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America arranged "free democratic elections" in Iraq, then PUNISHES for the results
EuroNews
http://euronews.net/create_html.php?page=detail_info&article=352982&lng=1
Mideast
Palestinians say aid suspension "blackmail"
The Palestinian leadership has closed ranks to criticise Europe and the United State's decision to suspend all direct aid to the the governing Palestinian Authority while it remains led by Hamas.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and President Mahmoud Abbas may not agree on much, but on this issue they spoke as one, calling the suspension an "unjustified punishment of the entire Palestinian people for having made a democratic choice".
Abbas is still struggling for influence over Hamas, which has accused him of trying to take certain policy areas, like foreign affairs, away from the government.
The US state department's Shaun McCormack says the reason for the suspension is clear; Hamas's refusal to renounce violence or recognise the state of Israel.
Aid will still reach the Palestinians, through non-governmental sources and aid agencies; indeed many such outfits are boosting their efforts. However Hamas is struggling to pay its 130 000 civil servants, whose salaries support about a third of the Palestinian population.
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4/8/2006, 7:31 am
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Re: America arranged "free democratic elections" in Iraq, then PUNISHES for the results
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/07/AR2006040701516.html
International Aid to Palestinians
By The Associated Press
The Associated Press
Friday, April 7, 2006; 7:06 PM
-- The United States has earmarked a total of $234 million in aid to the Palestinians for 2006 _ none of it going directly to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority. The European Union and its member nations earmark about $615 million in yearly aid. A breakdown based on figures from the U.S. government, European governments and the European Commission:
UNITED STATES: $150 million goes to construction, training government officials and other projects, plus $84 million in humanitarian assistance paid through the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees.
EUROPEAN COMMISSION: $148 million, including $21.6 million in direct aid to the caretaker Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. It gave $345 million in 2005.
GERMANY: $76 million, plus $56.6 million given through non-governmental organizations and U.N. agencies.
FRANCE: $73.9 million, including $30.8 million in direct aid to the Palestinian Authority, $6.2 million to the World Bank, $6.2 million to U.N. agencies.
BRITAIN: $61.6 million, half of which goes to U.N. agencies.
NETHERLANDS: $40.6 million, with $6.2 million of it going to the Palestinian government, and the rest given to U.N. agencies and aid groups.
SWEDEN: $30.3 million to U.N. agencies, plus $35.7 million given though NGOs.
ITALY: $27 million
BELGIUM: $13 million.
DENMARK: $4.1 million.
FINLAND: $7.4 million _ half to Palestinian Authority projects, the rest to U.N. agencies.
GREECE: $6.8 million, though aid groups.
IRELAND: $4.9 million in aid, of which $923,400 in direct aid to the Palestinian Authority, the rest via aid groups, U.N. agencies.
LUXEMBOURG: $3.7 million, through aid groups.
SPAIN: $2.5 million, to World Bank trust fund for the Palestinian Authority.
LATVIA, LITHUANIA, HUNGARY, ESTONIA, and CYPRUS: Combined total of about $876,000.
No figures are available from Austria, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Portugal, Poland, Malta and Slovakia.
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4/8/2006, 7:41 am
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Re: America arranged "free democratic elections" in Iraq, then PUNISHES for the results
Khaleej Times Online
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2006/April/middleeast_April185.xml§ion=middleeast
Palestinians seek solution over Israeli banks
(Reuters)
7 April 2006
RAMALLAH, West Bank - The Palestinian Monetary Authority said it was in contact with Israel’s central bank to try to stop banks in the Jewish state from cutting ties with Palestinian institutions now that Hamas had taken office.
”The Monetary Authority is ... making contacts with official sides (in Israel) and Palestinian banks to find a work formula that can maintain the relationship,” said George al-Abed, the head of the authority, which functions like a central bank.
Cutting banking ties would hurt the Palestinian economy and trade flows since some imports are backed by Israeli bank guarantees, a Palestinian official has said.
Major Israeli banks launched a review of dealings with their Palestinian counterparts after the Islamic militant group Hamas, which is sworn to destroy Israel, won elections in January. A Hamas-led government assumed power last week.
Israel’s largest bank, Bank Hapoalim POLI.TA, said this week it was severing the main banking ties between Israel and Palestinian areas.
Sources said Hapoalim would phase out dealings over the next three months. Israel’s third-largest bank, Discount Bank DSCT.TA, said it might follow suit.
“The decision of Hapoalim bank in relation to not dealing with banks in the Palestinian territories is an individual decision taken by Hapoalim board of directors for private reasons,” Abed said in a statement issued late on Thursday.
The Bank of Israel could not be reached for comment. But a spokeswoman this week said that while cooperating with Palestinian banks was not illegal, maintaining ties could appear improper.
The Palestinian Monetary Authority is independent of the Hamas-led government.
Hamas is also struggling to find a bank willing to handle its finances, casting doubt on whether it can pay staff or receive foreign aid, Western diplomats and Palestinian officials said this week.
Officials of Hamas, listed by Washington and the EU as a terrorist organisation, say the banking problems are part of an international campaign against the group.
Cutting ties with Palestinian banks would affect the flow of the Israeli shekel into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the most common currency in the Palestinian markets.
Palestinians do not have a national currency. They also deal in the Jordanian dinar and in U.S. dollars.
The new Hamas government is facing Western isolation and cuts in aid to its administration unless it recognises Israel, renounces violence and accepts interim peace accords. Hamas says talks with Israel would be futile.
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4/8/2006, 7:52 am
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Re: America arranged "free democratic elections" in Iraq, then PUNISHES for the results
---------------------------
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/14/AR2007061402098.html
Takeover by Hamas Illustrates Failure of Bush's Mideast Vision
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 15, 2007; A18
Five years ago this month, President Bush stood in the Rose Garden and laid out a vision for the Middle East that included Israel and a state called Palestine living together in peace. "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror," the president declared.
The takeover this week of the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group dedicated to the elimination of Israel demonstrates how much that vision has failed to materialize, in part because of actions taken by the administration. The United States championed Israel's departure from the Gaza Strip as a first step toward peace and then pressed both Israelis and Palestinians to schedule legislative elections, which Hamas unexpectedly won. Now Hamas is the unchallenged power in Gaza.
After his reelection in 2004, Bush said he would use his "political capital" to help create a Palestinian state by the end of his second term. In his final 18 months as president, he faces the prospect of a shattered Palestinian Authority, a radical Islamic state on Israel's border and increasingly dwindling options to turn the tide against Hamas and create a functioning Palestinian state.
"The two-state vision is dead. It really is," said Edward G. Abington Jr., a former State Department official who was once an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas, whose bouts of vacillation have irritated U.S. officials, yesterday dissolved the Palestinian government in response to Hamas's takeover of Gaza. U.S. officials signaled that they will move quickly to persuade an international peace monitoring group -- known as the Quartet -- to lift aid restrictions on the Palestinian government, allowing direct aid to flow to the West Bank-based emergency government that Abbas will lead.
"There is no more Hamas-led government. It is gone," said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the administration must still consult with other members of the Quartet. He said that humanitarian aid will continue to Gaza, but that the dissolution of the Palestinian government is a singular moment that will allow the United States and its allies to create a "new model of engagement."
The evolving U.S. strategy would let the Hamas-run Gaza Strip fend for itself while attempting to bolster Abbas as a moderate leader who can actually govern and deliver peace with Israel. The senior administration official noted that Gaza has no territorial issues with Israel, since there are no Israelis in Gaza, so the Hamas entity there would have no stake in potential peace talks concerning the border on the West Bank.
Referring to Abbas, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters yesterday that "we fully support him in his decision to try and end this crisis for the Palestinian people and to give them an opportunity to return to peace and a better future."
But analysts said yesterday that this strategy of dividing the moderates from the extremists -- which was the core of Bush's 2002 speech -- proved ineffective and may have led to the dilemma facing the administration.
"The less we try to intervene and shape Palestinian politics, the better off we will be," said Robert Malley, an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the International Crisis Group. "Almost every decision the United States has made to interfere with Palestinian politics has boomeranged."
Bush made his speech at the height of a bloody Palestinian uprising, after concluding that then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was too tied to terrorism to make peace. Bush ordered U.S. diplomats to never again meet with Arafat.
Under international pressure, Arafat agreed to name Abbas as a newly empowered prime minister in 2003. But Abbas quit within months, saying he never got enough support from the United States or Israel to be effective.
When Arafat died at the end of 2004, Abbas won the elections to replace him as president of the Palestinian Authority. Despite deep Israeli misgivings, the United States encouraged Abbas to hold Palestinian legislative elections -- and Abbas invited Hamas to participate, believing he could beat them at the polls. But Hamas won, giving Hamas control of the cabinet and of the powerful prime minister's post that had been created at the behest of the United States.
Then, Washington organized a financial boycott of the government, in an effort to showcase Abbas as a moderate alternative in his role as president. But the financial squeeze engendered Palestinian ill will toward the West, not Hamas, and Abbas earlier this year agreed to a unity government with his opponents. The United States had just begun delivering nonlethal aid and training to security forces loyal to Abbas when Hamas decided to strike and seize Gaza.
"The people who are moderate are not effective," said David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "And the people who are effective are not moderate."
Rice has been to Jerusalem four times since December, seeking to rekindle peace talks and to help the Palestinians and Israelis discuss what she called the "political horizon" -- the contours of a Palestinian state. But the discussions never progressed far, largely because of the political weakness of Abbas and his Israeli counterpart.
Before the Hamas takeover of Gaza, Bush and his aides had debated whether the president should make a speech marking the fifth anniversary of his Middle East address, on June 24, in part to rebut criticism that his administration has accomplished little to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Aides say now that those plans are up in the air. It is not clear what the president would say.
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6/16/2007, 12:16 pm
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Joseph Sarandos
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Re: America arranged "free democratic elections" in Iraq, then PUNISHES for the results
A classic example of “Political Double-speak”?
As preface to this subject, I’ll remind that the Bush Administration is on the historical record for FIRST arranging and protecting “Free democratic elections” in Iraq, but THEN officially objecting to and imposing harsh financial and political SANCTIONS AGAINST the government that WAS freely elected by the People of Iraq.
The actions and reactions of the Bush Administration were basically THE SAME in the case of the “Free elections” in Palestine.
For some background references to these facts, read the following articles at their hyperlinked sources:
----------------------------------------------------------------
EuroNews
http://euronews.net/create_html.php?page=detail_info&article=352982&lng=1
Mideast
Palestinians say aid suspension "blackmail"
----------------------------------------------------------------
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/07/AR2006040701516.html
International Aid to Palestinians
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/14/AR2007061402098.html
Takeover by Hamas Illustrates Failure of Bush's Mideast Vision
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Now these are EXCERPTS from an Associated Press (AP) article published today (8/21/07), that can be found on many web sites including the San Jose Mercury News from whose site I am quoting at
http://www.mercurynews.com/nationworld/ci_6679475
Note the phrases that I’ve placed between “>> <<”.
Bush acknowledges frustration in Iraq
By DEB RIECHMANN Associated Press Writer
News Fuze
Article Launched:08/21/2007 09:35:38 AM PDT
MONTEBELLO, Quebec—President Bush acknowledged frustration with the troubled government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Tuesday >>but said it's up to the Iraqi people to decide whether to continue supporting him<<.
Stopping short of offering an endorsement, >>Bush said it was not up to the United States to give a verdict on al-Maliki's government<<.
<<"The fundamental question is, will the government respond to the demands of the people,"<< the president said. >>"And if the government doesn't ... respond to the demands of the people, they will replace the government. That's up to the Iraqis to make that decision, not American politicians."<<
<Snipped>
>>"The Iraqis will decide,"<< Bush insisted. "They have decided they want a constitution. They have elected members to their parliament and >>they will make the decisions just like democracies do." <<
<Snipped>
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Joseph
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8/21/2007, 12:14 pm
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