Soccer Dad: Sauce for Hamas

May 22, 2006

Sauce for Hamas

In More Bucks for Mr. Mubarak the editors of the Washington Post argue reasonably that the United States should be penalizing Egypt for its failure to reform and continued repression of its opposition.

As it turned out, Mr. Mubarak wasn't serious. In the past six months the 78-year-old president has shut down the political opening and moved to crush his democratic opposition. Mr. Nour is back in jail, sentenced to five years in prison on patently bogus charges; on Thursday a Mubarak-controlled court rejected his final appeal. This year's elections have been put off, and a draconian "emergency" law was renewed despite Mr. Mubarak's promise to lift it. Egyptians who protest are arrested or beaten.

A step back like this is not unusual for a crumbling regime or an aging dictator. What's truly remarkable is the way in which the Bush administration has abruptly dropped its own attempt to promote Egyptian liberalization. The day after riot police violently put down a pro-democracy demonstration in Cairo this month, Mr. Bush, Vice President Cheney, Ms. Rice and other senior officials all found time to huddle privately with Mr. Mubarak's son, Gamal. Most Egyptians believe the son is being groomed to succeed his father; many are convinced that strategy explains the jailing of Mr. Nour and the suppression of the opposition.

Five days later, State Department Assistant Secretary David Welch appeared before Congress to testify that none of Egypt's $1.8 billion in annual aid -- the third-largest foreign subsidy in the world -- should be withheld, because "it would be damaging to our national interests." Mr. Welch lauded Mr. Mubarak for trying to prevent a Palestinian civil war and opposing an Iranian nuclear weapon, though in both cases the Egyptian leader was acting in his own interest; Mr. Welch didn't mention Mr. Mubarak's antagonism toward Iraq's new Shiite government or his frontal attacks on U.S. regional democracy initiatives. Instead, he delivered a textbook restatement of the traditional Arabist strategy Mr. Bush once loudly repudiated, in which autocrats are funded and their domestic brutality tolerated for geopolitical convenience.

Very nice, but what happens if the Bush administration reverses itself and holds back funds leading to shortages of medical supplies and other necessities? Would the Post's editors then argue for resuming aid lest innocent Egyptians suffer?

I'd doubt that the editors would, yet that's exactly what they argued in a comparable case, just two days ago in A Palestinian lifeline

The outside nations, the chief source of support for the Palestinian Authority before Hamas won an election, have been demanding that the Hamas movement accept Israel, renounce terrorism and abide by existing Israeli-Palestinian accords before funding is restored. But Palestinian leaders have a long tradition of exploiting the suffering of their own people for political ends; Hamas has been content to foster a humanitarian crisis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The result is that Israel and the Western donors are negotiating among themselves about how much funding should be restored to the Palestinians and in what form. They have little choice, since the collapse of the Palestinian Authority would do more damage to Israel, and lingering hopes for a Middle East peace, than it would to Hamas. But the governments need to be careful in their retrenchment: What's needed is an approach that spares average Palestinians from hunger and disease while continuing the political isolation of Hamas.

So Hamas has "foster[ed] a humanitarian crisis" but funding to the Palesitnian Authority should apparently be restored while somehow "continuing the political isolation of Hamas."

I don't see how it's possible to do both. But frankly the Post has offered a possible solution to the problem. Remember the Post advocated the most recent Palestinian Authority elections in the (vain) hope that the participation of the uncorrupted terrorist organization Hamas would force greater accountability upon the moderate corrupt Fatah party

Faced with the possibility of defeat by Hamas, Fatah has been forced to overhaul the aging and corrupt cadre left behind by Yasser Arafat and install young reformers at the top of its legislative list.

The Post has also reported in Out of Money but Not Resources that there's a private individual who's helping out his old village

At the end of last month, a crowd gathered in the town hall here to take part in an unusual act. About 75 people, all employees of the Palestinian Authority, were getting paid.

Like the rest of the 150,000 Palestinian civil servants, the teachers, bureaucrats and policemen here had not received a paycheck for nearly two months, the result of a freeze in international aid following Hamas's victory in January legislative elections.

But this village has a patron, a native son who prospered in the United Arab Emirates. Although he has returned to his birthplace only a handful of times since leaving with his family following the 1967 Middle East war, over the years Zuhair Jubran has remembered his village in trying times, few more so than now.

With the government unable to make payroll, Jubran decided he would. Each public employee, including teachers from neighboring villages who work in Beit Iksa's boys and girls schools, has started receiving a monthly salary of $325 from Jubran's private accounts.

So then private individuals could help out. And given their corruption over the years it may be safe to assume that the major players in Fatah still have fat bank accounts (made up, in no small part, of foreign aid). So instead of calling on the West to rescue the Palestinians who voted the unrepentant terrorist organization into power let those who should have helped use the funds they've received as they were meant to be used - to help their people not line their pockets or sit unused in bank accounts. (h/t Elder of Ziyon)

Additionally if Fatah releases these funds, Hamas would hardly be able to claim that they're standing up for the average Palestinians (the benign platform they campaigned on; there was also a malignant platform).

So instead of encouraging the West to rescue the Palestinians, why not demand that the Palestinians rescue the Palestinians.

Since the founding of the Palestinian Authority in 1993 it has been responsible for nothing. It has not stopped terror (and instead fomented it). It has not created an economy ( but relied on the unappreciated kindness of the international community). It has not done anything that constitutes a government in our times. Rather it has served as a trough for those Palestinians who are the most equal. Now the old major is dead, but nothing has changed.

In truth there's a difference between Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. Egypt though authoritarian and almost certainly corrupt does have institutions necessary for the functioning of a society; the PA does not. Without international funding Egypt would manage. The PA cannot unless Fatah coughs up its vast resources. No accountability has its price.

But if it's to the Washington Post, nothing should change. The world should continue to fund the Palestinian Authority even it keeps Hamas afloat. The political isolation comment is meaningless. The editors of the Post have to know that to support the PA is to support Hamas.

Technorati tags: Hamas, Egypt, foreign aid.