Fayyad, Arab donors and the PA's perpetual disfunctionality

LOTL..
06 January '13..

The level of disfunctionality of the Palestinian Authority while apparent to most, at times can still be quite difficult to put to paper and describe. While not the goal of today's AP interview in the New York Times, they may have just captured it in all its glory.

AP Interview: Palestinian PM Warns of Cash Crisis
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 6, 2013 at 2:22 PM ET

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — The Palestinian self-rule government is in "extreme jeopardy" because of an unprecedented financial crisis, largely because Arab countries have failed to send hundreds of millions of dollars in promised aid, the Palestinian prime minister said Sunday.

The cash crunch has gradually worsened in recent years, and the Palestinian Authority now has reached the point of not being able to pay the salaries of about 150,000 government employees, Salam Fayyad told The Associated Press. The number of Palestinian poor is bound to quickly double to 50 percent of the population of roughly 4 million if the crisis continues, he said.

"The status quo is not sustainable," Fayyad said in an interview at his West Bank office.

.....Fayyad pinned most of the blame for the Palestinian Authority's financial troubles on delinquent Arab donors, saying they are "not fulfilling their pledge of support in accordance with Arab League resolutions."

Arabs Fear Iran As a Tidal Wave; The West Thinks It's Easily Contained by a Sand Castle

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
22 February '10

How do leading Arab forces view the U.S. and Iranian maneuverings over Tehran’s drive to get nuclear weapons, the world’s number one political and strategic crisis? Such reactions are almost always either left out of Western calculations on the Middle East or treated in a distorted manner, replaced by clichés: they only react to what the West does and they are overwhelmingly concerned about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

If treated properly, however, such primary materials are a gold mine for comprehending world views, the situation, and probable responses. Al-Sharq al-Awsat is probably the most interesting Arabic-language newspaper today. It is Saudi-owned, London-based, and the closest thing to a liberal daily. Still, though, it reflects Saudi elite viewpoints.

The newspaper’s editor, Tariq al-Homayed, in a February 18 article, sees the region heading toward war, and he is far from alone in doing so. What he says is extraordinarily important even if—especially if—one doesn’t take it literally.

In the words of the MEMRI translation:

“The notable thing is that [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad threatens Israel and the West... not with his own country's weapons but in the name of 'the resistance and the countries in the region'....

"If a war breaks out, it will be an Iranian war, and Iran will be its target... Why [then] does [Iran threaten to] attack our region and our countries? This is not our war, nor are we working [to promote it]–this war belongs only to Iran and its proxies. As for us, we will be Iran's victims whether it acquires nuclear [weapons] and whether a war breaks out [against it]..."

(Read full article)
.

An Arab Liberal Explains What's Wrong and Dreams His Worst Nightmare

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
26 January '10

You couldn’t do better to understand the contemporary Middle East than through an al-Jazira television program recorded and translated by MEMRI. The speaker is Moncef al-Marzouki, a Paris-based Tunisian human rights activist.

Note: if you read to the end of this article you will encounter the stinger, like a horror movie’s last scene when the monster leaps out and devours the hero.

Marzouki lives in Paris, which tells a lot. It’s hard to live in the Arabic-speaking world and express such frank opinions. Moreover, he is very much exposed to Western influences which flavors his thought and, by the same token, distances him from those living in the Middle East.

While under the themes of Political Correctness and multiculturalism, those in the West celebrate and flatter Arab political culture, the people who actually live under that system are in despair.

While those in the West usually argue the main complaint of Arabic-speakers is about what foreigners do to them, their real problem is what their own leaders do to them.

While in Western universities, students are most often taught about the Middle East along the lines of Arab nationalist ideology, their best counterparts in the region are imprisoned and tortured by regimes holding that doctrine. Meanwhile, these victims’ ill-treatment of is applauded by the Western professors’ ideological counterparts in the Arabic-speaking world.

(Read full article)
.

Either Al-Jazeera Is Nuts Or The World It Covers Is Nuts. Maybe Both.

Marty Peretz
The New Republic
23 December 09

There is cultural malady among the Arabs. It is feverish, spasmodic, contagious. You can see it in the rhetoric in Arab politics. You can see it in the mayhem which easily flows from that rhetoric. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) records almost all of it.

Alas, for those of you who believe that peace will come easily to the Shi'a and the Sunni, to the Israelis and the Palestinians, to the royals and the military republics, the evidence is that it won't come easily at all. In fact, the evidence it that it simply won't come.

Western diplomacy assumes that political arrangements can be made for borders, for designated air space, for rules of disengagement and demilitarization, for political modalities. I think it is all a fraud.

Below is the transcript of a debate on Arab universities, carried by Al-Jazeera. It is an important topic. But the debaters are more than a little bit off their rockers, even the sane one.

(Read full article)
.

Another thought experiment

FresnoZionism.org
17 December 09

Recently while reading “A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel” by Allis and Ronald Radosh (a Hanukah gift from my wife, thank you!) I was struck yet again by the stubborn refusal of the Arab nations during that period — not just the Palestinian Arabs, but Ibn Saud, the Syrians, Iraqis, Egyptians, etc. – to consider any kind of compromise on Jewish immigration into Palestine (not to mention a Jewish state). This despite the fact that there was clearly enough room and resources in the area to support both Jews and Arabs, and although the Jewish presence had already improved economic conditions greatly, even leading to an increase in the Arab population.

As everyone knows, their refusal to compromise ultimately led to war, and a much worse end result for the Palestinian Arabs. And the cynical use of the Arab refugees as a weapon against Israel by the Arab leadership from 1948 to today constitutes one of the most massive violations of human rights since WWII. What a scandal it would be if it weren’t for the remarkably twisted perceptions of those organizations concerned with human rights!

Arab opposition to Jewish immigration actually began at the beginning of the 20th century. It was usually expressed by saying that the Jews would ‘take over’ although the Arabs themselves had not been in charge for centuries. And partition proposals which would have limited Jewish sovereignty to small parts of Palestine were violently rejected.

Today, sixty-one years after the founding of the state and (roughly) 120 years since the beginning of the Zionist enterprise, Arab opposition to it is probably stronger than ever. Even the fact that two Arab states have signed peace agreements with Israel does not disprove this — in practice the ‘peace’ is as cold as possible, antisemitic incitement continues, and only massive American bribes keep it in force.

(Read full article)

.