Why are we subsidizing Palestinian extremism?

David Frum
March 14, 2006
The National Post
Original Source: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.html?id=1cabdf30-a060-475d-a566-dafd09e7c070

Visitors to Paris really must make time for a visit to the fabled rue St. Honore, one of the world's most expensive streets: Gucci is here, as is Faberge. Oh and somebody else, too: Suha Arafat, widow of the late Palestinian leader, who reportedly occupies one of the last private houses on the street where Moliere once lived. If you obtain an appointment to visit her, however, you will probably be directed not to the house, but to the reception suite she maintains in the nearby Hotel Bristol, where rooms begin at $955 per day.
This travelogue, I think, casts some interesting light on the question of whether Canada should continue its aid to the Palestinian Authority. Canada gives about $25-million per year to Palestinians in the occupied territories: a total of some $300-million since 1993.
Where did that money go? The International Monetary Authority has reported that some US$900-million in Palestinian Authority funds were diverted into overseas bank accounts between 1997 and 2003. French authorities recorded transfers of some US$10-million to accounts controlled by Suha Arafat in just a single year.
The Palestinian Authority itself admits it cannot account for billions of dollars it has received in aid. True, not all this money was stolen. Probably the larger portion was redirected to pay for Yasser Arafat's terrorist war against Israel. But whether transformed into Parisian apartments or plastic explosives, the vast wealth poured into the Palestinian Authority has vanished without benefit to the local population.
Corruption on this scale helped elect Hamas, which has cunningly merged Islamic chauvinism, terrorism and welfarism into an electorally appealing package. Now, international aid donors must ask themselves: Do they want Hamas to succeed? Every dollar that continues to flow into the PA is a dollar contribution to the Hamas re-election fund. Every dollar that continues to flow into the PA is a dollar given to enhance the appeal of Islamic extremism and terrorist violence.
The Canadian foreign affairs bureaucracy responds to criticism by pointing out that Canada's $25-million goes to the UN and NGOs, not to the PA government (not yet, anyway -- although Paul Martin promised an additional $37-million in government-to-government aid just before he left office). But the terrible fact is the UN agencies in the Palestinian territories have long functioned as support organizations for terrorism. Michael Krauss and Peter Pham of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies have itemized just a few of the many connections between the UN and Hamas:
- After his arrest in August 2002, Nidal 'Abd al-Fataah' Abdallah Nizal, a UNRWA ambulance driver and Hamas activist from Qalqiliya in the West Bank, admitted that he used his official vehicle to transport munitions to Hamas terrorists and to carry official orders to them.
- Nahd Rashid, a senior UNRWA official in Gaza before his arrest in August, 2002, confessed that he used his UNRWA vehicle to transport armed members of the Popular Resistance Committees (an affiliate of the supposedly moderate Fatah faction) to kill Israeli soldiers at the Karni entrance to Israel.
- In May, 2004, armed Palestinians were filmed using UNRWA ambulances to transport terrorists
- UNRWA schools use textbooks that incite violence against Israel and praise martyrdom. UN facilities have been converted into bomb-making factories. And the former chief of UN operations in the Palestinian territories, Peter Hansen, acknowledged to the CBC in October, 2004: I am sure there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll, and I don't see that as a crime.
This is what Canadian aid to the Palestinian territories is paying for. Compared to this, Suha Arafat's extravagance looks almost harmless: She only burns money, not buses full of Israeli civilians.
Our world is full of preventable suffering. Canada's foreign aid budget is severely limited. There must be many, many better uses of $25-million per year than the subsidization of extravagant lifestyles or terrorist murder.
Yet the weird thing is that Canada's foreign affairs bureaucracy seems far more anxious to keep giving money to Hamas than Hamas is to continue receiving it. After all, the terms asked of the Palestinians are not exactly onerous. All they need to do is disavow terrorism, stop inciting wars they always lose and live in peace with their neighbours. It's not really so much to ask, is it?
And until the new government of the Palestinian Authority can meet those elementary conditions, Canada can surely find a better use for its aid money than underwriting Islamic extremism in the heart of the Middle East.