Meanwhile let us have a look at that aid to various Palestinian groups

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Meanwhile let us have a look at that aid to various Palestinian groups

Russia is not the only country and the Caucasus is not the only region the EU finds hard to deal with and where, if truth be told, it makes a bad situation even worse. I think it is fair to say that everything the EU has done in the Middle East has helped to deepen the problems there.

Not least, we have the problem of aid to various Palestinian groups. The argument is always the same: we do not approve of terrorism or deliberate attacks on civilian population whether it is Israeli or Palestinian of the wrong kind and we would much rather Hamas, Fatah and whoever else acknowledged Israel’s right to exist though if they don’t we understand; and, of course, we would much rather the Palestinians did not waste the money they get in aid on hate-filled school text books or on equipment for terrorists or simply on feathering the leaders’ nests; but if we do not give them aid they will produce pictures of hungry children and empty shops and their friends in the NGOs will talk endlessly about humanitarian catastrophes. So, more lucre filched from the taxpayer is sent to completely corrupt and politically impossible Palestinian organizations.

It seems that the Palestinian Authority a.k.a. Al-Fatah is once again struggling to meet the government pay-roll’s demands, which, given how many people are on that list, is a serious matter. If they don’t get paid they will start using their ammunition and you don’t want that.

Added to which, it would appear, that Arab solidarity does not go very far and the EU had to step in (had to? Who says?) and add another €40 million over and above the €256 million already “disbursed” this year. Handed over to the Palestinian Authority is a better way of describing it than disbursed but let that pass.

The 40 million euro injection of funds comes on top of the 256 million euros in budget support disbursed so far this year by the European Union.

[Prime Minister Salam] Fayyad has struggled in recent months to pay government workers because many Arab donors have not met their financial commitments. "The situation is very, very tight, for sure," a top official from Fayyad's office said this week.

A Palestinian official said the EU money would help Fayyad meet the next government payroll, due in the first week of September. Fayyad has been waiting for months to receive $80 million pledged by Kuwait but it is unclear when the funds will arrive in the Palestinian Authority's coffers, officials say.

It has always been our contention on this blog that if we really do want to put pressure on the Palestinian Authority or the Hamas government in Gaza, we should stop all aid until all conditions, and that includes an open and transparent budget system, were met. Their Arab brethren would not step in. Of course, the Palestinians deprived of their subsidy might decide to put their economy in order instead of wasting money on rockets to fire into Israel and that would be all to the good.

Autres directions

A perspicacious Guardian today notes that the EU is in as much disarray about how to handle the looming recession as it is over how to confront Russia's belligerence in the Caucasus.

Drawing on the experience so many of us have had of baffling French road signs, it suggests that "toutes directions", the often confusing signpost at crossroads in French provincial towns, just about sums up eurozone government responses so far.

Actually, we can do better than that. Attempting to find our way to Strasbourg one day, driving through the by-ways of Alsace completely lost, we came to a T-junction in a small town, unmarked on our map. Witnessed by my increasingly acerbic co-editor, then one of my backseat drivers passengers, we were utterly confounded by a single sign offering the choice between "toutes directions" and "autres directions". That, it seemed to us, was the most appropriate paradigm for the European Union.

Returning to The Guardian, it tells us that France, as holder of the EU presidency, is effectively pushing for a concerted series of activist, counter-cyclical measures to be adopted when finance ministers meet in Nice in the middle of next month - even if it means busting the bloc's three percent budget deficit limit.

In this – predictably - it can count on support from its "Club Med" partners in Italy and Spain but Germany, determined to maintain fiscal discipline and avoid a repeat of the 1970s, is resolutely opposed. And so is the EU commission, while the UK is out on a limb, together with the Irish and the Nordics (several limbs, actually).

Although it retails a sorry tale of confusion, it is a pity though that the paper cannot see the bigger picture. It is not only the "looming recession" and the question of "how to confront Russia's belligerence in the Caucasus" that finds the EU in disarray. The impending clash over the Common Agricultural Policy will point up yet more disarray, while the continued impasse over GM crop approvals, the disagreement over biofuels and the energy policy generally, are all examples of the EU haring off in "toutes directions".

In fact, from the experience of the Common Fisheries Policy – branded by its own commissioner as "immoral" - to the waste policy, immigration and high level initiatives in the Middle East, nothing the EU touches ever works. It leaves behind it a trail of wreckage, disarray and confusion.

Never more has it ever been more urgent that we in the UK should be looking for that sign which says, "autres directions".

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