By Ryan Jones
May 10, 2006
Ever the master manipulators, the Palestinian Arabs have managed to reject Israel and embrace terrorism by overwhelmingly choosing Hamas as their rulers, and yet coerce the international community into continuing to foot their bills.
Without ongoing handouts from the West, the "Palestinians" warn, the Palestinian Authority - the largest employer in Judea, Samaria and Gaza - will collapse within a matter of months, leaving in its wake a full-fledged humanitarian crisis and civil war, and removing any chance of concluding a final peace agreement between Israel and the PA.
With their decades of "peacemaking" via the promotion of artificial "Palestinian" claims crumbling before their eyes, Middle East power brokers rushed to the negotiating table Tuesday to hammer out an agreement on how to continue funding the PA without putting money directly in the hands of Hamas.
That the hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid that have been pumped into the "Palestinian" territories over the past decade have not by now resulted in a more prosperous and self-sufficient society never entered into the debate.
The United States has been the primary opponent of aid to a Hamas-led PA, but by the end of the day it had reached a compromise with its Middle East Quartet partners on the establishment of a temporary tightly-controlled mechanism to renew funding on a trial basis.
The primary beneficiaries will be the PA's approximately 165,000 employees, which Israel National News pointed out includes the members of the PA's bloated security forces, many of who are actively involved in planning and carrying out acts of terrorism against Israeli Jews.
PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh responded by saying there was no chance Hamas would bow to international demands and moderate its positions by the end of the trial period.
"The Quartet have conditions. They aim to push the Palestinian government to make concessions that harm [Palestinian] rights [sic] and red lines and give the [Israeli] occupation [sic] legitimacy."
Despite this, observers see little chance that, once reestablished, the West will again deny financial aid to the Palestinian Arabs, whether they accept Israel or not.