Grudgingly but gratefully the PLO accepted the donors' money as a temporary arrangement, pending the end of the interim period in final status negotiations that were supposed to conclude by the creation of an independent Palestinian state living in peace and security side by side with Israel as promised by the U.S. led international community first in 1999, then in 2005, again in 2008, and now within two years according to Obama administration.
Politically however, the donors' money have become a temporary permanent arrangement, relieving the budget of the occupying power of burdens it must be held responsible for, financing the unending military occupation, defusing the economic incentive for revolt against the occupation, and holding the PA and the PLO hostages to the political conditions attached to donors' contributions.
Disillusionment with the role the donors' money is playing is growing alongside the Palestinian disillusionment with the "peace process." The Palestinians, who contributed substantially to regional state building and who still contribute to many regional economies are a resourceful and indignant people who have the capital, the expertise and skillful labor, the scientific and intellectual manpower, and the intelligence and the political will to build their own society once they are empowered with self determination to gain liberty, freedom and independence. With the growing disillusionment, the donors' political role is increasingly becoming suspicious, creating a sense of humiliation, exacerbating the national frustration, and could not any longer keep the lid tightly on the boiling refusal of the interim turned permanent status quo.
Palestinian sense of betrayal by the international community is as old as the United Nations General Assembly's 1947 resolution No. 181 for the partition of their homeland into two states and its resolution No. 194 of 1948 for their return to their homeland. This same sense of betrayal has a strong vocal voice in the West Bank recently in the "disappointment" that Abbas, the signatory to (DoP), made clear by declaring his irrevocable decision not to run anew for presidency: "I found all ways blocked, then I decided not to rerun for another term. I am not optimistic and I do not want to have illusions," he had told the London based Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat. In the Gaza Strip, the latest chapter of the betrayal of the world community was voiced in Paris on December 22 by sixteen rights groups, including Amnesty International, Oxfam, and Christian Aid: "The international community has betrayed the people of Gaza by failing to back their words with effective action to secure the ending of the Israeli blockade. World powers have also failed and even betrayed Gaza's ordinary citizens. They have wrung hands and issued statements, but have taken little meaningful action," they said in a report.
This sense of betrayal is explosive given the political siege imposed under the direct Israeli military occupation on the PLO and PA in the West Bank and the Israeli military siege imposed tightly on the Gaza Strip. Conditions are ripe for a third Palestinian "Intifada" (uprising) in the West Bank and all indications refer to a renewal of Israeli military invasion of Gaza.
Abbas, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on December 22 warned of an imminent "Intifada." True he pledged that, "As long as I'm in office, I will not allow anybody to start a new intifada. Never. Never. But if I leave, it's no longer my responsibility and I can't make any guarantees," he said.
Meanwhile in the Gaza Strip, Hamas, on the eve of the first anniversary of the December 27 Israeli three-week invasion, is warning against an imminent Israeli new invasion. Their strongest indicator is a steel wall the U.S. Engineering Corps are building underground to block an estimated 1,500 tunnels that span the 14-kilometer Sinai-Gaza border. In January 2008 thousands of Arab Palestinians from Gaza swarmed the Egyptian Gazan borders as an outlet into a compatriot Arab government who nonetheless proved no more compassionate to their plight under siege than the Israelis when they immediately after the episode closed their border crossings. The tunnels were the Palestinian alternative.
Now the U.S. made 18 meter steel slabs, which were tested in U.S. laboratories to resist bombs, melting or cutting and meant to reach 30 meters underground, threaten -- in addition to disrupting and contaminating the underground water flow -- when the project is completed, reportedly in eighteen months, to deprive them of sixty percent of their basic needs, according to the UNRWA American Commissioner General, Karen Koning AbuZayd, who told a forum organized by the American University in Cairo that the steel wall is more secure than the Bar Lev Line, built by Israeli military along the eastern coast of the Suez Canal after it occupied the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt in 1967.
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