What was witnessed in Gaza last week, as dozens of masked Palestinian policemen, protesting at not getting paid their salaries, blocked roads and briefly seized a government building, reflects a growing sense of desperation among Palestinians starting to feel the pinch of the new government’s economic isolation. Hamas is trying mightily to find aid from different sources after the United States and the European Union cut their aid flow. Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar met with Arab League officials in Egypt to discuss ways out of the financial crisis. Three Palestinian ministers are on a fund-raising trip to Arab and Islamic states. Russia is following up its hosting of a Hamas delegation last month by pledging an unspecified amount of financial assistance. So far though, cash has not been forthcoming and surviving on “thyme, salt and olives,” as a defiant Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said, will not suffice.
Hamas is correctly determined not to bow to the demands that led to the US and EU sanctioning it. If the cutting off of aid is, as was stated, because Hamas has failed to accept the Quartet’s principles of nonviolence, recognition of Israel and respect for previous agreements between the parties, then where is Israel’s punishment for the exact same failures? Who is supposed to recognize whom? Why should Israel not recognize Hamas? The Palestinians are the victims; they are the ones whose land has been taken by force.
Again, Hamas is asked to abide by all previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements; yet Israel’s decision to prohibit contact with the Palestinian Authority and to withhold Palestinian tax revenues violates those very accords signed with the Palestinians. Israel continues to violate the recent agreement on movement and access between the PA and Israel, which stipulates that the Karni passage will operate continuously. Karni, the only commercial crossing for import and export of goods to and from Gaza, has been closed 60 percent of the time this year.
And since March of last year, when Hamas declared its truce, its cease-fire is holding, whereas Israelis keep firing on Palestinian areas and Palestinians are being killed to this day. Yet Hamas remains in Western eyes the culprit. As such, it appears that Hamas’ success or failure to meet pay-day obligations is now the benchmark by which its survival will be determined.
The present yardstick of success for the Palestinians is not whether the road map is adhered to, not whether Jerusalem returns, or the fate of political prisoners, the return of refugees or final border status or settlements or the wall of separation or even an independent state.
Today, it is less all this and more about the day-to-day feeding of a people, getting them an education, health services, jobs and housing and the one million and one little things that, when all put together, equal dignity and self-worth.
The noble Palestinian cause is thus being reduced to a greater bread-and-butter issue.
