Still Strangling Palestine
My article "Still Strangling Palestine", on the effects of the Western blockade of the Occupied Palestinian territories, is available now at UK Watch.
An excerpt:
"It is easy enough to predict the likely consequences of imposing a year’s comprehensive financial blockade on one of the poorest places on Earth. And yet the findings of last Friday's Oxfam report on the effects of the West's enforced economic isolation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories – imposed in response to the victory of Hamas in the elections of January 2006 - are no less chilling for that.
According to the report, “…the decision to suspend aid to the PA [the Palestinian Authority] and withhold tax revenues has led to immense suffering. One year on, the number of Palestinian people living in poverty has jumped by 30 per cent, essential services are facing meltdown, and previously unknown levels of factional violence plague Palestinian streets. If this situation continues, the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) risk becoming a ‘failed state’, destroying the chances of achieving a two-state solution [to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict].”
Our government, which claims to lead the way in democracy promotion abroad and the alleviation of third world poverty, may be comfortable with impoverishing a society to punish it for voting the wrong way in a free election. But there is no reason for us to acquiesce in the implementation of such an obscene policy when we have the power to change it."
Read the rest here.
An excerpt:
"It is easy enough to predict the likely consequences of imposing a year’s comprehensive financial blockade on one of the poorest places on Earth. And yet the findings of last Friday's Oxfam report on the effects of the West's enforced economic isolation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories – imposed in response to the victory of Hamas in the elections of January 2006 - are no less chilling for that.
According to the report, “…the decision to suspend aid to the PA [the Palestinian Authority] and withhold tax revenues has led to immense suffering. One year on, the number of Palestinian people living in poverty has jumped by 30 per cent, essential services are facing meltdown, and previously unknown levels of factional violence plague Palestinian streets. If this situation continues, the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) risk becoming a ‘failed state’, destroying the chances of achieving a two-state solution [to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict].”
Our government, which claims to lead the way in democracy promotion abroad and the alleviation of third world poverty, may be comfortable with impoverishing a society to punish it for voting the wrong way in a free election. But there is no reason for us to acquiesce in the implementation of such an obscene policy when we have the power to change it."
Read the rest here.
Labels: Israel/Palestine
posted by David Wearing at 4:18 PM
2 Comments:
David,
You might want to make a contribution to this dicsussion on CiF:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/conor_foley/2007/04/boycott_no_more.html
Eccles.
thanks, Eccles. Way ahead of you, as you may have seen by now
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