The Last Exile

Foreign Policy magazine has posted highlights of Freedom House’s annual report with a listing of the 20 least free countries in the world. North Korea ranks #1 and none of the big fat nasty places mentioned are a surprise per say. Well, except - I did think Somalia should rank higher than #5 and while I never thought Libya would be an easy place to live-in, I am kind of surprised to see Libya trumped a bigger hell-hole than Somalia.

Now, if I could just get my head around the idea that it is more desirable to be citizen of Somalia rather than a Libya. It just doesn’t quite pass my inner sniff test. Zimbabwe did not even make the list or rate a dishonorable mention. What’s up with that? In fact, it looks like the entirety of Central and South American is no longer deserving of a mention among the worst of the worse…which is either a cause for celebration or someone(s) possesses really poor world geography skills.

Depending on your geopolitics – China holds either one or two spots on the list. Once as Tibet (China 9), and then again, as China (12). I don’t mean to give the impression I am suddenly going soft on commies but I have real doubts China 2010 rates a place in the top 20.

While the dictators/despots of Africa earn 5 dishonorable mentions 4 FSU satellites are given rather prominent positions on the list. Is this an appropriate time to interject and just say a small prayer of thanksgiving for the fact some of my ancestors all got the hell of out Belarus (10) – alive and in one piece. Egad, would it ever suck to be me in Belarus now.

Guess who didn’t make the list or a mention? Israel, which doesn’t surprise me in the least but Israel’s omission has probably made the world’s collective mouth gasp in horror for such a glaring and obvious omission. The Saudis and the Syrians make the list, and the Saudis’ 16th spot beats the Syrian’s 17th which is probably the only time in the last 100 years that a Saudis have beaten anyone other than a slave or a woman. Again from this region, I am rather surprised to see not the slightest nod Yemen’s way. Speaking of misses, Iran does not clock in anywhere. No doubt Neda and thousands of other Iranians would probably be rather startled by that fact as well – well they would; if they weren’t already dead.

The only people who would probably be surprised by this Ynet News report is probably the Obama Administration and the Euroweiners who have invested (literally) so much in the bona fides of Mahmoud Abbas. If I were to summarize the Palestinian position it would be thus -the so-called Palestinian moderates are afraid they will lose to the ‘radicals’ so they want the election post-poned. Ynet News.

The Fatah movement is considering filing an appeal with the Elections Committee and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in an effort to postpone the local elections in the Palestinian Authority due to internal disagreement and division within the faction. The Palestinians consider next month’s elections crucial, as they symbolize another important step on the way to building the institutions of the Palestinian state, as President Salam Fayyad described them.

Fatah hasn’t been able to reach an agreement over the candidates for many of the municipalities and councils, and in many places a list of senior Fatah officials is expected to run against the movement’s official list. The Palestinian Central Committee has failed in their efforts to reconcile the camps, and some fear Fatah’s image might significantly be jeopardized over the internal rift.

The Fatah has also failed to ward off pressures mounted by the large local clans. The clans, who have witnessed their influence decline both on the national and governmental levels, consequently held on to the local authorities with all their power. “The clans in Hebron have made it clear that they are not interested in factional elections, but rather in the division of the council according to a clan hierarchy,” a Fatah source told Ynet.
“People in the clans told us: ‘Fatah, Hamas, we don’t care about any of these. We want our own people regardless of their party affiliation,” the source said, adding, “No one so far has had the courage to confront the clans, and according to estimations the elections in Hebron will be clan-based and not according to party distribution.”

Another matter that is pushing the Fatah to postpone elections is the fear that Hamas supporters will back Fatah opponents, despite Hamas’ official announcement that it will boycott the elections.  ”We are concerned that in many places, especially where Fatah is weak and divided, the Hamas will tell its supporters to vote for our opponents, which will ensure Fatah’s defeat in the elections,” said the source.

The peace process is officially dead in spite of any indirect or even direct negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. If Abbas cannot even garnish enough support for his party membership within local councils then there simply is no viable Palestinian leader who can step up to the plate and negotiate on the behalf of the Palestinian people with the Israeli state. Nor will there be a viable Palestinian leader as long as the Americans and Europeans continue to place all their bets on a man who lacks support among his own base.

I haven’t been blogging simply because I am absolutely overwhelmed with things to do. I have a spring/summer wardrobe and a bed-skirts to finish sewing, walls to paint, and the most comprehensive cleaning of my apartment since about this time last year. Did I mention things to cook? This just looks and sounds so utterly divine that I just might have to make room for it on the menu.

In the meantime, I really don’t care what Ann Coutler has to say or not as I am not yet a perfected Jew but can we all agree that University of Ottawa students get a fail for tolerance and/or supporting free speech rights?

Speaking of intolerance and free speech, the Saudis are busy condemning Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recent speech at the AIPAC convention. There is something about the Saud’s whiny about Israelis which always reminds me of the smell of rotting socks…

Apparently, Bib Netanyahu had an hour and a half face-to-face meeting with the US President Obama. I suspect Obama was busy trying to convince Bibi to change the text of the Haggadah at the end of the Passover seder to say - ‘Next year in the Settlement’ rather than the politically ‘arrogant’ but traditional ‘Next year in Jerusalem”.

In the meantime, if you are really looking for something to read and want to sink your teeth into something a little more substantial than norm; may I suggest this US Army War College paper published circa 2005 and entitled Getting ready for a Nuclear –Ready Iran. I suspect the Obama administration has read it and is following the woefully inadequate script.

Daniel Pipes:

“The stupidest program the U.S. government has ever undertaken” – last year that’s what I called American efforts to improve the Palestinian Authority (PA) military force. Slightly hyperbolic, yes, but the description fits because those efforts enhance the fighting power of enemies of the United States and its Israeli ally.

Go read the ‘why’ and just so all you Canadians don’t get too smug – the current Canadian government is just as butt stupid for expanding and continuing to fund Operation Proteus which is the Canadian Forces helping to train the Palestinian Authority ’security forces’ along side US General Dayton’s group.

h/tip: Sassywire.

In a follow-up to this mornings post on corruption within the Palestinian Authority, an arrest warrant has now been issued for Fahmi Shabaneh. Jerusalem Post

The Palestinian Authority on Wednesday issued an arrest warrant against former top PA anti-corruption official Fahmi Shabaneh, ironically, on charges of corruption and undermining the PA.

It comes a day after Shabaneh issued an ultimatum to PA President Mahmoud Abbas to remove the corrupt officials in the Palestinian leader’s office within two weeks or he will expose more cases of corruption that “would seriously embarrass the PA and even harm its relations with Arab and Muslim countries as well as donors.”

Wednesday’s arrest warrant was signed by the PA prosecutor general, who also accused Shabaneh of involvement in selling land to Jews. However, Shabaneh is a resident of Jerusalem, where the PA does not have the power to make arrests. 

You make think Shabaneh is safe as long as he does not leave East Jerusalem but he does risk being kidnapped by Fatah officials and kidnapping is not out of the realm of a Palestinian security officials job description.

If Shabaneh is turned over to the Palestinian Authority he faces an automatic death sentence if convicted by a PA military court for ’selling land to Jews’. This racist law is considered a capital criminal offence of the highest order within the Palestinian Authority. Nor would Shabaneh be the first to suffer that fate. Shabaneh has only one faint hope – if enough people in the international community take up his cause the Palestinian Authority might be persuaded it is within their best interests not to try him on trumped up charges. So who is up for the challenge?

The upper echelon of the Palestinian Authority got caught and called to account for treating the public coffers of the Palestinian people like their own personal slush fund. So who is to blame for the sad sorry state of corruption with the PA? The Jerusalem Post carries the official response.

Former top Palestinian Authority anti-corruption official Fahmi Shabaneh issued an ultimatum to PA President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday to remove the corrupt officials in the Palestinian leader’s office within two weeks or he will expose more cases of corruption that “would seriously embarrass the PA and even harm its relations with Arab and Muslim countries as well as donors.”

According to Shabaneh, the material he will expose is far more severe than what had been published so far. In response, the PA published a statement on Wednesday morning saying that Shabaneh’s allegations were part of an Israeli conspiracy aimed at undermining Abbas because of his refusal to return to the negotiation table unconditionally.

Shabaneh, at least sounds like a realist;

“Had it not been for the presence of the Israeli authorities in the West Bank, Hamas would have done what they did in the Gaza Strip,” Shabaneh told the Post. “It’s hard to find people in the West Bank who support the Palestinian Authority. People are fed up with the financial corruption and mismanagement of the Palestinian Authority.”

“I have bought my cemetery plot,” says Shabaneh

The Jerusalem Post also carries an in-depth interview with Sabaneh which is worth the few minutes it takes to read but mark my words in a few years some earnest Israeli university student will write a thesis attempting to prove the Israeli occupation is the result of widespread and systematic corruption within the Palestinian Authority. 

(Reuters Photo)While I can understand Sabaneh’s prediction that at some point in the future Hamas will overthrow Fatah from power and control in the West Bank; its really no solution. Any Hamas’ leader who lives in a refugee camp but has granite countertops in his kitchen is not who I would bank on of being a fiscally responsible guardian of the public trust or coffers.

Big story out of Lebanon, other than Hezbollah, concerns the status of Palestinian refugees – specifically those Palestinian refugees who arrived in the 70’s as a result of the Jordanians expelling Palestinians during the Black September uprising. While these Palestinians are numbered among the ‘total’ Palestinian refugee count maintained by the UNWRA these people are completely ID-less. The most basic necessities are denied not only to those refugees but by extension to their descendents.

There was discussion in Lebanon on whether or not to issue a limited kind of Lebanese issued identification (but not citizenship) to what is commonly referred as non-id Palestinian refugees in order for them to receive health care, education or even travel outside of Lebanon. This Lebanon Daily Star report goes into more depth on their plight.

As far as the world is concerned, Saeed Mohammad Hammo technically does not exist. But as he recounts his life as a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, his story is very much real. Hammo, 61, is among an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 so-called “non-ID Palestinians” in Lebanon who are considered illegal aliens and who have lived in legal limbo, many of them for decades. They have no freedom of movement, no right to work and no access to medical services or education.

And their plight, due to be discussed on Monday during a brief visit to Lebanon by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, is passed on to their children and grandchildren. “These are people who are very much alive but at the same time they are not recognized as such,” said Souheil al-Natour, a Beirut-based Palestinian analyst. “How can you consider a physically living person as non-existent? “This is a complete negation of humanitarian principles.”

Lebanon recognizes as refugees only Palestinians who fled here following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) lists nearly 400,000 of them. But Lebanese and Palestinian officials say the number of refugees actually resident in Lebanon may be as low as 250,000 as UNRWA does not strike off its figures Palestinians who move to other countries.

The majority of the non-ID Palestinians came to Lebanon in the 1970s following the events known as Black September, when Jordan kicked out the Palestine Liberation Organization and thousands of Palestinian fighters. As such, they are not considered refugees by Lebanese authorities and have no official status. “Non-ID Palestinians live in harsh conditions and are deprived of some of the most important and basic human rights,” said Mireille Chiha, of the Danish Refugee Council office in Beirut. “They have no freedom of movement, can’t purchase a car or motorbike and they don’t benefit from the services of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees,” she added. “Even within the refugee camps, they are referred to as the ‘ghareeb’ or foreigner. “So the [non-ID Palestinians] face additional hardships than those already faced by other refugees.”

The issue of the non-ID Palestinians has grown in prominence since the end of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 Civil War, as many of them have begun having children and grandchildren, who have inherited their status. Ali Mahmoud Ahmad Abu Ali, 62, arrived in Beirut in 1973 when he was a member of the PLO. He has since settled as a refugee and married twice in Lebanon. His six children have inherited his shadowy legal status and do not exist on paper. “I am exhausted from this life of perpetual hardship,” said Hammo, 61, who arrived in Lebanon in 1970 and has three children between the ages of five and eight. “I live off of handouts and sneak out of the camp when I can to earn $10 a day picking fruit,” he said. “I just want mercy for my children, nothing else.”

This man’s plight is beyond pathetic but what is even more intolerable is the cavalier treatment his plight – and by extension – the plight of literally thousands of other Palestinians just like him. Well, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas visited Beirut yesterday and met with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman. So did Abbas show the slightest concern or exhibit the slightest effort to end ‘his’ people’s misery? The Lebanese Daily Star:

BEIRUT: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stressed Monday Lebanon’s full authority and sovereignty over all Palestinian refugees camps while underscoring that the refugees’ presence was temporary, until a comprehensive peace solution was reached. “There are no legions under the command of the Palestinian authority in refugee camps and we would cooperate with the Lebanese state to the extent the latter allows, since the camps are Lebanese territories upon which the Palestinians live; thus Lebanon has full sovereignty over them,” Abbas said Monday, following his meeting with President Michel Sleiman. “The status of Palestinian refugees will remain unchanged until a comprehensive, final solution is reached” with Israel,” Abbas added.

So Hammo, your Fatah/PLO/PA Chairman has spoken, and the bottomline is; your SOL. This needless suffering is why we should put the whole ‘peace process’ on hold and talk refugees – Now.

The big story in Palestinian politics is that Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced he would not seek re-election in January. Now there are rumours that the delayed elections scheduled for this January (which should have been held last January), will be post-poned and Abbas will continue to run the Palestinian Authority until the next election. The common wisdom contends Abbas announcement of his ‘impending’ retirement is that it is merely a rouse to garner support for his leadership and to pressure the international community into forcing Israeli concessions – specifically maneuvering the US into taking a hard-line with Israel.

One of the ways the ‘Mid-East’ psyche deals with the successes of the Israeli state is to attribute every Israeli success to outside forces – usually American. This makes a certain amount of sense from the Palestinian perspective but it ignores one of the realities of the Israeli-American relationship which is that the Americans cannot afford to cut the Israelis loose and lose all influence. An Israel unencumbered to American interests is free to pursue relationships with countries which could potentially conflict or thwart international American interests.

The oddity of Abbas’ current position – a complete Israeli settlement freeze in exchange before sitting down to continue negotiations with the Israelis is a complete 360 degree turn and cannot be entirely explained as a result of a change in Israeli administrations. Even Arafat never demanded a complete settlement freeze prior to negotiations. Besides the Palestinian Authority has negotiated agreements with Bibi the last time he was Prime Minister; so why not now? I am not so sure about the ‘common wisdom’ given the Fatah convention held last August which is the only material change I can see. Abbas now has to answer and appease a very hard line Fatah central committee who blame Abbas for mismanaging the Fatah-Hamas divide and are pushing for a US-Israeli estrangement given Obama alleged sympathies for the Palestinians.

The majority of those elected to the Central Committee are serious old style PLO hardliners and with US President Obama unable to squeeze a complete settlement freeze from the Israelis; Abbas is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He can neither move forward or regroup as he has no base of support outside of Ramallah. He has never been an overtly popular leader who it is now rumoured cannot risk venturing outside of his inner circle in Ramallah in recent years owing to ’security considerations’ – and the risk isn’t what the Israelis will do but what his own people will do if given the opportunity to get their hands on him.

Threatening to resign works in Abbas’ favour in distinct ways. He shows the Central Committee hardliners he has the full support of the international community which is important as it is directly tied to the Fatah purse, and subsequently, he gets a little breathing room from the demands of the Central Committee. He also gets to post-pone elections which could potentially see an increase in Hamas’ West Bank support.

Lately, I have been doing a great deal of pondering the Middle East peace process. I admit I get a certain amount of perverse pleasure watching diplomats twist and tie themselves up like pretzels depending on who their intended audience is but it occurs to me we need a better word than ‘peace process’ to describe the state of Israeli-Arab relations or we will never get to the end of the so-called peace process. In fact, it’s not really a peace process but a ‘war process’. Abet a low level conflict, which now and then sparks into a wider and more deadly confrontation. There is a temporary ‘cease-fire’ with Hamas in the Gaza Strip which means a ‘lull’ in the fighting and not that the war is over. Not only are the Palestinians busy fighting a war against Israel but are at war with themselves; hence – the West Bank/Gaza Strip divide.

First step – ignore both the Israelis and Palestinians. Each has their positions and both sides have offered as much as they can afford to give without risking civil war within their own societies. Their respective positions reflect the current realities of how things stand on the ground – as in today and both positions are intractable. So what needs to be done is change the realities on the ground which can most fully influence those ‘intractable’ positions towards change or compromise. So the next step is to settle the Palestinian Refugee issue before anything else – including resolving the so-called ‘settlements’ issue in the Disputed Territories. Firstly, Palestinians living in the West Bank have been enjoying an economic prosperity the likes of which they have not enjoyed for years. Secondly, while the ‘settlements’ represent not only Israeli-Jewish homes but provide a livelihood to Palestinians from contracting and construction as while a thousand other little spin-off industries. No one is going hungry and the taxes raised from a working population keeps the Palestinian Authority’s coffers full. It’s all good people.

Secondly, the beauty of settling the Palestinian Refugee issue is that a solution to the crisis requires neither the consent of the Israeli or Palestinian leadership to resolve it but the world needs to recognize – neither the Israeli or Palestinian society can afford to adsorb and settle an influx of 4.5+ million people in this small physical area and in a region which is often stricken by drought. There is no possible way the infrastructure of either societies can handle providing the most basic human needs of 4 million plus people. Certainly, if nothing else, there is not enough water to provide for the most basic daily water needs of an influx of almost 4 million plus people.

While I recognize the Palestinian leadership will be outraged the bald-faced truth is that the Palestinian leadership has not done one damn thing to lessen or ease conditions for Palestinians condemned to live in refugee camps throughout the Arab world. And yes, I do mean ‘condemned’ and furthermore, the conditions are so often truly horrendous I wouldn’t let an animal live like let alone a fellow human being. Time to bring the big guns out turns them on onward the Arab world.

There is no Palestinian leader, alive or dead, who has enough political capital or cache with the Palestinian people to make a single or slightest concession on the so-called Right of Return at the negotiating table with the Israelis. The central rationale for the establishment of the Palestinian Liberation Organization was to enforce, by hock, by crook, and the blood of every last Jew in the world (if necessary) to assert the alleged right of Palestinians to return to the former British Palestine Mandate.

There really is one way to test the feasibility of settling the Palestinian refugee without either the consent of the Israelis or Palestinian Authority; hold a referendum within the refugee camps and let the people decide. If this Forward article correctly reads the pulse of the Palestinian refugees correctly; pushing for full citizenship rights or resettlement to a neutral third country could be the way forward. For all those who vote full citizenship rights or resettlement; let the Obama Administration take up their cause and bring out the big guns to negotiate with the various Arab governments to make full citizenship rights a fact or find a third neutral country for resettlement. For those who vote to languish indefinitely in the camps for umpteen generations in squalor – let them.

I have not been blogging about the (first-in-ages and ages) meeting of the General Assembly of Fatah being held in Bethlehem – mostly because I have been too busy watching it spiral out of control. Talk about a train wreck. Originally it was scheduled as a three day event but things have spun out of control so badly and fractional divide so deep that the meeting has now been extended until some kind, any kind, of a resolution on anything other the then alleged right of killing more Jews can be reached. The Jerusalem Post carries this round up to date:

The conference, which opened on Tuesday, was originally scheduled for three days. However, sharp differences that erupted between Fatah representatives during Wednesday’s morning session prompted the faction leaders to change their plans and extend the conference.

The conference was nearly suspended following a heated exchange between several delegates. Tensions escalated to a point where organizers ordered all journalists to stay away from the conference hall. The main dispute erupted after Fatah delegates discovered that their leadership had no intention of presenting them with a detailed report about the faction’s financial, political and administrative status.

Surprise, surprise.

Another argument broke out over the representation of Fatah members from the Gaza Strip in the two key decision-making bodies, the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council. Some 400 Fatah members from the Strip were unable to attend the conference in Bethlehem after Hamas barred them from traveling to the West Bank. A handful of Gazan Fatah operatives who did make it to the conference accused the Fatah leadership of trying to keep them away from the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council. Had it not been for the intervention of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the conference would have “exploded into violence and anarchy,” delegates told The Jerusalem Post.

One delegate said that prominent Fatah representatives from the Gaza Strip, including top operative Samir Mashharawi, had stormed out of the meeting after discovering that elections for the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council would be held despite the absence of their stranded colleagues. Many delegates also expressed discontent over the way the Fatah leadership had chosen participants in the conference. Dozens of people attending the conference were not real members of Fatah, they said.

“In some cases, we discovered that veteran and wealthy Fatah officials had appointed their drivers, secretaries and neighbors as delegates to the conference so that they could vote for them in internal elections,” one delegate from the West Bank told the Post. “This shows that Fatah is not serious about reforming itself or injecting young and fresh blood into its institutions.”

No. Never. I don’t believe it.

Abbas was summoned to the conference hall in a last-minute bid to prevent the failure of the discussions. Abbas told the angry delegates that the Central Committee, which is dominated by old-timers, had not prepared a detailed report about the finances and administrative conduct of Fatah because the policy speech he had delivered at the opening session was sufficient.

“My speech was actually a detailed report about Fatah and the general situation,” Abbas was quoted as saying. “This was not my private speech. It was prepared in coordination with dozens of members of the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council.” He urged the delegates not to boycott the conference so as not to give the Palestinians’ enemies an excuse to rejoice. Regarding the grievances of the Gaza Strip’s Fatah members, Abbas promised that they would be permitted to vote for the two bodies via alternative means, including e-mail messages and mobile phones.

Absolutely. I completely understand. Abbas has spoken; be grateful.

The Fatah representatives have yet to discuss the repercussions of their faction’s defeat by Hamas in the January 2006 parliamentary election, and the case of Yasser Arafat’s unexplained death in 2004, Sha’ath told the Post. He said that because of the many issues on the agenda, the Fatah leadership had decided that it would take a few more days to conclude the discussions.

On the second day of the parley, it was still unclear whether the delegates would be required to vote for a new Fatah platform. A top aide to Abbas said the PA president did not see any need to vote for a new platform because his speech on Tuesday could be considered the Fatah political program.

And why should they vote on any new platform when it has already been decided for them by their uber-friendly democratic chairman-for-life Mahmoud Abbas?

More articles on the conference can be found here, here and here.

The Jerusalem Post has rather unintentionally amusing article regarding the European Union whining about picking up the dole tab for the Palestinians and claiming the ‘EU taxpayers bear settlement burden’. Oy vey – insert me rolling my eyes.

Israel’s settlement policy helps strangle the Palestinian economy and makes the Palestinian government more dependent on foreign aid, the European Commission said Monday. In an unusually harsh statement, the commission said that “it is the European taxpayers who pay most of the price of this dependence.”

The commission said expropriation of fertile land for Israeli settlements, roads that serve settlers only and West Bank checkpoints helped constrain Palestinian economic growth and made the Palestinian government more dependent on aid. The European Union is one of the largest donors to the Palestinian Authority. The commission said that in 2009 alone, it had paid more than 200 million euros ($280 million) to help cover the Palestinian budget deficit.

I know it’s fashionable to characterize “Jew Only” roads in the disputed territories but it’s not accurate. All Israeli citizens, be they Druze, Arab, Christian or Jew can drive on the so-called settler roads which Palestinian nationals are restricted from using. It wasn’t always this way, but there are only so many sniper attacks, ambushes, stoning and gasoline bombs thrown into Israeli licensed cars before someone in the IDF says – enough. Of course, there are roads in the disputed territories which restricted to only Arabs….as in no Israeli-Jews but Israeli-Arabs are allowed – brownie points to be the first who can figure out who is in charge of those ‘roads’.

The EU really has two choices – tell the Palestinians the buck has stopped or suck it up and pay out. The EU whiners don’t really comprehend how much worse the tab could be – especially if the Netanyahu Administration bows to international pressure and institutes a building settlement freeze:
The Jerusalem Post:

The last thing that Abu Mohammed al-Najjar wants is for Israel to succumb to US and European pressure and halt construction in the West Bank settlements. As far as the 58-year-old laborer is concerned, freezing the construction would be a disaster not only for him and his family, but for thousands of other Palestinians working in various settlements in the West Bank.

(…)”I don’t care what the leaders say and do,” al-Najjar told The Jerusalem Post at one of the new construction sites in Ma’aleh Adumim. “I need to feed my seven children, and that’s all I care about for now.” The phenomenon of Palestinians building new homes for Jewish settlers is not new. In fact, Palestinian laborers have been working in the construction business from the first day the settlements began in the West Bank.

Today, Palestinian Authority officials estimate, more than 12,000 Palestinians are employed by both Jewish and Arab contractors building new homes in the settlements. In some cases, Palestinians have found jobs in settlements that are located near their villages and towns.

Jamal Abu Sharikheh, 27, of the village of Bet Ur al-Tahta, has been working as a construction laborer in Givat Ze’ev for the past three years. Asked if he had any problem building homes in the settlements at a time when the international community was demanding that Israel freeze the construction work, the father of four also said he was trying to support his family “in a dignified manner.” (…)”If they want us to leave our work, they should offer us an alternative,” Abu Sharikheh said. “We don’t come to work in the settlements for ideological reasons or because we support the settlement movement. We come here because our Palestinian and Arab governments haven’t done anything to provide us with better jobs.”

Back in Ma’aleh Adumim, most of the Palestinian laborers said they had no problem revealing their identities. “We’re not doing anything wrong,” explained Ibrahim Abu Tair, a 42-year-old father of eight from the village of Um Tuba, southwest of Jerusalem. “We’re not collaborators and we’re not terrorists. We just want to work.”

(…)”We can’t tell the workers to stay at home without providing them with solutions,” admitted a Palestinian official in Ramallah. “We’re talking about thousands of families in the West Bank that rely on this work as their sole source of income.” Some of the laborers said that boycotting work in the settlements would be ineffective and pointless because their employers would have no difficulty replacing them with Chinese or other foreign workers. “Look how many foreign workers there are inside Israel today,” complained Jawdat Uwaisat, 44, of the village of Sawahreh in the Bethlehem area. “There are about 150,000 workers from different countries who have taken our places of work inside Israel. They are even bringing workers from Thailand and Turkey.”

He said that he and his colleagues working for Israelis earn almost three times what they would receive doing the same work for Palestinian construction companies. “The Palestinian employers pay us NIS 100 to NIS 150 a day,” Uwaisat said. “The Israeli companies, by contrast, pay NIS 350 to NIS 450 a day. That’s why many of us prefer to work for Israeli companies, even if the construction is in the settlements.”

(…)”If you see how big some of these settlements are, you will understand why the talk about a two-state solution is kalam fadi [nonsense],” commented Iyad Mansour, 55, of the Kalandia refugee camp, who has been working in Ma’aleh Adumim for the past three years.

Sure, by all means, go institute your settlement building freeze and cut off the legal productive livelihood of 12,000 plus Palestinian families but just don’t ever ask me for a nickel to finance their dole tab.