Dan Diker reminds us that when reading the following and similarly worded “articles” to ignore the author’s premature usage of the word “Palestine”. This premature reference to “Palestine” places Palestinian claims to the disputed West Bank and Gaza Strip – over which Israel also has longstanding claims – on an equal diplomatic and legal footing with the claims of the State of Israel. In other words, it assigns a legal status to the Palestinian claims that, in point of fact, they do not have.
There is no “State of Palestine” at present and there was no Palestinian state controlling the West Bank and the Gaza Strip prior to 1967.
According to Alan Baker, Legal Advisor to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, use of the language “Palestine” contravenes the carefully crafted language in the Oslo Accords and UN Security Council Resolution 242.3.
Regardless of this typical Arabist talkspeak eking out of The Telegraph, we will agree that the EU is indeed funding Jewicide. Via The Telegraph:
# The EU is to increase its aid to the Palestinian Authority by €40 million, in order to pay the salaries of government employees. The EU’s generosity with our money – it has paid the Palestinian Authority €256 million so far this year – creates two problems. First, the PA in Gaza is run by Hamas, which is on the EU’s list of designated terrorist operations. Under Brussels rules, funding such an organization is a criminal offence. Euro-lawyers have sought to circumvent the letter of the law by funneling aid money through NGOs, but this is sheer sophistry.
# Second, it is becoming increasingly clear that overseas aid is arresting a political settlement in the region. Palestinians receive more assistance, per capita, than any other people on Earth, and live in one of its most violent spaces. The two facts are connected.
# The idea that aggression can be buried under a landslide of euros sounds reasonable, but it is based on a false premise, namely that political violence is caused by economic deprivation.
# Palestinians are a naturally enterprising people who, in other Arab states, often form the professional and administrative class. A capitalist Palestine, in which citizens looked to themselves rather than to the state, would be more stable. Its propertied classes would have a stake in civil order. Its businessmen would have an incentive to remain on cordial terms with their customers, including those in Israel.
# None of this will happen, however, as long as Palestinians remain trapped in the squalor of dependency.
The author is a Conservative Member of the European Parliament.