Soccer Dad

"Concern" for the palestinians

Yesterday Elder of Ziyon blogged about the failure of Qatar to meet its pledges to the Palestinians and concluded.

We once again see how deep Arab commitment is to helping out Palestinian Arabs in their everyday lives.

It is paper-thin.

In related news, Lebanon, which long had had the most restrictive laws governing the Palestinians had recently liberalized them. But as the Sydney Morning Herald reports (via Daily Alert Blog)

Until recently, the 250,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon have been legally barred from working in all but the most menial of jobs. In August, after years of heated debate, the Lebanese parliament finally passed new laws formally lifting the work restrictions on Palestinians, but Leila El-Ali, executive director of Najdeh, a Palestinian advocacy group, says the new laws will have no impact on the ground. "All of the professions - doctors, lawyers, engineers, pharmacists, academia - will remain closed to Palestinians," she says.

Ms. El-Ali expanded on this:

In addition, she noted, "We see political parties such as Hizbullah use the plight of Palestinians as a way to attract supporters. But when the law granting us working rights came before the parliament, Hizbullah could not bring themselves to vote in favor of the bill."

How many times do we read in newspapers about how important the Palestinian issue is in the Arab world? To the ruling class it's not important at all. But it allows them to pose as champions of freedom (even as they deny their own people most basic freedoms) and it allows them to shun Israel while pretending to champion freedom. And it gives them a cause to distract their citizenry from their mis-rule.

The Palestinian cause is the Arab (and Muslim) world's version of breads and circuses.