Year of Hardship

Editorial: 25 December 2006

The $100 million of confiscated Palestinian money that Israel says it will release to the Palestinians is welcome news. It should go to helping alleviate some of the financial hardships the Palestinians have suffered this year. It can at least help pay many of the 160,000 government workers who have not received their full pay in nine months. That, in turn, could help lessen the tension between Hamas and Fatah supporters which has in instances this year risen dangerously high.

This Israeli step should not blur a couple of realities, like the money is Palestinian. It is tax revenue Israel decided to withhold when Hamas formed a government earlier this year. And not all of the money is being handed back; there is $500 million left. And Israel says it will hand over the $100 million for humanitarian purposes but only if a mechanism can be found to bypass Hamas. Trying to decide who deserves the money and who will go without it could yet unhinge the agreement.

The money, if it comes, is positive news at the tail end of a year that, even by Palestinian standards and the hardships they have endured for decades, has been extraordinary. First came the changing of the guard, the election of Hamas. Out went the Palestinian Authority, often accused of being corrupt, mismanaged and unable since Oslo of 1993 to get for the Palestinians a state or any other of their major rights. In came Hamas, the men of resistance, the humanitarian provider and now the wielders of power who, Palestinian believed and hoped, just might succeed where the PA failed. But the international economic boycott which followed the election of Hamas never allowed Hamas even the chance of getting any sort of peace initiative moving while plunging many Palestinians into poverty.

The elections were won by Hamas fair and square, the democratic kind the Bush administration has been espousing. But Hamas’ refusal to recognize Israel became the justification put forward by the US, Israel and the EU for their collective punishment of the Palestinian people for their having made the “wrong” choice in January’s elections. What followed was a summer siege of Gaza, ostensibly to release a captured Israeli soldier and to stop Qassam rocket fire into Israel. The siege failed to do either, killed over 600 Palestinians and looked more like it was intended to break Palestinian spirit so that any solution imposed by Israel would be welcomed. Then came the factional violence between the two main Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah.

The money will probably not lead to a breakthrough in the stalled Middle East peace process which would help Mahmoud Abbas, suffering from the conflict with Hamas, and Ehud Olmert, losing popularity in Israel over his handling of the war with Lebanon this summer. But it will help Abbas sustain a level of support for his government as it challenges Hamas on new elections. That is a challenge that could increase the political polarization of the factions that many Palestinians fear will result in greater bloodshed on the streets in the year ahead.