch the mess that they've created once again escalate to the point where there is even more turmoil in the occupied territories.
That distraction might work for a while but one of these days someone is going to have to step up to the plate and seriously and with a certain degree of finality address all of the underlying factors that have stopped a viable peace process from occuring to this point. And, at that time, such an honest evaluation will definitely require a large dose of humility and compromise that the US and Israeli governments seem utterly incapable of displaying. Of all of the roadblocks to peace, that factor is one of the most serious.
Related: Foreign Affairs minister Peter MacKay met with Abbas in Jordan on Friday. Meanwhile, Steve is sending embattled floor-crosser Wajid Khan on a second trip to the Middle East amid the controversy over whatever happened to his report from his first trip last year.
Meanwhile, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion demanded yesterday that Mr. Harper make public the Khan report, which cost at least $13,000. He even questioned if a report actually exists.
"I want to hear the Prime Minister say, 'I received a written report.' I want him to say 'and then I will make it public.' And people will know what is in it and the speculation will stop," Mr. Dion said during a news conference yesterday.
[...]
Mr. Khan had said he would share the information he gathered. But Mr. Harper and his office continue to refuse to release it.
"The Prime Minister receives advice from plenty of advisers," the official said. "If that advice were to become public there would be very little value to it and ultimately good advice becomes government policy. Bad advice doesn't become government policy."
Steve: The Decider about what's "good" or "bad". What, exactly, is he hiding?
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