Aid to the Palestinians should have been greatly curtailed, if not ended entirely, ages ago. They should be handled in the way the EU handles Belarus, everything tied to advances on human rights etc. The handing over of money without any restrictions, or the looking between the fingers at their violations of those restrictions already in place, is ridiculous and an outrage. KGS
How Long the Largess to the Palestinians?
David Hornik: Recent staged spectacles that were supposed to whip up sympathy for them and put Israel in a bad light again—the Nakba Day (May 15) and Naksa Day (June 4) marches on Israel’s borders, the flotilla, the flytilla—have been disappointments at best, if not outright flops. And the Palestinians’ long-hyped independent-statehood bid at the UN in September is meeting growing opposition from the West.
The Obama administration is believed to have signaled that it will veto the attempt in the Security Council. Germany and Italy have come out squarely against it, and last week 100 members of the European Parliament signed a letter decrying it, noting that “past agreements between the parties and international mediators clearly reject unilateral actions.”
This week a meeting of the Middle East Quartet—the U.S., EU, UN, and Russia—that was supposed to find a way to head off the Palestinians’ statehood bid and restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, ended inconclusively. Two Israeli newspapers (here and here) say the sticking point was—in return for Israeli diplomatic concessions—Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov backing the Palestinians’ ongoing rock-solid refusal to take that seemingly innocuous step.
