The Palestinian crisis

[Englander]

Editorial comment

Palestinians, on the brink of a humanitarian crisis, are to get some relief after aid donors decided this week to find ways round the international boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. That is a welcome correction to a sterile and destructive policy that has done nothing to dent popular support for the Islamist radicals or shift them away from their rejection of the state of Israel but has added significantly to the groundswell of anti-western bitterness among all Arabs.

The quartet of Middle East negotiators - the US, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations - has agreed to a "temporary international mechanism" to channel aid into the occupied territories, probably through the World Bank. James Wolfensohn, the bank's former chief, has resigned as special envoy to the region, warning of the crisis being created by the attempt to strangle Hamas financially.

Put simply, as former US president Jimmy Carter did this week, the Palestinian people are being punished for electing Hamas, partly in despair at the failure of a peace process they continue to support. Such collective punishment is, of course, illegal under international law. It is an immoral weapon to use against a prostrate and occupied people. The cut-off in the flow of aid (and Israeli-collected Palestinian tax revenue) into the West Bank and Gaza means people lack food, fuel and medicine. It will, if pursued, lead to institutional collapse and societal breakdown.

That would be a catastrophe not just for the Palestinians but for Israelis who will in future have to live alongside a failed would-be state.

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Financial Times