I listened to this interview with Nicholas Young, chief executive of the British Red Cross, on “Today” this morning. He was on to argue for more financial help for Gaza and to ensure that those pesky borders aree opened up to allow for the flow of all that “humanitarian aid” which the inhabitants of this moral sewer require. It’s interesting to listen him get through the interview without having to even once deal with the fact that the genocidal Jew-killers in Hamas rule Gaza and that Hamas are directly responsible for borders being closed and for IDF military intervention in Gaza ! It’s almost as if the Red Cross and the BBC deliberately obscure the reasons for the condition in which Gaza finds itself! But that could never be….could it?
I love the way its now a debate here on whether the palestinians waste aid or not. they may well do, but why do they need aid in the first place? oh yes, its cos the zionists pushed them into one tiny little corner and every now and then bomb the shit out of them. israel created the mess in palestine, thew refugee camps etc.
Gus Haynes | 03.03.09 – 1:38 pm
I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a simplistic view of the Palestinian economic crisis as this one. Palestinian problems are much greater than waste and almost entirely of the Palestinian’s own making.
Some time ago I wrote an economic analysis of Palestine for this blog but I couldn’t find it through Google. This is to the best of my memory what I wrote.
1) For 60 years the Palestinians have conducted a war against Israel and lost every round. Wars are terribly expensive even when conducted at a distance and much more so when fought at home. Lives are lost, infrastructure is destroyed, investors and tourists look elsewhere. As Homer Simpson would say, duh.
2) Enormous corruption, beginning with Arafat and continuing with Abbas has meant that most of the money (literally $billions)is now sitting in overseas bank accounts.
This corruption is not only the trousering of foreign cash. it includes graft taken from those Palestinians trying to make an honest living.
3) To protect his own position by ensuring no one became powerful enough to dethrone him Arafat created a dozen overlapping militias and ‘police’ forces. The ‘militants’ receive preference in pay and provisions and produce nothing to benefit the economy.
4) Arafat backed Saddam Hussein. As a direct consequence Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Gulf States killed tens of thousands of educated and productive Palestinians working in their territory and expelled the rest. This had three economic results: a) The Arab states ceased to collect ‘income tax’ from these Palestinians and forward it to Arafat; b) remittance income which was a major source of hard currency dried up and c) hundreds of thousands of Palestinians returned home to unemployment.
5) Attempting to emulate Gandhi the Palestinians withdrew their labour, (often by physically stopping workers who wanted to cross), from Israel. This was accompanied by some murders of Jewish employers and much sabotage. Israel responded by increased mechanization, imported workers from less ‘dangerous’ places e.g. Thailand and Romania and diversification into less labour-intensive enterprises. A convenient surge in Soviet immigration didn’t hurt. In short, the 1st Intifada convinced Israel that it didn’t need the Palestinians. When the Intifada ended the Palestinians who had lost their jobs were not re-employed. The largest single Palestinian income source was no more.
6) Related to 5). The Palestinian territories were a major market for Israeli goods. When the Intifada stopped this through deliberate boycott, attacks on suppliers and the inability for Palestinians to pay their bills Israel developed new and more profitable markets. This raised the price of goods to the Palestinians and perhaps more importantly deprived them of raw materials for industry.
7) Palestinian industry basically depends on Israeli good will to transport goods to overseas markets on time (essential for agriculture) or at all. Pissing of the Israelis was a bad idea.
8) Well publicized Palestinian attacks against tourists killed the tourist industry. The idea was to damage the Israeli tourist industry but it backfired. Even when tourists come, as to Bethlehem, they arrive on Israeli buses and stay in Israel rather than Palestine. They spend very little in Palestine.
9) Training their children to kill Jews has enormously disrupted education. The Palestinians used to be called the ‘Jews of the Middle East’- no more.
10) ‘Bite the hand that feeds them’ syndrome. The Palis trashed economic structures designed to help them. For example, the greenhouses left after Israel withdrew from Gaza in 1995. Constant attacks closed down special economic zones designed to allow Palestinian products access to the Israeli market and Israeli companies to hire Palestinians.
11)Welfare dependence – UNWRA variety. A well known condition in other parts of the world. As donors are always willing to fork out cash (even if it doesn’t reach the intended recipients) why struggle to develop industry?
11) Internal violence. The Hamas/F
Oops. I meant to hit preview. :o(
12) Internal violence. The Hamas/Fatah feud drove most of the most productive people out of business or out of Gaza. Muslim terrorism against Christians is having the same effect.
The bottom line is that if you chose to make war against your biggest and closest employer, supplier, port and market you will suffer the consequences, particularly if you lose.
Hence why the second Palestinians stop shooting at Israel and live in peace, wealth and prosperity will flow back in to their homes.
Perhaps though Deegee you have missed the single biggest issue here. Palestinians are merely a convenient pawn for Arabs to concentrate their hatred against the evil juice! As long as that hatred exists or is allowed to exist or is purposely fostered by Arabs, there will be no real peace in the Middle East.
Mailman
I love the way its now a debate here on whether the palestinians waste aid or not. they may well do, but why do they need aid in the first place? oh yes, its cos the zionists pushed them into one tiny little corner and every now and then bomb the shit out of them. israel created the mess in palestine, thew refugee camps etc.
Gus Haynes | 03.03.09 – 1:38 pm
Apologies for the extra long post but there is more to come.
The Zionists did not create the refugee camps. UNWRA did that. A camp, according to UNRWA’s working definition, is a plot of land placed at the disposal of UNRWA by the host government for accommodating Palestine refugees and for setting up facilities to cater to their needs. Areas not designated as such are not considered camps.
In any case some 2/3 of registered refugees don’t live in camps.
Israel didn’t keep the Palestinians in camps. Their Arab brothers did that. With the single honourable exception of Jordan, no Arab country has granted citizenship to Palestinian refugees 60 yrs after. In many countries, particularly Lebanon and Syria the Palestinians are confined to camps by the government of the country. They are not allowed to leave.
Finally, if Israel created the mess in Palestine who created the mess in Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, and every Arab country without oil. Why are these places not paradise for the Arabs? Without Israel to bomb the shit out of them you would expect better economic conditions, peace and human rights, wouldn’t you, Gus?
Perhaps not. Can someone who gathers his information from the BBC be blamed for his fantasies?
A German friend once commented to me. If the Allies and Germany had handled affairs after the massive defeat of WWII as the Arabs and Palestinians have after 1948 there would be 100 million refugees still living in shit more than 60 yrs later.
Gus Haynes | 03.03.09 – 6:23 pm
Israel is the cause of Islamic fundamentalism? That’s funny, Islamic fundamentalism has been going on for fifteen hundred years or so and Israel is only sixty years old. How do you explain that?
its not cos they are jewish – its cos they carry out an insane foreign policy which isnt working ,and is the root cause of all islamic fundamentalism today. you complete prat – someone citicises israel and you accuse them of being anti-jewish/anti semitic. idiot.
Gus Haynes | 03.03.09 – 6:23 pm |
Oh, dear. Lying again, are we? Here’s Osama Bin Laden’s own manifesto, from 1996, in which the poor Palestinians are a mere drop in the ocean. Only after 9/11 did the Western, anti-Israel media connect the Palestinians to world-wide Islamic Jihad, which Al Qaeda picked up on in subsequent press releases.
If you care – for a change – to do a little homework of your own, you might discover that Bum Laden didn’t start bringing the Palestinians into it until long after the Western media made the case for him.
Yes, the Palestinians murdered some Israeli athletes in Munich, and later hijacked a plane in Entebbe and then the Achile Largo, during which they pushed a crippled Jew into the ocean because Israel wouldn’t roll over and die. But Entebbe inspired a TV movie, and the cruise ship hijacking inspired John Adams to write an opera much more than any of it inspired world-wide Islamic jihad. You really need to learn some history outside of CBBC Newsround.
If you had any clue about the Muslim world, you’d realize that many of them don’t like the Palestinians. If Israel’s treatment of Hamas was the root of all evil, why would the Egyptians fight to contain Hamas as much as anyone? Why didn’t Jordan take the West Bank back with Arafat in charge? Why did the Iraqis hate the Palestinians because Sadaam Hussein spent $25,000 on the families of Palestinian suicide bombers? The Taliban in Afghanistan don’t give a damn about Gaza. Tamil Tigers don’t, nor do the Jemaah Islamiah in southern Thailand. Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines have quite a different root cause, as do the Uighurs in Western China and the artists formerly known as the “Salafist Group for Call and Combat” in Algeria. In reality, more people are getting violently angry about the Palestinians in Britain and in BBC production offices than in the actual Muslim World.
This is what, three total busts in as many days? You really, really need to rethink your religious beliefs (taught via BBC catechism, no doubt), and get educated.
Alternatively, click here.
This thread is getting beyond stupid because so few of you bother reading history. Remember UN Resolutions 181 and 242? Remember what happened after the 1967 Six Day War and how Israel’s offer to return all territory captured was rejected? Recall if you dare how subsequent, and indeed even earlier offers of peace by Israel were rejected. All this seems to be conveniently ignored by beeboids and their ilk who do not accept the true nature of Islamic maniacs. Cricket team anyone?
The gally pally aid convoy has been attacked and stoned in egypt and daubed with anti hamas slogans, that how much the gazans are loved in egypt.
Ive also heard egypt is threatening to detain galloway and ridley indefinitely if they further abuse their positions, so after you just kissed the gound in gaza (something you have never one in scotland) please re-enter egypt and say something else mr galloway and ms ridley, please, im begging you…