Not a Dime, Not a Shekel
The Palestinian Authority is crying poor and wants Israel to release some $50 million in tax revenue for “salaries” and “administration.” The U.S. State Department, unfortunately, has been making sympathetic noises.
Whose salary should Israel help the PA pay? Should Israel pay the Tanzim, Arafat’s personal army and the front line troops of the PA war against Israel? Should Israel pay the Imams in the mosques who call for Jewish and American blood and deny the attachment of Jews to their holiest sites?
The Palestinian Authority is crying poor and wants Israel to release some $50 million in tax revenue for “salaries” and “administration.” The U.S. State Department, unfortunately, has been making sympathetic noises.
Whose salary should Israel help the PA pay? Should Israel pay the Tanzim, Arafat’s personal army and the front line troops of the PA war against Israel? Should Israel pay the Imams in the mosques who call for Jewish and American blood and deny the attachment of Jews to their holiest sites? Or the PA “camp counselors” who were featured in the NYT last summer, teaching Palestinian children the fine art of grenade throwing and Molotov cocktail-making? Or PA school teachers who inculcate children with Jew-hatred and vicious lies during the school year? Or PA prison personnel, who run a revolving-door hotel for Hamas bombers? Or the official PA propagandists who claim Israel is poisoning Palestinian water and using depleted uranium tank rounds?
If not the nationalistically criminal element of the PA, maybe Israel should just supply salaries for the economically criminal element, whose bank accounts in London and Paris contain far more than the Israeli tax payment – money essentially stolen from its own poor and working class. Even the Arab League won’t provide any more money to the PA because of the endemic corruption.
Israel is at war, and to the extent that the U.S. government wants Israel to fund the PA, it is in the ridiculous position of asking Israel to support the enemy that seeks its destruction. Would we have allowed payments to the Nazis from Germans in the U.S. during WWII? If the example seems too far-fetched, consider current US policy toward Iraq.
Secretary of State Powell is going to the region this weekend in part to press the Arab states to maintain a ten-year-old, failed economic embargo against Iraq that has not stopped Saddam from pursuing acquisition of advanced weaponry, but which clearly has cost Iraqi children a fair chance at a decent life. U.S. policy is to insist that it is Saddam who is responsible for the misery of his people and that until Saddam stops the behaviors of which we disapprove the embargo stands. We hold the same policy toward Iran and Afghanistan under the Taliban.
We are not very fond of embargoes, primarily because of their disproportionate impact on the layer of society least able to absorb the hit. However, sauce for the goose, as they say. If it is Saddam’s fault that Iraqi children are hungry, then it is Arafat’s fault that Palestinian teachers (and troops) are unpaid. Not Israel’s.
Secretary Powell’s confirmation testimony to Congress included his belief that Arafat could, and therefore should, stop the violence against Israel before the US could expect Israel to take any further steps toward the PA. Arafat, he said in effect, holds the key to the future of the Palestinian people – their national aspirations and their economic well-being. That position has the benefit of being both correct and internally consistent, and it is the position we strongly encourage him to take when he visits Israel next week.