Donors ante up another $5.4 billion for the reconstruction of Gaza again. Theyre tired of this. To stop it, pay attention to who starts the Gaza wars.
In Cairo last Sunday donor countries pledged $5.4 billion to rebuild the Gaza Strip. They’re sick of this. They should be.
Qatar forks over $1 billion. The US, another $212 million. UAE, $200 million. The EU, $568 million. Turkey, $200 million. Kuwait, $200 million. Greece, $1.35 million. Some 50 donors nations, all told.
What a colossal waste.
What an unnecessary, preventable expenditure.
Connect the dots, please! Cause-and-effect: Hamas fires missiles at Israeli civilians; Israel responds. Result: destruction in Gaza. Solution: Reverse the cause-and-effect. Hamas does not fire missiles at Israeli civilians. Israel does not respond. No destruction in Gaza.
The next time the likes of the EU complain about Israel’s “disproportionate” response to attacks on its country, maybe the donor nations should silence their reflexive political line and look at their bottom line. Let them recall what it costs them to rebuild Gaza — again — as Hamas stupidly boasts about having won a war it recklessly began.
Who kidnapped the three Israeli boys last June? Hamas. Who fired missiles into Israel civilian centers the exact same day the boys were kidnapped? Hamas. Who arrogantly — and, it turns out, expensively — renounced one Israeli ceasefire proposal after another? Hamas.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende told the Washington Post that Europe’s patience is wearing thin with the seemingly endless violence between the two sides.
As well it should.
“It’s understandable for donors and taxpayers alike to ask why taxpayers should pick up the bill for what warring parties have torn down,” Brende said.
Precisely. A sort of comic kleptomania governs the Hamas mentality: Fire missiles, invite response, station human shields in houses, build terror tunnels from inside houses, watch the destruction of the houses — then turn around for handouts to rebuild the houses.
Another reality worthy of European impatience: The persistent corruption of both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority that sees “reconstruction” money go for anything but. As in the $100 million of this $5.4 billion that will go toward “bolstering the Palestinian Authority budget.” Translation: The PA dole. The PA payment of “salaries” to unemployed Palestinians who do nothing for the government; in fact, who do nothing at all. This passes for “reconstruction” in Gaza. It’s no wonder that donors are tired of picking up the bill.
Still another reality: “building materials.” Israel has severely limited their import into Gaza, even if fully paid for by the donor nations, because these materials — $3 billion worth of them — in the last “reconstruction” effort were used to build more than 30 terror tunnels whose sole purpose was to facilitate the murder and kidnapping of Israelis, not to erect houses.
To rebuild Gaza, the donor nations need to confront the ideology, the power and the governance of Hamas. If Hamas isn’t changed or sidelined, this $5.4 billion will — again — go to waste.
Gaza today, the Economist reports, is a “sea of despair.” Highways half finished. Caravans for the homeless piled high in Turkey. People living in shacks or wreckage. People fleeing Gaza on unsafe boats. Hamas and the PA still fighting to weaken each other, not to help the citizenry. Hamas still focused on “the resistance,” on the next war. The more things change . . .
Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News
