|
 |
||||
|
|
|||||
|
Hamas sanctions squeeze the life out of West Bank By Jane Flanagan in Nablus The Telegraph 07/05/2006 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/05/07/wpal07.xml&DCMP=EMC-new_07052006 Afrah Jowdad, 32, toyed forlornly with her four prized bracelets for the last time before handing them over to the merchant in the ancient West Bank gold market of Nablus yesterday. "They were given to me by my husband as a dowry on my wedding day, so to lose them is to lose my best-loved memories," she said. "But I have six children and no other way to pay for food, so I have no option other than selling my bracelets." A child with a 'Hungry' sign Silent protest: A child at a march in Nablus Outside the Star Display jewellery emporium, a line of Palestinian women, in traditional hijab dress, queued patiently to sell rings, necklaces and other finery. To sell one's dowry brings shame on Palestinian families but these are such desperate days in Gaza and the West Bank that basic needs prevail over social mores. "I have never seen anything like this: I am averaging 400,000 shekels [£50,000] of gold purchases every day," said the merchant, Abdel Hakim Hawari, 40. The rush to sell family heirlooms in the occupied territories is the starkest proof yet of the imminent economic meltdown faced by 3.5 million Palestinians, as sanctions against the new Hamas government begin to bite. Even before Hamas was elected, the economy was faltering and heavily dependent on financial support from Europe and America. But the decision by Brussels and Washington to withdraw funding until Hamas moderates its militant anti-Israel stance has pushed the fragile economy to collapse. Overnight the money has dried up as 167,000 public-sector employees, the economy's largest body of earners, no longer receive wages from the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA). The impact is all the greater for Israel's clampdown on the territories, which has stopped thousands of Palestinians from crossing into Israel to earn a living. With Hamas refusing to condemn a recent suicide attack, aid workers fear that the isolated Palestinian government - and the limited services available to its people - may soon collapse. Aid agencies would be overwhelmed if expected to pick up the pieces. "All the international aid agencies put together will not be able to replace the services that the Palestinian Authority provides," said David Shearer, the head of the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs. As government coffers empty and the flow of trade and goods into the Palestinian territories dries up, medical supplies in hospitals are running dangerously low and basic food supplies are unaffordable for most families. Last week a group of 36 aid agencies working with Palestinians, including the British groups Merlin and Save the Children UK, wrote a joint letter to Israel urging it to fulfil last November's agreement to allow trade in and out of Gaza. Israel has remained insistent on keeping tight checks on traffic to prevent terrorist attacks. The economy of the Palestinian territories has been propped up by outside support since the early 1990s, when the PA was created out of the Oslo peace process as the future government of a nascent Palestinian state. In spite of the continued fighting that stalled progress towards creating a Palestinian state, the international community kept faith with the PA, ploughing in billions of pounds. The World Bank estimates that only 12 per cent of the PA's economic activity was ever internally generated. The rest came from outside, either through Palestinians earning wages in Israel or foreign donor support. When Yasser Arafat, then the Palestinian leader, launched the armed intifada in late 2000, Israel closed the checkpoints to the occupied territories, reducing the income from foreign earnings to a trickle. By the time Hamas won power in January's general election, the PA was in debt to the tune of £451 million. When aid was suspended by Brussels and Washington, Hamas asked Muslim nations for funding and won promises of tens of millions of pounds from friendly Arab nations - only to run into another problem. International banks have refused to transfer these Arab funds to the PA, for fear of being proscribed by the United States banking authorities for helping Hamas, which is on Washington's list of terrorist organisations. They have reason to be cautious. Five years ago, when al-Aqsa Islamic Bank in the West Bank city of Ramallah was described by President George W Bush as "a financial arm of Hamas'', its global business vanished overnight. Both America and Europe agree that economic sanctions should hurt the Hamas administration, not the Palestinian people. But so far, it is people such as the Jowdads of Nablus, selling family heirlooms, who are making the painful sacrifices. "I just don't know what is going to happen when people run out of gold to sell," said Mr Hawari, as he raked in the profits from today's high international gold prices. "This cannot go on for ever and, when it finishes, there will be trouble."
Hamas aid row is a matter of life or death for patients By Tim Butcher in Gaza City (Filed: 06/05/2006) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=YGVD4WZRBATXJQFIQMGCFFOAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2006/05/06/wmid06.xml A six-year-old boy lay on a hospital bed chomping through a fistful of pumpkin seeds yesterday, unaware that he could soon be a casualty in the bitter battle raging between Hamas and the international community. The row is as tortuous and twisted as the plastic tubes snaking from Abdullah Nahal's distended stomach to a dialysis machine, but for his father the issue is horribly clear. "Unless he has dialysis he will die," Manar Nahal, 30, said without any apparent emotion at his son's bedside in Gaza City's Shifa Hospital. "But we have been told that the doctors have only a few more days' supplies of filters and pipes for the dialysis so we don't know if they will turn us away when we come for our session next week." On the bed next to Abdullah lay Mariam Abu Odeh, 12. "She has already lost one brother and two sisters to a kidney condition that is hereditary in our family," said the girl's mother, Intissah Abu Odeh, 45. "The condition is very serious so if she goes without dialysis I fear I will lose my fourth child." A shortage of medical supplies is the first symptom of a crisis looming over 3.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank under the control of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority (PA). Aid experts believe that the first avoidable deaths among Palestinian civilians are only days away. Evidence of shortages was easy to find at Shifa, the largest public hospital in Gaza. On the dialysis ward all 160 patients have been told to prepare for a reduction in the weekly number of blood-cleaning sessions. And up on the cancer ward, Ismail Siam forlornly held up the cake of soap he had to buy so his sister, Asma al Saidi, could have a bed bath. "They cannot even afford to keep my sister clean," he said shaking with anger and impending grief. Nurses, who have worked unpaid for the past two months, said stocks of almost all chemotherapy drugs had run out on the ward. The problems stem from the world's reaction to Hamas's takeover of the PA. The economy was already creaky, artificially propped up by regular stipends from America and Europe and a tax rebate owed by Israel, worth £60 million monthly. But all of that money disappeared overnight as Israel and the West put pressure on the Islamist movement to recognise Israel and renounce violence. Those who provide the funds said they did not want to hurt the Palestinian people but it is they who are suffering. "The West is killing Arabs and Muslims with their policy of withholding funds - it is as simple as that," said Basim Naim, the health minister newly appointed by Hamas. "When we have to reduce dialysis for our patients we are signing their death certificate. As a surgeon I am used to sacrificing limbs to save a life but now I am being asked to cut back on peripheral services to save our entire health system from collapse, to cut back on life-saving treatment." With 13,700 doctors, nurses and health workers on his books, Mr Naim said his ministry needed £6 million each month to buy medical supplies and to pay salaries. "Since the beginning of March we have received nothing, not a cent," he said. John Ging, head of the largest aid provider in Gaza, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said the Palestinian health sector was within days of a full-blown crisis. He said the causes were twofold - the withdrawal of funding to the PA and the problem of access to Gaza through border checkpoints that are controlled by Israel and routinely closed because of Israeli security concerns. Hamas has complained that stockpiles of drugs and medicines that it has purchased in Egypt cannot reach Gaza because of border controls. Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, denied that there had been any tightening of border rules for the transfer of medical supplies and acute health cases since Hamas won control of the PA. "Israel wants to do everything it can to avoid suffering in the Palestinian community," he said. "But we have legitimate security concerns with an administration run by a political movement that espouses terrorism against Israel." Europe and America said the supply problem was the fault of Hamas for refusing to meet demands to moderate its anti-Israel stance. But in a sign of the growing importance of the issue, donor nations met last week to discuss ways of making sure hospital stock rooms in Gaza and the West Bank do not run out completely. For Abdullah, a swift resolution of the crisis is a matter of life or death.
|