Canada’s Palestinian Aid Programme Serving Israel’s Interests
By Yves Engler | Dissident Voice | December 14th, 2012
Few aspects of Canadian foreign policy have been mentioned more times over the past two weeks than Ottawa’s 300 million dollar five year aid program to the Palestinians.
Ever since the Globe and Mail reported on November 26 that Prime Minister Stephen Harper threatened Mahmoud Abbas that “there will be consequences” if he followed through on his plan to ask the UN General Assembly to upgrade Palestine’s status there has been a great deal of speculation about whether Canadian “aid” would be cut off. A quick Google search brings up hundreds of articles mentioning the 300 million dollars in funding yet none of them mention the highly politicized character of this “aid”.
After Hamas won legislative elections in January 2006 the Conservatives made Canada the first country (after Israel) to cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority. When Hamas officials were ousted from the Palestinian unity government in June 2007, the Conservatives immediately contributed $8 million “in direct support to the new government.” Then in December 2007 the Conservatives announced a five-year $300 million aid program to the Palestinians, which was largely designed to serve Israel’s interests.
A Saint John Telegraph-Journal headline explained: “Canada’s aid to Palestine benefits Israel, foreign affairs minister says.” In January 2008 foreign minister Maxime Bernier said: “We are doing that [providing aid to the PA] because we want Israel to be able to live in peace and security with its neighbours.”
Most of the Canadian aid money has gone to building up a Palestinian security force overseen by a US general. The immediate impetus of the Canadian aid was to create a Palestinian security force “to ensure that the PA maintains control of the West Bank against Hamas,” as Canadian Ambassador to Israel Jon Allen was quoted as saying by the Canadian Jewish News. American General Keith Dayton, in charge of organizing a 10,000-member Palestinian security force, even admitted that he was strengthening Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah against Hamas, telling a US audience in May 2009 his force was “working against illegal Hamas activities.” According to Al Jazeera, between 2007 and early 2011 PA security forces arrested some 10,000 suspected Hamas supporters in the West Bank.
The broader aim of the US-Canada-Britain initiated Palestinian security reform was to build a force to patrol Israel’s occupied territories. In a 2011 profile of Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel Ron Allison, “Dayton’s chief of liaison in the West Bank” for a year, his hometown newspaper reported: “The Dayton team was concerned with enhancing security on the West Bank of Palestine and was all geared towards looking after and ensuring the security of Israel, said Ron.”
“We don’t provide anything to the Palestinians,” noted Dayton, “unless it has been thoroughly coordinated with the state of Israel and they agree to it.” For instance, Israel’s internal intelligence agency, the Shin-Bet, vets all of the Palestinian recruits.
The Israelis supported Dayton’s force as a way to keep the West Bank population under control. Like all colonial authorities throughout history Israel looked to compliant locals to take up the occupation’s security burden. In a December 2011 article titled “[Ehud] Barak admires PA security forces for protecting [Israeli] settlers [in the West Bank]” a Palestinian news agency described an interview the Israeli defence minister gave to a Hebrew radio station.
Writing in a July 2011 issue of the London Review of Books Adam Shatz explained: “The PA already uses the American-trained National Security Force to undermine efforts by Palestinians to challenge the occupation. (Hamas, in Gaza, has cracked down on protest even more harshly.) ‘They are the police of the occupation,’ Myassar Atyani, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, told me. ‘Their leadership is not Palestinian, it is Israeli.’ On 15 May – the day Palestinians commemorate their Nakba [the 1948 destruction of Palestinian society] – more than a thousand Palestinians, mainly young men, marched to the Qalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem and clashed with Israeli soldiers; but when Atyani tried to lead a group of demonstrators to the Hawara checkpoint outside Nablus, PA security forces stopped them. The road from Ramallah to Qalandia is in Area C, which is not controlled by the PA; the road from Nablus to Hawara is in Area A, which is. And protesters who have attempted to march to settlements along PA-controlled roads have also found themselves turned back. It is an extraordinary arrangement: the security forces of a country under occupation are being subcontracted by third parties outside the region to prevent resistance to the occupying power, even as that power continues to grab more land. This is, not surprisingly, a source of considerable anger and shame in the West Bank.”
The Palestinian security force is largely trained in Jordan at the US- built International Police Training Center (created to train Iraqi security after the 2003 invasion). In October 2009 the Wall Street Journal reported: “[Palestinian] recruits are trained in Jordan by Jordanian police, under the supervision of American, Canadian, and British officers.” The number of military trainers in the West Bank varied slightly but in mid-2010 18 Canadian troops worked with six British and ten US soldiers under Dayton’s command. “The Canadian contribution is invaluable,” explained Dayton. Canadians are particularly useful because “US personnel have travel restrictions when operating in the West Bank. But, our British and Canadian members do not.” Calling them his “eyes and ears” Dayton said: “The Canadians … are organized in teams we call road warriors, and they move around the West Bank daily visiting Palestinian security leaders, gauging local conditions.”
Part of the US Security Coordinator office in Jerusalem, the Canadian military mission in the West Bank (dubbed Operation PROTEUS) includes RCMP officers as well as officials from Foreign Affairs, Justice Canada and the Canadian Border Services Agency. In a September 2010 interview with the Jerusalem Post then deputy foreign minister Peter Kent said Operation PROTEUS was Canada’s “second largest deployment after Afghanistan” and it receives “most of the money” from the five-year $300 million Canadian “aid” program to the Palestinians. During a visit to Israel in February, foreign minister John Baird told the Globe and Mail he was “incredibly thrilled” by the West Bank security situation, which he said benefited Israel.
In effect, Canada has helped to build a security apparatus to protect a corrupt PA led by Mahmoud Abbas, whose electoral mandate expired in January 2009, but whom the Israeli government prefers over Hamas.
Don’t expect the Conservative government to sever this “aid”.
Second group of journalists beaten in Hebron
Ma’an – December 15, 2012
BETHLEHEM – After Reuters cameramen were assaulted by Israeli forces in Hebron this week, a second group of journalists were beaten by troops in the West Bank city, a press freedom group said Saturday.
On Wednesday, Israeli soldiers punched two Reuters journalists and forced them to strip in the street, before letting off a tear gas canister in front of them, leaving one of them needing hospital treatment.
A freelance reporter and Al-Quds TV correspondent were also beaten during the incident in Hebron, the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms, MADA, said.
The journalists were covering the aftermath of the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Muhammad Salaymeh by an Israeli border guard in the city.
A day later, four journalists went to cover the ensuing clashes, and were blocked and threatened by an Israeli force near Hebron’s Tareq ben Zaid school, MADA said.
Associated Press photographer Hazem Bader was detained for 45 minutes by Israeli soldiers, the journalists told MADA.
“They tied my hands behind my back, beat me on my feet and my back, and cursing me all the time,” Bader said.
“One of the soldiers tried to fabricate a charge against me that I tried to assault him, but my colleagues of photographers documented the arrest.”
He was freed when a press office intervened, he said.
MADA condemned the “escalation of violations” against journalists in Hebron this week.
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Reuters deplores Israeli mistreatment of journalists
Press TV – December 14, 2012
Israeli forces have assaulted two cameramen working for Reuters news agency in the occupied West bank, forcing them to strip on the street.
Yousri Al Jamal and Ma’amoun Wazwaz said on Thursday that an Israeli military patrol stopped them as they were on their way to a checkpoint in the West Bank city of al-Khalil, where a Palestinian youth had been earlier killed by Israeli forces.
The cameramen added that the Israeli troops punched and hit them with the butts of their guns after they made the cameramen get off their vehicle, which was marked as belonging to “TV.”
The two were also wearing blue flak jackets with the word “Press” printed on them.
The soldiers who attacked the Reuters employees accused them of working for B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization which documents human rights violations in the occupied West Bank.
However, the cameramen said the forces did not give them the chance to show their identification cards and made them strip and kneel down on the road.
Wazwaz was overcome by the fumes and taken to a hospital after the Israeli forces dropped a tear gas canister and ran away from the scene.
According to the cameramen, two other Palestinian journalists working for local news agencies were also arrested by Israeli soldiers at the same location.
Stephen J. Adler, chief editor of Reuters News said, “We deplore the mistreatment of our journalists and have registered our extreme dismay with the Israeli military authorities.”
The Israeli military has offered no explanation for the attack on the journalists and says it will investigate the issue.
On Thursday, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian teenager on his birthday after he allegedly threatened them with a toy gun in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces kill teenager on his 17th birthday in Hebron
International Solidarity Movement, West Bank | December 12, 2012
Palestinian youth Mohammad Ziad Awwad Salayme was shot dead on his 17th birthday in Hebron. Live ammunition was fired injuring another man and several journalists had to be hospitalised after being beaten on the street. Clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli Occupation forces erupted throughout the city and surrounding areas.
At around 7:30 pm on Wednesday 12 December 2012 a soldier of the Israeli army shot dead Mohammad Salayme, killing him with two bullets to the body and head in the Salayme neigbourhood of Hebron near to the Ibrahimi mosque. Mohammad had spent the day in school and was on his way to buy some cake for him and his family to celebrate his birthday, when suddenly his life was cut short. Another Palestinian man was shot with live ammunition and injured, he was taken to a hospital in the city. The Israeli military claimed Mohammad Salayme was carrying a fake gun, therefore shot him. Mohammad’s father who rushed to administer first aid to his son said he saw no fake gun on him. Sound bombs, tear gas and rubber bullets were fired at Palestinians who tried to help the dying teenager.
The Israeli military closed off all the streets around the area where Mohammed was killed to prevent any journalists from reaching the incident. A car carrying four journalists was hit with several rounds of live ammunition and the journalists were stopped and forced from their car. The journalists, two from Youth Against Settlements, one from Reuters and one from Palmedia were forced to strip to their underwear in the cold evening air. The soldiers took their cameras and physically beat up the journalists resulting in them needing hospital treatment. A filmmaker who works for the Israeli peace group Btselem who lives close to the shooting was surrounded by 12 soldiers, beaten up and arrested. Officers from the District Coordination Office For Military Affairs informed local activists the cameras would be returned to them tomorrow after being checked for evidence.
The Israeli military flooded the city with an enormous amount of soldiers who attempted to clear the streets in a very aggressive manner, throwing sound bombs into groups of remonstrating Palestinians, shooting tear gas and rubber coated steel bullets. This behaviour only antagonised the residents of Hebron turning the tense situation into outright confrontation as clashes erupted throughout the city. The areas of Salayme, Bab Al-Zawiya, Qtoun and Dar Al Binzaid all echoed to the sound of live ammunition, concussion grenades, tear gas and rubber coated steel bullets. Clashes were reported in the nearby city of Yatta and in Dura.
Tensions in Hebron are rising as the Israeli occupation forces are using increased levels of violence in the city ever since the recent Israeli assualt on Gaza. Hamdi Alfalah was killed on November 20th and many people have been injured. Hebron will see another funeral on Thursday 13th of December.
Palestinians aren’t getting “one cent,” says Israel
Al Akhbar | December 12, 2012
Israel says Palestinians will not get tax revenues before at least March, after having already confiscated the Palestinian Authority’s December funds. The decision comes as part of Palestine’s “punishment” for last month’s United Nations bid.
“The Palestinians can forget about getting even one cent in the coming four months, and in four months’ time we will decide how to proceed,” Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in a peremptory speech on Tuesday night.
Under the current peace deal, Israel collects US$100 million each month in duties on the PA’s behalf in occupied West Bank. These funds are generally used to pay public sector salaries.
Israel has responded viciously to the PA’s UN upgrade to non-member statehood, accusing the PA of sidestepping stalled negotiations, through a UN bid.
“Israel is not prepared to accept unilateral steps by the Palestinian side, and anyone who thinks they will achieve concessions and gains this way is wrong,” he said.
Before confiscating funds in December, Israel announced settlement plans in the E1 sensitive area that would destroy all possibility for a two-state solution, inciting international condemnation.
While making it clear that these steps are a form of retribution, an Israeli iron-fist response meant to instil fear in those that make decisions without permission – “unilateral steps” – Israelis mentioned that Palestinians have debts to pay off with Israel Electric Corporation and the Israel Water Authority.
The European Union criticized Israel Monday, saying, “Contractual obligations … regarding full, timely, predictable and transparent transfer of tax and custom revenues have to be respected.”
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Tuesday that Paris will host a donors’ conference early next year to raise funds for the government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
(Al-Akhbar, Ma’an)
Israeli authorities ‘to demolish West Bank road’
Ma’an – 10/12/2012
SALFIT – Israeli authorities on Monday notified Palestinian farmers in a northern West Bank village that a road connecting them to their fields will be demolished, locals told Ma’an.
Residents of Qarawat Bani Hassan, near Salfit, said Israeli planning officers told them the al-Hurriya (Freedom) road will be demolished in two weeks.
Farmers were told to avoid agricultural work in the area.
The same street was dug up by Israeli bulldozers on March 24, 2011. The local municipality, with support from the Palestinian prime minister and donor organizations, later rehabilitated the road.
Palestinian Authority premier Salam Fayyad joined the road’s original inauguration two years ago.
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Jewish settlers commit vehicular assaults with impunity at peaceful roadblock protests in the West Bank
International Solidarity Movement | December 3, 2012
West Bank – On two different occasions while Palestinians, accompanied by international activists, peacefully blocked roads leading to illegal settlements to demonstrate against the occupation and settlements, settlers purposefully injured activists in hit and run incidents.
On November 14 while a group of protesters blocked a road leading to an illegal settlement, a settler tried to drive through the crowd, then accelerated, deliberately hitting an international activist, as the activist was trying to get out of the way. The activist hit the front of the car, then bounced off the windshield and hit the ground. The settler then drove away, careless about what he had just done. An ambulance was called, and the activist was treated for injuries to his head and arm.
A similar incident occurred on November 19, as a roadblock protest was held on another settler road. As a settler car approached the crowd, he accelerated into Palestinian popular struggle coordinator Abdallah Abu Rahmah, hitting him with his car, before fleeing the scene. Abdallah was treated in hospital but was released later that day. Israeli army soldiers were present at the scene, but didn’t do anything to prevent the settlers from acting in violent ways, and allowed them to flee the scene.
The settlers seem to be above the law. They continually get away with violence, destruction of property, and constant harassment against the Palestinians, while the soldiers usually protect them, because they have Israeli citizenship. Incidents similar to these happen constantly all throughout the West Bank, while soldiers and authorities turn a blind eye.
Analysis: World Bank policies persistently fail Palestinians
By Alaa Tartir and Jeremy Wildeman – Ma’an – 28/10/2012
The Middle East featured prominently on the agenda of the recent annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Tokyo. But how relevant are these agencies’ policy prescriptions in the context of conflict? In the case of the occupied Palestinian territories they are not only inappropriate but also harmful.
And yet both institutions have relentlessly dished up these prescriptions for the past two decades. To understand why they are so harmful, it is useful to deconstruct the policy recommendations in the World Bank’s latest growth report for the Palestinian territories.
The Bank’s growth report provides a breakdown of the current state of the Palestinian economy, which it describes as fragile and dependent on foreign aid. The report’s frank conclusions are largely unsurprising: aid-based growth is unsustainable, especially because aid levels are expected to decline over time.
The surprising part of the report lies not in the Bank’s negative prognosis of the Palestinian economy, but rather in its recommendations. It calls for the Palestinians to emulate the Asian tigers by “adopting an outward orientation and integrating into world supply chains.”
Just how a people that exercises no control over its own land, borders and natural resources can carry out such export-based growth is not explained. The report further recommends that the Palestinian Authority “should strive to build a business environment that is among the best in the world and not merely on par with its neighbors.”
This is utterly impossible under prolonged occupation, where Palestinian civil and property rights are ignored by an Israeli state that is simultaneously engaged in the mass-expropriation of Palestinian land. The business climate is so bad that one report suggested certain Palestinian businesspersons even prefer to invest in Israel.
The report also repeats a dangerous belief long propagated by the World Bank: that the Palestinian economy can benefit from deeper integration with the Israeli economy.
Actual experience indicates otherwise. The Palestinian economy has been de-developed since 1967, as US scholar Sara Roy’s work has shown, and Palestinian industry has been deliberately sabotaged in favor of Israeli industry, as economist Shir Hever documents.
Classic World Bank economic assumptions that recommend “free trade agreements between a future Palestinian state, Israel and neighboring countries” have never been embraced by Israel.
Palestinians cannot exploit “competitive advantages” because Israel deliberately prevents them. Instead, integration has been one-sided, allowing Israel to exploit a captive Palestinian market cut off from the outside world.
It is vital to understand the extent to which much of the World Bank’s policy advice is destined for failure because it exercises enormous influence on foreign aid to Palestinians, and its recommendations form the basis on which international donors design their aid programs.
In fact, it designed the aid regime adopted by the international community during the Oslo Peace Process of the early 1990s. Since that time, the Bank has prescribed policy recommendations for donors that do not take into account the human reality of Palestinians struggling to survive for decades under a violent military occupation and in colonial conditions.
Nor have the international community and those many prominent international bodies engaged in the ‘peace process,’ such as the World Bank, held Israel to account for its actions.
Indeed, the Bank sanitizes the language it uses when criticizing the occupation, employing euphemisms that downplay the effects of occupation while focusing on the Palestinians when giving reasons why Bank recommendations have failed.
As they met with the world’s delegations in Tokyo, did the World Bank and IMF question their policies and the need to actually reflect the facts on the ground?
Until and unless they do, they will waste valuable time and resources and distract Palestinians from what should be their primary goal: Ending the military occupation as a first step toward sovereignty, freedom, and self-determination.
Until Palestinian rights are secured, it is meaningless to develop aid programs that do not take into account the full impact of the occupation and the expropriation of Palestinian land.
The Bank’s growth report is useful only in revealing that the Palestinian economy is in a critical state of disrepair. Its inability to provide policy recommendations that properly account for the effects of occupation renders its advice irrelevant.
It is time to look for alternative models of aid, ones that do not simply seek new ways for the Palestinians to cope with life under occupation, but rather challenge the status quo while enabling Palestinians to survive, by, for example, promoting investment in smallholder agriculture.
This alone can lead to real economic growth and sustainable development.
Alaa Tartir is Program Director of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, and author of The role of international aid in development: the case of Palestine 1994-2008 (Lambert 2011). Jeremy Wildeman, an Al-Shabaka Guest Author, co-founded the Nablus-based charity Project Hope. The full policy brief on World Bank policies by al-Shabaka is available here.
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Israel detains leading MP near Nablus
Ma’an – 27/10/2012
Mahmoud al-Ramahi is secretary-general of the Palestinian parliament. (MaanImages/File)
NABLUS – Israeli forces detained the secretary-general of the Palestinian parliament Mahmoud al-Ramahi on Saturday afternoon as he passed through a northern West Bank checkpoint.
Al-Ramahi was driving south from Nablus when he was seized at the Huwwara checkpoint. His car was also confiscated.
The MP was last released from Israeli jail less than four months ago.
An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed the detention and said he is “suspected of involvement in illegal activity,” without elaborating.
Months after al-Ramahi was appointed to the leadership the Palestinian Legislative Council in 2006, he was seized by Israeli forces in his hometown of al-Bireh, near Ramallah, as part of a sweep of arrests after Hamas won elections.
Al-Ramahi, a medical doctor, was elected on the Hamas-affiliated Change and Reform list.
He was jailed from August 2006 until March 2009. The MP was again arrested in November 2010, and held in administrative detention until July 4 this year.
Al-Ramahi has brokered talks between Hamas and Fatah, and Hamas officials said his last detention was an Israeli attempt to disrupt reconciliation talks.
According to latest statistics, 13 Palestinian MPs are being held in Israeli jails.
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