How long will the International Community look on in silence?
If this story's bias and misrepresentation is any indication, as long as we continue to allow them to ...
If this story's bias and misrepresentation is any indication, as long as we continue to allow them to ...
World Bank warns Gaza banks may collapse without injection of new cash
Published: Saturday, December 6, 2008 | 9:36 PM ET
Canadian Press: Dalia Nammari, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
RAMALLAH, West Bank - The World Bank and International Monetary Fund have warned that Gaza's severe cash shortage may cause local banks to collapse.
It was the most serious warning yet regarding the consequences of Israel's continued refusal to allow new money infusions into banks in the Palestinian territory.
Israel hasn't allowed money to enter Gaza since October, barring Palestinian banks from transferring cash to their Gaza branches.
It's part of a larger blockade imposed on Gaza in response to Palestinian rocket attacks from the territory controlled by the Islamic militant group Hamas.
(Actually, this is not true. The illegal, illegitimate Blockade was imposed upon Gaza after Hamas won democratic elections, and provided Israel with an excuse. The real reason this is being done is that they can get away with it. Period. Because the media ignored the Blockade until the rockets Israel's own defense staff warned it would provoke started, Israel has been given a virtual free hand to brutalize the one and a half million residents of the Gaza Strip. This is part of a wider program of making life so unbearable for the Palestinians, that they will accept any offer Israel offers, completely out of desperation.)
The World Bank says the liquidity crisis could lead to the collapse of the commercial banking system in Gaza.
The International Monetary Fund offered a similar prediction.
The cash shortage means around 77,000 Palestinian civil servants will not be able to withdraw their salaries before a Muslim holiday early next week.
The cash shortage also forced the United Nations in November to halt cash payments to thousands of Gaza's poorest residents.
(In other words, Israel's actions have only made the suffering of these people all the more immoral and inhumane. And all it would take for this to end is for the world to end it, since the Blockade is illegal.)
Gaza banks closed on Thursday, payday for civil servants, because of cash shortages. Bank officials haven't said if they will open Monday, their next working day.
Monetary officials estimate Gaza banks hold less than a quarter of the cash needed to pay wages. The Israeli shekel is Gaza's main currency.
Jihad al-Wazir, head of the Palestinian Monetary Authority in the West Bank, said Gaza's banks have around 47 million shekels (about $12 million) between them.
They need 220 million shekels ($54 million) to pay salaries, he said.
Al-Wazir said salaries may be paid in a mix of currencies to bypass the shekel shortage.
President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel's partner in peace talks, lost control of Gaza to Hamas in June 2007.
(Interesting way to put it. Hamas responded to an armed Coup attempt, which used corrupt elements of Fatah as proxies, and was orchestrated by the US and Israel, coordinated under Elliot Abrams - of Iran-Contra fame - and approved directly by Condoleeza Rice. 1. Although this failed to produce 'Regime Change', it did succeed in negating the Mecca Agreement, which had ended Palestinian infighting, opening the door for real talks, and once again divided the Palestinian leadership - the reason Israel supported the rise of Hamas years ago.
Abbas is party to a PR stunt, designed to allow Israel to stall any real peace process, while avoiding bad press. The "Annapolis charade was created by Israel's sponsor, the people who colluded in the armed coup. They've done this in order to prevent the end of Zionism's war to annex the whole of Palestine, avoid their legal and moral obligations, and prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. 2.)
Based in the West Bank, he still claims authority over Gaza and has continued to pay tens of thousands of civil servants there each month through the banking system.
The cash crunch appears to be hitting Abbas much harder than Hamas, because the militant group pays 20,000 of its own employees with cash it smuggles into Gaza from Egypt.
Their employees received December salaries.
But I'm sure the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Ghetto are suffering a whole lot more than their bretheren in the W. Bank.)
1) ‘I Like This Violence’
Censoring the U.S. role in Gaza’s civil war
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3184
2) No Middle East Peace Without Tough Love
Henry Siegman Al-Hayat - 23/04/08//
The scandal of the international community's impotence in resolving
one of history's longest bloodlettings is that it knows what the problem is but does not have the courage to speak the truth, much less deal with it.
That problem is that for all of the sins attributable to the Palestinians (...) there is no prospect for a viable, sovereign Palestinian state primarily because Israel's various governments, from 1967 until today, have never intended allowing such a state to come into being.
It is one thing if Israeli governments had insisted on delaying a
Palestinian state until certain Israeli security concerns were dealt
with. But no government that is serious about a two-state solution to
the conflict would have pursued without let-up the theft and
fragmentation of Palestinian lands that even a child understands makes Palestinian statehood impossible.
Given the overwhelming disproportion of power between the occupier and the occupied, it is hardly surprising that Israeli governments and their military and security establishments found it difficult to resist the acquisition of Palestinian land. What is astounding is that the international community, pretending to believe Israel's claim that it is the victim and its occupied subjects the aggressors, has allowed this devastating dispossession to continue and the law of the jungle to prevail.
As long as Israel knows that by delaying the peace process it buys
time to create facts on the ground that will prove irreversible, and that the international community will continue to indulge Israel's pretense that its desire for a two-state solution is being frustrated by the Palestinians, no new peace initiative can succeed, and the dispossession of the Palestinian people will indeed become irreversible.
There can be no greater delusion on the part of Western countries
weighed down by guilt about the Holocaust than the belief that
accommodating such an outcome would be an act of friendship to the Jewish people. The abandonment of the Palestinians now is surely not an atonement for the abandonment of European Jewry seventy years ago, nor will it serve the security of the State of Israel and its people.
the expectation that uncritical Western support of Israel would lead to greater Israeli moderation and greater willingness to take risks for peace is blatantly contradicted by the conflict's history.
Time and again, this history has shown that the less opposition Israel
encounters from its friends in the West for its dispossession of the
Palestinians, the more uncompromising its behavior. Indeed, Olmert's reaction to Sarkozy's and Merkel's expressions of eternal solidarity and friendship have had exactly that result: Olmert approved massive new construction in East Jerusalem- authorizing housing projects that were frozen for years by previous governments because of their destructive impact on the possibility of a peace agreement-as well as continued expansion of Israel's settlements. And Olmert's defense minister, Ehud Barak, declared shortly after Merkel's departure that he will remove only a token number of the more than 500 checkpoints and roadblocks that Israel has repeatedly promised, and just as repeatedly failed, to dismantle.
That announcement shattered whatever hope Palestinians may have had for recovery of their economy as a consequence of the seven billion dollars in new aid promised by the international donor community in Paris last December. In these circumstances, the donor countries, not to speak of the private sector, will not pour good money after bad, as they so often have in the past.
So what is required of statesmen is not more peace conferences or
clever adjustments to previous peace formulations, but the moral and
political courage to end their collaboration with the massive hoax the
peace process has been turned into. Of course, Palestinian violence
must be condemned and stopped, particularly when it targets civilians. But is it not utterly disingenuous to pretend that Israel's
occupation-maintained by IDF-manned checkpoints and barricades,
helicopter gunships, jet fighter planes, targeted assassinations and
military incursions, not to speak of the massive theft of Palestinian
lands-is not itself an exercise in continuous and unrelenting violence
against more than 3 million Palestinian civilians? If Israel were to
renounce violence, could the occupation last even one day?
Short of addressing the problem by its right name-something that is of an entirely different order than hollow statements that "settlements do not advance peace"-and taking effective collective action to end a colonial enterprise that disgraces what began as a noble Jewish national liberation struggle, further peace conferences, no matter how well intentioned, make their participants accessories to one of the longest and cruelest deceptions in the annals of international diplomacy.
* Henry Siegman, director of the US/Middle East Project in New York, is research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Program, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Siegman is a former national director of the American Jewish Congress and of the Synagogue Council of America.
http://english.daralhayat.com/opinion/commentators/04-2008/Article-20080423-7bb195f0-c0a8-10ed-01e2-5c7347efa4bc/story.html
Published: Saturday, December 6, 2008 | 9:36 PM ET
Canadian Press: Dalia Nammari, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
RAMALLAH, West Bank - The World Bank and International Monetary Fund have warned that Gaza's severe cash shortage may cause local banks to collapse.
It was the most serious warning yet regarding the consequences of Israel's continued refusal to allow new money infusions into banks in the Palestinian territory.
Israel hasn't allowed money to enter Gaza since October, barring Palestinian banks from transferring cash to their Gaza branches.
It's part of a larger blockade imposed on Gaza in response to Palestinian rocket attacks from the territory controlled by the Islamic militant group Hamas.
(Actually, this is not true. The illegal, illegitimate Blockade was imposed upon Gaza after Hamas won democratic elections, and provided Israel with an excuse. The real reason this is being done is that they can get away with it. Period. Because the media ignored the Blockade until the rockets Israel's own defense staff warned it would provoke started, Israel has been given a virtual free hand to brutalize the one and a half million residents of the Gaza Strip. This is part of a wider program of making life so unbearable for the Palestinians, that they will accept any offer Israel offers, completely out of desperation.)
The World Bank says the liquidity crisis could lead to the collapse of the commercial banking system in Gaza.
The International Monetary Fund offered a similar prediction.
The cash shortage means around 77,000 Palestinian civil servants will not be able to withdraw their salaries before a Muslim holiday early next week.
The cash shortage also forced the United Nations in November to halt cash payments to thousands of Gaza's poorest residents.
(In other words, Israel's actions have only made the suffering of these people all the more immoral and inhumane. And all it would take for this to end is for the world to end it, since the Blockade is illegal.)
Gaza banks closed on Thursday, payday for civil servants, because of cash shortages. Bank officials haven't said if they will open Monday, their next working day.
Monetary officials estimate Gaza banks hold less than a quarter of the cash needed to pay wages. The Israeli shekel is Gaza's main currency.
Jihad al-Wazir, head of the Palestinian Monetary Authority in the West Bank, said Gaza's banks have around 47 million shekels (about $12 million) between them.
They need 220 million shekels ($54 million) to pay salaries, he said.
Al-Wazir said salaries may be paid in a mix of currencies to bypass the shekel shortage.
President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel's partner in peace talks, lost control of Gaza to Hamas in June 2007.
(Interesting way to put it. Hamas responded to an armed Coup attempt, which used corrupt elements of Fatah as proxies, and was orchestrated by the US and Israel, coordinated under Elliot Abrams - of Iran-Contra fame - and approved directly by Condoleeza Rice. 1. Although this failed to produce 'Regime Change', it did succeed in negating the Mecca Agreement, which had ended Palestinian infighting, opening the door for real talks, and once again divided the Palestinian leadership - the reason Israel supported the rise of Hamas years ago.
Abbas is party to a PR stunt, designed to allow Israel to stall any real peace process, while avoiding bad press. The "Annapolis charade was created by Israel's sponsor, the people who colluded in the armed coup. They've done this in order to prevent the end of Zionism's war to annex the whole of Palestine, avoid their legal and moral obligations, and prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. 2.)
Based in the West Bank, he still claims authority over Gaza and has continued to pay tens of thousands of civil servants there each month through the banking system.
The cash crunch appears to be hitting Abbas much harder than Hamas, because the militant group pays 20,000 of its own employees with cash it smuggles into Gaza from Egypt.
Their employees received December salaries.
But I'm sure the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Ghetto are suffering a whole lot more than their bretheren in the W. Bank.)
1) ‘I Like This Violence’
Censoring the U.S. role in Gaza’s civil war
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3184 2) No Middle East Peace Without Tough Love
Henry Siegman Al-Hayat - 23/04/08//
The scandal of the international community's impotence in resolving
one of history's longest bloodlettings is that it knows what the problem is but does not have the courage to speak the truth, much less deal with it.
That problem is that for all of the sins attributable to the Palestinians (...) there is no prospect for a viable, sovereign Palestinian state primarily because Israel's various governments, from 1967 until today, have never intended allowing such a state to come into being.
It is one thing if Israeli governments had insisted on delaying a
Palestinian state until certain Israeli security concerns were dealt
with. But no government that is serious about a two-state solution to
the conflict would have pursued without let-up the theft and
fragmentation of Palestinian lands that even a child understands makes Palestinian statehood impossible.
Given the overwhelming disproportion of power between the occupier and the occupied, it is hardly surprising that Israeli governments and their military and security establishments found it difficult to resist the acquisition of Palestinian land. What is astounding is that the international community, pretending to believe Israel's claim that it is the victim and its occupied subjects the aggressors, has allowed this devastating dispossession to continue and the law of the jungle to prevail.
As long as Israel knows that by delaying the peace process it buys
time to create facts on the ground that will prove irreversible, and that the international community will continue to indulge Israel's pretense that its desire for a two-state solution is being frustrated by the Palestinians, no new peace initiative can succeed, and the dispossession of the Palestinian people will indeed become irreversible.
There can be no greater delusion on the part of Western countries
weighed down by guilt about the Holocaust than the belief that
accommodating such an outcome would be an act of friendship to the Jewish people. The abandonment of the Palestinians now is surely not an atonement for the abandonment of European Jewry seventy years ago, nor will it serve the security of the State of Israel and its people.
the expectation that uncritical Western support of Israel would lead to greater Israeli moderation and greater willingness to take risks for peace is blatantly contradicted by the conflict's history.
Time and again, this history has shown that the less opposition Israel
encounters from its friends in the West for its dispossession of the
Palestinians, the more uncompromising its behavior. Indeed, Olmert's reaction to Sarkozy's and Merkel's expressions of eternal solidarity and friendship have had exactly that result: Olmert approved massive new construction in East Jerusalem- authorizing housing projects that were frozen for years by previous governments because of their destructive impact on the possibility of a peace agreement-as well as continued expansion of Israel's settlements. And Olmert's defense minister, Ehud Barak, declared shortly after Merkel's departure that he will remove only a token number of the more than 500 checkpoints and roadblocks that Israel has repeatedly promised, and just as repeatedly failed, to dismantle.
That announcement shattered whatever hope Palestinians may have had for recovery of their economy as a consequence of the seven billion dollars in new aid promised by the international donor community in Paris last December. In these circumstances, the donor countries, not to speak of the private sector, will not pour good money after bad, as they so often have in the past.
So what is required of statesmen is not more peace conferences or
clever adjustments to previous peace formulations, but the moral and
political courage to end their collaboration with the massive hoax the
peace process has been turned into. Of course, Palestinian violence
must be condemned and stopped, particularly when it targets civilians. But is it not utterly disingenuous to pretend that Israel's
occupation-maintained by IDF-manned checkpoints and barricades,
helicopter gunships, jet fighter planes, targeted assassinations and
military incursions, not to speak of the massive theft of Palestinian
lands-is not itself an exercise in continuous and unrelenting violence
against more than 3 million Palestinian civilians? If Israel were to
renounce violence, could the occupation last even one day?
Short of addressing the problem by its right name-something that is of an entirely different order than hollow statements that "settlements do not advance peace"-and taking effective collective action to end a colonial enterprise that disgraces what began as a noble Jewish national liberation struggle, further peace conferences, no matter how well intentioned, make their participants accessories to one of the longest and cruelest deceptions in the annals of international diplomacy.
* Henry Siegman, director of the US/Middle East Project in New York, is research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Program, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Siegman is a former national director of the American Jewish Congress and of the Synagogue Council of America.
http://english.daralhayat.com/opinion/commentators/04-2008/Article-20080423-7bb195f0-c0a8-10ed-01e2-5c7347efa4bc/story.html 
