Hamas sanctions squeeze the life out of West Bank

**HeiGou** · 05-07-2006

Hamas sanctions squeeze the life out of West Bank
By Jane Flanagan in Nablus
(Filed: 07/05/2006)

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."

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."

**Syed Nizam** · 05-07-2006

Hamas sanctions squeeze the life out of West Bank ?

Honestly HeiGou, i do not understand your rationale of posting something like this? What are u trying to imply? That the Palestinanian livelihood is much better before?

"The fact is that in America, Israel has pretty much won the propaganda war, and America is where it's about to put several more million dollars into a public relations campaign (using stars like Zubin Mehta, Yitzhak Pearlman, and Amos Oz) to further improve its image. But consider what Israel's unrelenting war against the undefended, basically unarmed, stateless and poorly led Palestinian people has already achieved. The disparity in power is so vast that it makes you cry. quipped with the latest in American-built (and freely given) air power, helicopter gunships, uncountable tanks and missiles, and a superb navy as well as a state of the art intelligence service, Israel is a nuclear power abusing a people without any armour or artillery, no air force (its one pathetic airfield in Gaza is controlled by Israel) or navy or army, none of the institutions of a modern state. The appallingly unbroken history of Israel's 34-year-old military occupation (the second longest in modern history) of illegally conquered Palestinian land has been obliterated from public memory nearly everywhere, as has been the destruction of Palestinian society in 1948 and the expulsion of 68 per cent of its native people, of whom 4.5 million remain refugees today. Behind the reams of newspeak, the stark outlines of Israel's decades-long daily pressure on a people whose main sin is that they happened to be there, in Israel's way, is staggeringly perceptible in its inhuman sadism. The fantastically cruel confinement of 1.3 million people jammed like so many human sardines into the Gaza strip, plus the nearly two million Palestinian residents of the West Bank, has no parallel in the annals of apartheid or colonialism. F-16 jets were never used to bomb South African homelands. They are used against Palestinians towns and villages. All entrances and exits to the territories are controlled by Israel (Gaza is completely surrounded by a barbed wire fence), which also controls the entire water supply. Divided into about 63 non-contiguous cantons, completely encircled and besieged by Israeli troops, punctuated by 140 settlements (many of them built under Ehud Barak's premiership) with their own road network banned to "non-Jews," as Arabs are referred to, along with such unflattering epithets as thieves, snakes, cockroaches and grasshoppers, Palestinians under occupation have now been reduced to 60 per cent unemployment and a poverty rate of 50 per cent (half the people of Gaza and the West Bank live on less than $2 a day); they cannot travel from one place to the next; they must endure long lines at Israeli checkpoints that detain and humiliate the elderly, the sick, the student, and the cleric for hours on end; 150,000 of their olive and citrus trees have been punitively uprooted; 2,000 of their houses demolished; acres of their land either destroyed or expropriated for military settlement purposes.......
......Nor is this all. Israel's plan is not just to hold land and fill it with dreadful, murderous armed settlers who, defended by the army, wreak havoc on Palestinian orchards, schoolchildren and homes; it is, as the American researcher Sara Roy has named it, to de-develop Palestinian society, to make life impossible so that the Palestinians will leave, or give up somehow, or do something crazy like blow themselves up. Since 1967, leaders have been jailed and deported by the Israeli occupation regime, small businesses and farms made unviable by confiscation and sheer destruction, students prevented from studying, universities closed (in the mid-'80s Palestinian universities on the West Bank were closed for four years). No Palestinian farmer or business can export to any Arab country directly; their products must pass through Israel. Taxes are paid to Israel. Even after the Oslo peace process began in 1993, the occupation was simply re-packaged, only 18 per cent of the land given to the corrupt Vichy-like Authority of Arafat, whose mandate seems o have been only to police and tax his people for Israel's sake. After eight fruitless immiserating years of the Oslo negotiations masterminded by an American team of former Israeli lobby staffers like Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross, Israel was still in control, the occupation packaged more efficiently, the phrase "peace process" given a consecrated halo that allowed more abuses, ore settlements, more imprisonments, more Palestinian suffering to go on than before. Including a "Judaised" East Jerusalem, with Orient House occupied and its contents looted or carted off (there are invaluable records, and deeds, maps, that in a repetition of what it did when it stole PLO archives from Beirut in 1982, Israel has simply stolen), Israel has implanted no less than 400,000 settlers on Palestinian land. To call them vigilantes and hoodlums is not an exaggeration."
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/arch...e_atrocity.htm

Honestly HeiGou, for God's sake you are not a palestinian so you will never truly understand the magnitude of their sufferings under the Israeli's siege. So, for God's sake, please refrained yourself from posting something as ridiculuous as this.

**HeiGou** · 05-07-2006

Originally Posted by Syed Nizam

Honestly HeiGou, i do not understand your rationale of posting something like this? What are u trying to imply? That the Palestinanian livelihood is much better before?

>deletions<

Honestly HeiGou, for God's sake you are not a palestinian so you will never truly understand the magnitude of their sufferings under the Israeli's siege. So, for God's sake, please refrained yourself from posting something as ridiculuous as this.

Did you read it? Did you understand it? It says the Palestinians are suffering. What is your problem with that?

**afriend** · 05-07-2006

Honestly HeiGou, for God's sake you are not a palestinian so you will never truly understand the magnitude of their sufferings under the Israeli's siege. So, for God's sake, please refrained yourself from posting something as ridiculuous as this.

That's true...we will never understand what it's like for them.....not that I'm saying anything to u HG

**ISDhillon** · 05-07-2006

I understand the palistinians suffering its not nice when any group of people are cruelly evicted from their holy lands. And every cause has an effect.

**Syed Nizam** · 05-07-2006

LIFE UNDER SIEGE

http://www.palestinemonitor.org/eyew...yewitness.html
Nowhere across their land are Palestinians spared the effects of Israeli aggression. From north to south, cities, towns, villages, camps -- all wish to make their plight known, and all must vie for coverage by the world's media, whose priorities are often politically motivated. The media spotlight has not yet been trained on Nablus, a city under curfew and buffeted by relentless army assault. It is long past time that we hear the voice of besieged Nablus.

For more than a year now, since April 2002, the cries of Nablus have been muted by the roar of jet bombers flying overhead and the blasts from tanks encircling and effectively laying siege to the city. At all times of the day and night, and often without warning, Israeli soldiers shell and shoot at the civilians of Nablus, who never know when or where to take cover. Children, women and men have been hunted, injured and killed.

The City under Siege is entirely cut off from the neighbouring towns and villages -- and from the rest of the world. 200,000 people are trapped inside the tank fence around the city and subjected to a curfew that has been lifted for a total of 70 hours during the first 100 days. But the inhabitants of Nablus are determined to survive. They have been breaking the curfew, even though the Israeli army has been using "vicious violence (physical and psychological) to impose it, attempting to keep the population caged in their homes like animals through the use of terror and excessive military force", according to International observers based in Nablus.

Students and schools are specifically targeted. Internationals report that schools are regularly tear gassed, and that "tanks arrive in front of the various refugee camps and schools in the city center by 6:30 a.m., when they begin firing endless rounds of ammunition, frequently large calibre rounds. The Israeli army attempts to close the schools before they even open by spending an hour or more terrorising the students and teachers with this incessant tank fire."

The internationals witnessed one army assault on young students, between 5-15 years old, as they were going home from school: "The tank began by opening fires then proceeded to literally chase the students at high speed, shooting continuous rounds of live ammunition in the air. The children ran in all directions, young girls and boys some in tears and all in fear, their faces seized by terror, crinkled in panic." (Source: 104 days of curfew in Nablus, Susan Barclay, 8 October 2002.)

Along with its people, Nablus' exceptional cultural heritage is under threat from these military assaults. Classified as a World Heritage Site, Nablus and its environs have been inhabited for more than 4,000 years -- as far back as the Iron Age. Just outside of the modern-day city is the site of Flavia Neapolis, one of the best-preserved examples of a Roman city, with its colonnaded streets, forum theatres and temples. It features such gems of Middle Eastern Roman architecture as the Hippodrome dating from the 2nd century A.D. and the Amphitheatre built in the following century, which covers the circular part of the hippodrome.

Later civilisations have also left their mark on Nablus, where the Old City's remarkable Christian and Islamic monuments are of special interest. UNESCO has undertaken to restore historic Nablus with World Bank funding. In fact, the Palestinian authorities and UNESCO signed the agreement for the ?third phase? of the restoration programme only two days before Sharon's provocative visit to Al Aqsa in September 2000! Had the programme gone ahead, it would have not only helped to safeguard Nablus' cultural heritage, but also provided a resuscitating boost to the city's economy.

We are sending this message, in solidarity with Nablus, because we believe that culture and communication have a major role to play in bringing peace to the region.

We are calling on the international community to reiterate its commitment to upholding human rights, and its commitment to Palestine, and to take notice of Nablus! International involvement is essential if the people of Nablus and their cultural heritage are to be treated in accordance with International Humanitarian Law and the relevant international declarations, conventions and covenants.

The basic rules of International Humanitarian Law state that persons not taking part in hostilities are entitled to respect for their lives and their moral and physical integrity. That they shall in all circumstances be protected and treated humanely without any adverse distinction. That armed forces do not have unlimited choice of methods and means of warfare. That it is prohibited to employ weapons or methods of warfare of a nature to cause unnecessary losses or extensive suffering. And that neither civilian populations as such nor property shall be the object of attack. The Geneva Conventions and Protocol I are applicable in case of declared war or of any other armed conflict arising between two or more of the Parties. Even if the state of war is not recognised by one of them. These agreements also cover armed conflicts in which people are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right to self-determination.

The Charter of the United Nations holds that recognition of the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. The need to extend particular care to the child has been stated in the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child (1924) and in the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959), and recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Declaration on the Protection of Women and Children in Emergency and Armed Conflict.

Cultural heritage should be safeguarded as stipulated in the Hague Convention and Protocol for Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (1954), the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) and its Additional Protocols, and the Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972).

We appeal to the international community -- human rights organisations, people working in the media, all those the world over who wish to see basic human rights respected and cultural heritage preserved -- to turn their attention to the plight of the Nablusians and their historic city.

We appeal to the international community to mobilise support for Nablus by working jointly with local community representatives and Palestinian organisations in their efforts to counter the siege.

Immediate intervention is desperately needed to save Nablus, its people and its legacy.

Fawzia A. Reda

Fawzia A. Reda is a founder of Cultural Connexion, a non-profit organisation based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with liaisons in Amman, Nablus, Ramallah, Cairo, and Paris. Cultural Connexion aspires to promote and preserve the Arabic and Islamic arts and cultures and foster better dialogue in the West with the Arab and Muslim communities.

So HeiGou, the life of the Palestinian people are not even better before! Learn & respect on their own decision to democratically elected the Hamas into the government! Will ya?

**Syed Nizam** · 05-07-2006

Originally Posted by HeiGou

Did you read it? Did you understand it? It says the Palestinians are suffering. What is your problem with that?

You are asking me what is my problem in that? ONLY ONE! Your title is Hamas sanctions squeeze the life out of West Bank, as if the Hamas are solely responsible for the suffering of the palestinian people! Simple...:grumbling

**Zzims** · 05-07-2006

You should have pos the topic under American Sanctions.. is it they who Sanctioned the Paletinian ppl.. trying to make a point against the Hamas sacrificing the palestinian population with hunger.. its a bad to make a any kind of point.. they shouldeve thought about that... if ur saying the the Palestinian fault for electing Hamas to power.. then ur democary is screwed.. American and western lies knows no bounds..

**HeiGou** · 05-07-2006

Originally Posted by Syed Nizam

You are asking me what is my problem in that? ONLY ONE! Your title is Hamas sanctions squeeze the life out of West Bank, as if the Hamas are solely responsible for the suffering of the palestinian people! Simple...:grumbling

So you read the title and nothing else? It was not my title. And the sanctions, self evidently, are not imposed by Hamas. They are not Hamas' sanctions, but sanctions on Hamas. The whole article is about Palestinian suffering. Read it instead of leaping to conclusions.

**------** · 05-07-2006

Read it instead of leaping to conclusions.

Calm down HeiGou

**HeiGou** · 05-07-2006

Originally Posted by Zzims

You should have pos the topic under American Sanctions.. is it they who Sanctioned the Paletinian ppl.. trying to make a point against the Hamas sacrificing the palestinian population with hunger.. its a bad to make a any kind of point.. they shouldeve thought about that... if ur saying the the Palestinian fault for electing Hamas to power.. then ur democary is screwed.. American and western lies knows no bounds..

I did not choose the title of the thread and clearly the article does not say the sanctions are the work of Hamas, but are imposed by others. I do not see what bad things the Americans are doing - they are just refusing to subsidies people they consider terrorists. I have no obligation to share my money with people I do not like and want to kill me. Why do you think the Americans do? There is a problem with Israel's behaviour but that is not the West's fault either.

Palestinians elected Hamas. Presumably they knew that there would be some consequences. They were happy to pay the price. Are you saying the West ought to continue to subsidise Hamas?

**HeiGou** · 05-07-2006

Originally Posted by Aalimah

Calm down HeiGou

Why address that to me, and I am calm, and not to your Brothers?

**Sahraxx** · 05-07-2006

subhanallah i think the suffering out there is just shocking and it is such a shame that the western world is allowing suffering like this

**HeiGou** · 05-07-2006

Originally Posted by Sahraxx

subhanallah i think the suffering out there is just shocking and it is such a shame that the western world is allowing suffering like this

How is the Western world allowing this suffering? Since when did every problem in the world become the fault of the West? The Palestinians have chosen to support Hamas. Fair enough. I would have too if I were a Palestinian. But why should Westerners go on paying their money to people who want to murder them? If they reject a hand of friendship whose fault is that? The real question is why have the Palestinians been supported by the West since 1949 without any consequences before?

Let's see the Muslims step up to the plate and replace the lost aid.

**Zzims** · 05-07-2006

Originally Posted by HeiGou

I did not choose the title of the thread and clearly the article does not say the sanctions are the work of Hamas, but are imposed by others. I do not see what bad things the Americans are doing - they are just refusing to subsidies people they consider terrorists. I have no obligation to share my money with people I do not like and want to kill me. Why do you think the Americans do? There is a problem with Israel's behaviour but that is not the West's fault either.

Palestinians elected Hamas. Presumably they knew that there would be some consequences. They were happy to pay the price. Are you saying the West ought to continue to subsidise Hamas?

There is a problem with ISrael behaviuor yet the West still keen on supporting them Financially.. i'd say 50 mil aid to palestinian which theyve stopped to 5 Billion to Israel..havent stopped..i'd say its their fault all the way..and so if u say u have no obligation to share ur money its counts that ur a non muslim..is of no suprise.. in Islam ppl are expected to share some of his/her wealth... so seeing Palestinian killed is ok for supporting ISrael more.. as Killing of Israelis is a point of stop for aiding palestinian..

**Syed Nizam** · 05-07-2006

Originally Posted by HeiGou

So you read the title and nothing else? It was not my title. And the sanctions, self evidently, are not imposed by Hamas. They are not Hamas' sanctions, but sanctions on Hamas. The whole article is about Palestinian suffering. Read it instead of leaping to conclusions.

On the contrary, i did read the whole thing! Hehehe... I'm just a little bit upset by the whole situation going on in Palestine at the moment. My sincere apology to you for my earlier outburst..

If only both the Europe & America could really see that their action causes more suffering to the Palestinian people..... I wonder if they actually realise about it, but choose to turn both eyes from it in order to punish the Palestinian people for voting the Hamas in the previous election.

Hmm... We can never truly know, can we?

**HeiGou** · 05-07-2006

Originally Posted by Zzims

There is a problem with ISrael behaviuor yet the West still keen on supporting them Financially.. i'd say 50 mil aid to palestinian which theyve stopped to 5 Billion to Israel..havent stopped..i'd say its their fault all the way..

You are perfectly entitled to that opinion.

and so if u say u have no obligation to share ur money its counts that ur a non muslim..is of no suprise.. in Islam ppl are expected to share some of his/her wealth...

Yes but are they expected to share their money with people who are trying to kill them? That is the question. And zakat, as I discovered this week, is not to go to non-Muslims. So why should non-Muslims give any money to Muslims in charity much less to Muslims who are trying to kill them?

so seeing Palestinian killed is ok for supporting ISrael more.. as Killing of Israelis is a point of stop for aiding palestinian..

Except all that has happened in the West is that the West has decided not to go on giving money to the Palestinians. They are not stopping Muslims giving money. They are not stopping Palestinians earning money. They are just not subsidising them any more. I think that is fairly reasonable actually.

**KAding** · 05-07-2006

Originally Posted by Zzims

You should have pos the topic under American Sanctions.. is it they who Sanctioned the Paletinian ppl.. trying to make a point against the Hamas sacrificing the palestinian population with hunger.. its a bad to make a any kind of point.. they shouldeve thought about that... if ur saying the the Palestinian fault for electing Hamas to power.. then ur democary is screwed.. American and western lies knows no bounds..

I disagree. The Western democracies are under no obligation to pay the wages of Palestinian civil servants. The Palestinians decided to elect those people who they knew have no support in the West, so they should face the consequences. Why would we be required to pay for Hamas? What about our own democratic rights to determine how our governments spend our tax money?

Democracy does not mean other countries are forced to pay for your democratic choices!

Btw, sanctions is an inaccurate description. A better phrase would be 'end of subsidizing'. And both Europe and the US still pay millions for aid to the Pals, but our representatives have decided it would be a bad idea to essentially give money to Hamas directly. I agree with them.

**Zzims** · 05-07-2006

American money --> ISrael Military..--> Bombs Palestinian.. so i'd say Palestinian have the right for any compensation wether or not its the west obligation or not.. its not wether paying the Civil servants or not.. its the Ppl as a whole who are effected.. Western Democary denies them who are justly elected yet they support those who they seemed fit in their eyes.. Siraeli atcks i'd say deemed fit in their eyes.. to no extent.. Condemnation for an act is along way towards a areaction towards it.. Want to condemn Hamas atcks Condemn Israeli atcks also..

**Nicola** · 05-07-2006

Would seem the Palestinian are now reaping what they sowed also.

I see many people are ready to condem the Americans who vote for Bush! same applies there.

Likewise many blame the English people concerning the war in Iraq for electing Blair who took us in that cesspit!
Pot meet Kettle!