===
Saved by The Supreme's?
As I have written previously, Federal Jurists might just save our nation from progressive insanity and most importantly Obama corruption.
No doubt, big banks with management out of control and engaging in corrupt practices, some forced on them by government bureaucrats and legislative insanity, were to blame for our financial problems but over reach reaction and legislative restrictive penalties imposed by the Obama Administration and supported by run away Democrats ( Barney and Dodd) must also be curbed! (See 1 below.)
===
I recently e mailed my brilliant lawyer friend in Atlanta, that I remembered he once suggested Iraq would ultimately break itself into three nations and/or GW should do so.
This is his response to my e mail. (See 2 below.)
===
Jeb Bush, who I am told by those who should know, is running for the presidency in 2016, doubles down on Common Core.
My problem is not with the expressed goal of Common Core but the fact that Obama tied federal education disbursements to states adopting Common Core. Obama's nose again under the tent.
This is why I believe The Department of Education, should be shut down and states should be allowed to determine their own educational standards and teachers allowed to get out from under federal bureaucratic rules and purse strings. (See 3 below.)
While Jeb Bush is not afraid to state what he believes, Hillary, like Susan Rice, continues to bob, weave and lie in a disingenuous style. How pathetic Hillary is and her book tour reminds us again of just that. (See 3a below.)
And then, we have an insightful article about: "How Not to Help Black Americans".
Nothing new here. It has been clear for all to see but the very blacks who are blinded and enslaved by the crippling largess of Democrat Progressives.
Incidentally, I believe the author is himself black. (See 3b below.)
===
More and more Democrats are deserting Obama's sinking ship and his inane ideas and proposals! (See 4 below.)
===
Why does The West continue to throw money down the Palestinian rat hole? (See 5 below.)
More PA sickness! (See 5a below.)
===
Dick
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Supreme Court's Recent Decision Might Time-Bar Government Litigation Against Banks
Summary
- Large bank stocks have an overhang of uncertainty and fear due to a seemingly endless stream of multi-billion dollar settlements and litigation.
- Private corporation lawsuits against banks that began in mid-2011 or later have been dismissed due to a little-known rule called the statute of repose.
- A recent, relatively unknown supreme court decision may indicate that current and future government lawsuits should also be dismissed according to the statute of repose.
- The supreme court may abruptly end financial crisis-era settlements and litigation, dramatically changing the investment narrative and profitability of the large banks.
For the past several years, large banks including Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C) and JP Morgan (JPM) have been threatened with never-ending government lawsuits for tens of billions of dollars. In the past few weeks, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has reportedly asked for another $17 billion from BAC, and another $10 billion from C. These follow last year's $13 billion settlementwith JPM. The seemingly endless wave of threatened and actual litigation has introduced a great deal of uncertainty and fear into large bank stocks, and is likely depressing their stock prices.
This article is primarily about the statute of repose, a little known rule which, like the better-known statute of limitations, places limits on when plaintiffs can litigate against a defendant. Allison Frankel has written a good summary of the legal issues on her excellent blog, and my purpose here is mainly to supplement her legal discussion with some investment perspectives.
For most financial litigation, the Securities Act of 1933 sets the statute of repose at three years after the wrongdoing. Since most financial crisis misbehavior happened prior to mid-2008, the statute of repose sets a mid-2011 deadline for filing litigation. That deadline, per the Supreme Court, can not be extended.
This mid-2011 deadline has been enforced in several pieces of litigation between private companies, for example in the ruling Allstate (ALL) vs. Bank of America. Private company litigation over the financial crisis that began after mid-2011 has largely been dismissed as time-barred.
The statute of repose applies to government litigation too. However, the government has a special tool in its belt called FIRREA. FIRREA explicitly has an "extender" which gives the government a 10-year statute of limitations on litigation, but is silent on the topic of the statute of repose.
Banks have argued that since congress did not explicitly change the statute of repose, the mid-2011 cut off defined by the Securities Act should remain in force.
So far, most lower courts have ruled against the banks. The courts believe congress "intended to" extend the statute of repose when they explicitly extended the statute of limitations. This has led to a prevailing investment narrative of uncertainty and fear, where banks will need to pay untold billions of dollars in settlements, litigation, and fines.
A recent, largely unknown, Supreme Court decision may flip that narrative. CTS Corp vs. Waldburger deals with an environmental law where congress explicitly extended the statute of limitations, but did not extend the statute of repose. The Supreme Court, reversing a lower court, ruled that the statute of repose was not changed, and therefore, that Waldburger was too late in suing CTS Corp.
In his opinion, Justice Kennedy described the statute of repose as a type of defendant's rights:
Like a discharge in bankruptcy, a statute of repose can be said to provide a fresh start or freedom from liability...[it] embodies the idea that at some point a defendant should be able to put past events behind him.
FIRREA, like the environmental law above, is silent on the topic of statute of repose. There are good arguments both for and against the implicit extension of the statute of repose in FIRREA.
Arguments for the government:
- Why would Congress extend the statute of limitations if the statute of repose would prevent litigation anyway?
- Most lower courts have favored the government.
Arguments for the banks:
- The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of CTS corporation. Multiple justices would need to find FIRREA sufficiently different in order to shift the verdict against the banks.
- The Supreme Court may decide that Congress should be taken literally, i.e. that the Supreme Court should try not to guess Congress' intentions beyond what was written into the law.
- The Supreme Court's discussion of a defendant's rights as a"fresh start" and "freedom from liability" may suggest a reluctance to remove those rights without an explicit law from Congress.
I don't have a strong view which direction the Supreme Court will rule, and would be unsurprised if the verdict went in either direction.
If the Supreme Court decides that FIRREA does not implicitly extend the statute of repose, just about all government litigation and settlements against the banks would abruptly end - just as private company litigation against the banks abruptly ended around mid-2011.
From an investment perspective, I believe a future Supreme Court ruling constitutes a sizeable free option. To me the downside, where the banks suffer from continued and sizeable settlements and litigation, is already priced into bank stocks. But the upside, where the Supreme Court rules for the banks, would mean protection from those lawsuits and the reversal of litigation reserves, creating billions of dollars in unexpected profits. I believe there's substantial upside should the banks win, while the downside is already priced in.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2) A little more complicated. Joe Biden was the one who advocated the trifurcation, and his was a bit more meat cleaver-ish -- kind of like relocating the Poles after WWII or all the other wars in which the Poles have been relocated. I am not often confused with Joe Biden (although I would like to shoot a shotgun from a balcony sometime).
I, like the Framers, am not a fan of democracy. I am a fan of representative government with many checks and balances, particularly in confederations like the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States. With sovereignty dispersed -- even just a little -- governments tend to be more stable.
The situations in Afghanistan and Iraq scream for confederations. The tribes would make a good Senatorial structure, representing the wise men from each of the tribes, who generally converse anyway when they are not fighting. A lower body elected by the people could be structured like our House of Representatives. For good measure, religious leaders could even play a role.
Iraq -- and even Ukraine -- could find more stability with regional governments, perhaps with lots of sovereignty vested in those regional governments, but with a national government with the foreign relations power, and perhaps an ability to control the local governments through the more efficient distribution of foreign aid -- and the supervision and accountability for that foreign aid. The Kurds could have more sovereignty than most, the Shia and Sunni could have separate seatings in a Senate that would require consent of the Kuds, Sunni and Shia for action. Taxes could be collected locally, and only paid to the federal government on an allocation based on a census (kind of like the plan of our own original, ingenious, Constitution.
Having dual sovereign entities has the added advantage of increasing the possibility that corruption will be identified and stymied.
Unfortunately, a friend of mine from long ago recently helped negotiate the Afghan Status of Forces Agreement. And other friends have been involved in some of these disastrous decisions that have been made in the last few years. I wish I could influence my old friends, but alas, I cannot. These decisions are all rooted in the same repeated error -- an error repeated by the Jews, Greeks, Romans, French, Germans, Russians, Iranians, etc. -- a love of democracy.
Woodrow Wilson did our country a great service when, as Governor of New Jersey, he chased all corporate activity into Delaware. But he did a great disservice to our Nation and the World when he proclaimed the US position was to "make the world safe for democracy." Now we all speak of democracy and democratically elected governments as if they are the most stable things in the world. Jane Harmon, the current CEO of the Woodrow Wilson Institute, was representing the liberal point of view on Fox News Sunday this week, along with some bimbo. The bimbo claimed to be the White House correspondent for the AP. I have no doubt she was telling the truth about that. I've forgotten her name, but not what she said when she applauded Obama for not providing air cover to the Iraqis until they could form a "coalition government." She said there was no need for a little air power, because it would do no good, and an ongoing commitment to air power would not help support a government that could not be stable in the long run. So I guess she -- and Obama -- favor the alternative ISIS-led group as a more stable form of government. ISIS is their form of a democratically-elected government. Now that they have Stingers, they will be able to defend their territory from American air power, so we can think of them as the new Iraq.
They will go down in history with the other great bimbo President, Jimmy Carter, who refused to give the Shah rubber bullets for crowd control, leading to massacres and the rise of the ayatollahs and all the terrorist funding of the last 35 years. With Sam Nunn standing beside him all the way. Iran under the ayatollahs was Carter's version of a democratically elected government. Sam Nunn woke up a bit in the 90s, but by then it was too late, and he seems to have fallen back asleep.
I think Paul Bremer tried to force a government on Iraq that would not work. He wasted an opportunity -- he had a blank slate to create a confederation. The Iraqis have a rich tradition as the jurists of the Ottoman Empire, and they would have accepted a confederation, with power to the Kurds. But he blew the chance. We had a chance to impose our own form of government on Japan after the war. We made the Emperor apologize to the nation for saying that he was descended from the Sun. We ripped the heart out of their religion. They still may not survive as a people, but at least they are peaceful, well-liked and emulated. Where we have been beneficent and merciful in victory, and been persuaded by the populist nonsense of Woodrow Wilson, we have failed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3) Jeb Bush Charts Tricky Course With Embrace of Common Core
Stance Isolates Ex-Governor From Potential 2016 Foes but Could Boost Him in a General Election
Jeb Bush, center, and Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, right, discuss successful teaching strategies at an Oklahoma City school in April. Oklahoman/Associated Press
Most potential Republican presidential contenders are renouncing the national educational standards known as Common Core. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has championed measuring academic achievement for two decades, is doubling down.
Resistance to Common Core is growing among the party's activists, who see it as a federal incursion into local schools. Republican governors of South Carolina and Oklahoma last month joined Indiana in opting out. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who two years ago said the initiative "will raise expectations for every child," recently compared it to Russian centralized planning and on Friday vetoed a pro-Common Core bill.
Mr. Bush, by contrast, is urging states to stick with it.
Mr. Bush's embrace of Common Core, as well as his support for legalizing undocumented immigrants, is coming to define his national profile ahead of a possible 2016 presidential bid. These stances isolate him from the conservatives who dominate Republican nominating contests. Last week, they demonstrated their power by ousting House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a Virginia GOP primary."Pressing pause means stopping forward momentum," said a letter released Monday by Mr. Bush's nonprofit Foundation for Excellence in Education. "And when that happens, things can go backwards."
But political strategists also say Mr. Bush could emerge as a stronger general-election candidate by embracing his education record, unlike Mitt Romney, who distanced himself from his signature health-care initiative as governor of Massachusetts as he sought conservative backing in the primaries.
"Jeb is not going to pander, and I think people would rather you level with them," said former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a one-time Republican National Committee chairman who supports Common Core.
Created by a bipartisan group of governors and adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia, Common Core was designed to boost academic achievement and allow for comparisons across states. One goal was to hand power back to the states to implement standards called for in President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind law. But after President Barack Obama tied the disbursal of federal education grants to states adopting Common Core, conservatives revolted.
Most potential 2016 GOP candidates have come out swinging against the standards, including Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.
"It substitutes an unaccountable federal bureaucracy for state, local and parental decision-making in education," said Jim DeMint, a former senator who is president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with an active political arm. "Parents are tired of the failures and excuses from Washington."
When Mr. Bush was preparing to address the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council last year, an aide suggested remarks that avoided mentioning Common Core. Mr. Bush rejected the draft. "I respect those that don't agree with me," he told the group gathered in Chicago. "What I can't accept are dumbing down standards and expectations."
In April, Mr. Bush told Fox News: "I just don't feel compelled to run for cover when I think this is the right thing to do for our country. And others have, others that supported the standards all of a sudden are opposed to it." Last month, his educational foundation wrapped up a $3 million campaign in Florida promoting school improvements and the national standards.
Pushback against the standards also is coming from the left. The letter from Mr. Bush's educational group singled out teachers unions for seeking more time to prepare for testing. It also criticized the Gates Foundation, one of its largest donors and a leading Common Core funder, for seeking a delay.
No one doubted that Mr. Bush governed Florida from 1999 to 2007 as a conservative. He cut individual and corporate taxes, signed the "Stand Your Ground" law pushed by gun owners and ended affirmative action in university admissions and state contracting. On education, he spearheaded a law that assigned schools letter grades based on their test scores and required third-graders who couldn't read to be held back. He also pushed for taxpayer-funded vouchers to let students in failing schools attend private schools, a program that courts struck down.
As the GOP has shifted to the right, it is tea-party activists who are now among Mr. Bush's most ardent opponents. In addition to unhappiness with the federal role in education, conservative activists see a corporate connection to the initiative.
Since 2010, Mr. Bush's foundation has received $5 million from the Gates Foundation, and it gets donations from companies in the education industry, including PearsonPSON.LN +1.27% PLC and News Corp's NWSA -0.64% Amplify, which have contracts related to implementing Common Core. (News Corp publishes The Wall Street Journal.)
"All Common Core roads lead to K Street," wrote commentator and activist Michelle Malkin, one of Mr. Bush's biggest antagonists, referring to the Washington turf of many lobbyists.
A spokeswoman for the foundation, Jaryn Emhof, rejected criticism over corporate funding. "We have a firewall," she said. "They don't get any say over our reform agenda."
3a) Clinton on Keystone
The Democratic nominee in waiting can't tell you what she thinks.
Hillary Clinton's presidential, er, book tour hasn't gone well, but not because she isn't trying to avoid controversy. Asked last week by the Toronto Globe and Mail if she believes the U.S. should build the Keystone XL pipeline, she replied: "I can't respond."
Who knew an oil pipeline was classified information? As the former Secretary of State explained, "I can't really comment at great length because I had responsibility for it and it's been passed on and it wouldn't be appropriate." If she told you, she'd have to kill you. Or, to put it differently, if she told you, some Democrats might try to kill her presidential chances.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discusses her new book "Hard Choices" in Toronto on Monday. Associated Press
Mrs. Clinton knows the State Department made its final environmental assessment of Keystone XL in January. It found that the pipeline would have little net impact on global greenhouse gas emissions. State's final recommendation to President Obama rests with current Secretary John Kerry, so Mrs. Clinton is free to speak her mind as she pleases.
She certainly speaks on other issues, such as gay marriage, where she now exudes the zeal of the convert, having changed her mind only a year ago. She's also more than happy to revisit her 2003 decision as a Senator to support the invasion of Iraq, something she now regrets at every opportunity. And she's perfectly happy to distance herself from President Obama's decisions that are turning sour, such as refusing to support the moderate opposition in Syria.
All of which suggests that her Keystone reticence is an attempt to dodge the Democratic divide between unions that support the pipeline for its jobs and billionaires like Tom Steyer who brook no dissent on climate change. By ducking now, she can see what Mr. Obama decides (if he ever does), test the political wind, and come out on the side that offers the most political benefit. You can't say she didn't learn from all those years with Bill.
3b) How Not to Help Black Americans
Failed poverty programs have tried to do what blacks can only do for themselves.
Mr. Steele's words come to mind after reading a much-discussed argument for slavery reparations in the June issue of the Atlantic magazine. "The consequences of 250 years of enslavement, of war upon black families and black people, were profound," says the essay's author, Ta-Nehisi Coates. No disagreement there. But the enslavers and the enslaved are long gone, and Mr. Coates presents no evidence that what currently ails the black poor will be addressed by allowing them to cash in on the exploitation of dead ancestors.
Ironically, Mr. Coates spends most of the article detailing how previous government efforts to narrow black-white social and economic disparities—from Reconstruction to the New Deal to the Great Society—have largely failed. Yet he concludes that what's needed is more of the same—namely, another grand wealth-redistribution scheme in the guise of slavery reparations.
This year we are marking the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and next year we will do the same for the Voting Rights Act. These landmark pieces of legislation, signed by President Lyndon Johnson, outlawed racial discrimination and ensured the ability of blacks to register and vote. But Johnson wasn't satisfied with these victories. He was convinced that government could and should do more.
"You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair," Johnson said in 1965 at the start of his Great Society. The "next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights" was "not just freedom but opportunity" and "not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result."
Like Johnson, liberals today remain convinced that government has the ability to produce equal outcomes, though history repeatedly shows that intergroup differences are the norm rather than the exception. The reality is that social policy, however well intentioned, has its limits, and when those limits aren't acknowledged the results can be counterproductive.
Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute reports that since 1964 "the U.S. welfare state has devoted considerable resources to assuring or improving the public's living standards—something like $20 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars through antipoverty programs alone." Notwithstanding this government largess, the official poverty rate in 2012 was higher than it was in 1966, and the black-white poverty gap has widened over the past decade. The racial disparity in incarceration rates is also larger today than it was in 1960. Black unemployment, on average, has been twice as high as white unemployment for five decades.
One reason that Uncle Sam's altruism has not been successful is because the government is attempting to do for blacks what blacks can only do for themselves. Until those in the black underclass develop the work habits, behaviors and attitudes that proved necessary for other groups to rise, they will continue to struggle. And to the extent that a social program, however well-meaning, interferes with a group's self-development, it does more harm than good.
Upward mobility depends on work and family. Government policies that undermine the work ethic—open-ended welfare benefits, for example—help keep poor people poor. Why study hard in school if you will be held to a lower academic standard? Why change antisocial behavior when people are willing to reward it, make excuses for it, or even change the law to accommodate it, as in the Justice Department's current push for shorter sentences for convicted drug dealers?
The Obama presidency is evidence that blacks have progressed politically. But if the rise of other racial and ethnic groups is any indication, black social and economic problems are less about politics than about culture. The persistently high black jobless rate is more a consequence of unemployability than of discrimination in hiring. The black-white learning gap stems from a dearth of education choices for ghetto children, not biased tests or a shortage of education funding. And although black civil rights leaders cite a supposedly racist criminal justice system to explain why our prisons house so many black men, it has been obvious for decades that the real culprit is errant black behavior too often celebrated in black culture.
Black leaders today are convinced that they are helping blacks by helping the party of bigger government, Democrats. But a previous generation of black elites understood the perils of such reasoning.
"Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, 'What should we do with the Negro ?' " said Frederick Douglass in 1865. "I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall. . . . And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs!"
Douglass was stressing the primacy of black self-development, a not uncommon sentiment among prominent blacks in the decades following the Civil War. Booker T. Washington, who like Douglass was born a slave, said that "It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges."
Douglass and Washington didn't play down the need for the government to secure equal rights for blacks, and both were optimistic that they would get equal rights eventually. But both men also understood the limits of government benevolence. Blacks would have to ready themselves to meet the far bigger challenge of being in a position to take advantage of opportunities, once equal rights had been secured. The history of 1960s liberal social policies is largely a history of ignoring this wisdom.
Mr. Riley is a member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board and author of "Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed," just released by Encounter.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4) The Democrats Every Republican Should Quote
Former officials and allies are getting worried about Obama's priorities, and willing to say so.
By DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN
As the 2014 midterm elections draw closer, the Republican strategy seems clear: Campaign against Democrats as the party of Barack Obama, whose administration is out of step with the American people on foreign and domestic policy. With the president's plunging approval ratings, that's a sensible strategy. It might be more credible if they cite the mounting criticisms of Mr. Obama coming from his own former supporters or appointees.
Leon Panetta, Central Intelligence Agency director and defense secretary, has been blunt about the president's mismanagement of the Middle East—especially in Syria. Mr. Obama backed down from military action against Bashar Assad at the 11th hour, after suggesting that Mr. Assad's use of chemical weapons was a "red line" that would require the use of force.
"When the president of the United States draws a red line, the credibility of this country is dependent on him backing up his word," Mr. Panetta said last year. Mr. Obama's former ambassador to Syria, Rob Ford, resigned in March and earlier this month told CNN's Christiane Amanpour, "I was no longer in a position where I felt I could defend the American policy."
Hillary Clinton, Obama's first secretary of state, is making the rounds on tour for her memoir, "Hard Choices." Writing about the Egyptian revolution in 2011, when Mr. Obama eventually forced Hosni Mubarak to step down, she says: "I was concerned that we not be seen as pushing a longtime partner out the door, leaving Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the region to an uncertain, dangerous future." She lost that argument.
On arming the Syrian rebels, she argues that the "risks of both action and inaction were high. Both choices would bring unintended consequences. The President's inclination was to stay the present course and not take the significant further step of arming rebels." She adds: "No one likes to lose a debate, including me."
Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein was once a staunch Obama supporter. She has become increasingly unhappy over the administration's lack of communication with Congress about the National Security Agency's surveillance practices. She is especially disturbed that Congress was out of the loop regarding the recent exchange of five Taliban commanders to win the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. "I strongly believe that we should have been consulted and that the rule of law should have been followed," she said earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Democrats domestically are running away from Mr. Obama on multiple fronts. Locked in tough election battles, many Democrats have come out against Mr. Obama's draconian new Environmental Protection Agency emission rules, which will severely punish coal-fired power plants and endanger jobs. Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieuhas spoken out against the EPA rules, Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes has pledged to fight what she calls Mr. Obama's "attack on Kentucky's coal industry." West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall says that the EPA rule shows "disregard for the livelihoods of our coal miners and thousands of families throughout West Virginia."
Democrats have increasingly resisted the president's judicial picks including Michael Boggs and Mark Cohen ; they blocked Vivek Murthy, his surgeon general appointee; and they killed the nomination of Debo Adegbile, his appointee to head the Justice Department's civil-rights division. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi promised that Democrats would run on ObamaCare in November; many are not listening. Former Sen. Max Baucus called the law a "train wreck," while Sen. Jay Rockefeller says the law is "beyond comprehension." One candidate, Florida Democratic Congressman Joe Garcia, is running for re-election by openly bashing ObamaCare.
The chorus criticizing the president has swollen far beyond the ranks of Republican critics. Former top foreign-policy officials and stout Democratic allies have become increasingly critical of and worried about the administration's priorities, decision-making and vision of America's role in the world. The unfolding disaster in Iraq in the past week is only going to prompt more of Mr. Obama's allies to re-examine their ties to White House policy.
As the GOP gears up for the fall campaign, Republicans have a new message at their disposal: You don't have to take our word for it.
Mr. Schoen served as a political adviser and pollster for President Bill Clinton from 1994-2000.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5)- Terrorists & Kleptocrats: How Corruption is Eating the Palestinians Alive
In 2010-2011 I worked with the Israeli Ministry of Defense’s Civil Administration, which administers non-security policy in the West Bank. This unique experience has informed my thinking about Israelis, Palestinians, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a great extent. Among the many lessons I learned was that the Palestinian Authority does little to help the Palestinian people. One of my responsibilities as an Israel Government Fellow was to work with the Civil Administration’s agriculture team to ensure aid projects funded by foreign governments in the West Bank were executed successfully and lawfully. Much of this work involved significant interaction with individual Palestinians, most of whom were hard working, entrepreneurial-minded people focused on societal and self-improvement. In fact, many of them inspired me. I also worked intensively with the Palestinian Authority. Unfortunately, many of those experiences were deeply troubling, as I came to learn that the Palestinian Authority’s priorities and goals were often in conflict with those of its people, and held them back. This piece offers insight into the relationship between the PA and the Palestinian people.
5)- Terrorists & Kleptocrats: How Corruption is Eating the Palestinians Alive
In 2010-2011 I worked with the Israeli Ministry of Defense’s Civil Administration, which administers non-security policy in the West Bank. This unique experience has informed my thinking about Israelis, Palestinians, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a great extent. Among the many lessons I learned was that the Palestinian Authority does little to help the Palestinian people. One of my responsibilities as an Israel Government Fellow was to work with the Civil Administration’s agriculture team to ensure aid projects funded by foreign governments in the West Bank were executed successfully and lawfully. Much of this work involved significant interaction with individual Palestinians, most of whom were hard working, entrepreneurial-minded people focused on societal and self-improvement. In fact, many of them inspired me. I also worked intensively with the Palestinian Authority. Unfortunately, many of those experiences were deeply troubling, as I came to learn that the Palestinian Authority’s priorities and goals were often in conflict with those of its people, and held them back. This piece offers insight into the relationship between the PA and the Palestinian people.
Middle East scholar Jonathan Schanzer explains in his recent book State of Failure that the American approach to the Palestinian Authority has failed because it revolves around “getting to yes” in the peace process without transforming the PA into a responsible and trustworthy government. The right approach, he says, would involve fiscal reform and institution-building, while simultaneously negotiating the thorny issues with Israel. By myopically focusing on “yes,” the U.S. is ensuring the Palestinian Authority will remain corrupt and therefore illegitimate in the eyes of the Palestinian people. My experience confirms Schanzer’s argument. The PA is an incredibly corrupt organization. So is its dominant party, Fatah. Together they form a motley crew of elites seeking to maintain power and the attenuating trappings, willing to do whatever it takes to ensure their power and position are not lost.
A Palestinian farmer prays in a vegetable field in the West Bank village of Ouja. (Photo: Meital Cohen/Flash90)
A Palestinian farmer prays in a vegetable field in the West Bank village of Ouja. (Photo: Meital Cohen/Flash90)
This issue has now become too important to ignore because the most recent round of ill-conceived Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have, unsurprisingly, failed the Israeli and Palestinian people yet again and have resulted in the victory of the status quo. This outcome leads down a dark tunnel because we have failed to understand a basic fundamental: the Palestinian Authority as it exists is not a force for good. I returned to the U.S. in the summer of 2011, and although I have told the following stories anecdotally in private, I have resisted making them public because I wanted to give the PA the benefit of the doubt, hoping that in the end their role would be a positive one. I am not the only one who has held this hope. It is a hope that drives much of the support given by the US and Europe to the PA. But this hope has not been fulfilled, and it is now a barrier to better outcomes.
Nothing I experienced dashed my hope more than the story of Sammy Khalidi.
It began with a phone call. It was Sammy. He and I had just seen each other the day before at his farm in the central Jordan Valley in the West Bank. Sammy had a medium-sized farm growing tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, and herbs. He was participating in a development project run by an American consulting firm on behalf of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that aimed to enable Palestinian agricultural producers to export their products to foreign markets.
“Hello,” I said, “this is Aaron.”
“Aaron, it’s Sammy Khalidi. I have a problem, and I do not know what to do.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I got called from someone in the office of Fayyad. He said I have two days to switch packing houses. They do not want me using the Jewish pack house. They want me to use the Palestinian one. I cannot do that. It is too far away and too expensive. It would not work, I would go out of business. They said if I do not obey, they will take away my export license.”
Salam Fayyad was then the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority and an international darling. More technocrat than politician, Fayyad was credited with establishing rule of law and building political and social institutions in the West Bank that were creating better economic outcomes. I was a fan of Fayyad myself, but I was about to learn that even an internationally loved American-educated technocrat (or at least someone working in his office) could, and would, prioritize politics and the politically connected over the future success of the Palestinian people.
“Why not?” I asked.
“The Sinokrot pack house is south of me. My product must go north. This means my product will go bad before it gets to market. And they are more expensive.”
Sinokrot is a well-known Palestinian name. Sinokrot Global Group Ltd. is owned by Mazen T. Sinokrot. Sinokrot, also Western-educated (in Britain), has been instrumental in the development of the agriculture sector in the West Bank, and one of its greatest advocates in export markets. He also founded and chairs Al-Quds Holdings, which invests in education, real estate, tourism, information technology, and health care in Jerusalem.
He has excellent political connections, having served as the PA’s Minister of Economy in 2005 and 2006. He remains influential, and is a prominent board member of the Palestinian Investment Fund (PIF), which was created by a transfer of assets previously managed by the Palestinian Authority. Though independent, it benefits from deep political connections. During my time with the Civil Administration, PIF was receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from the American government’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and USAID. When Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, it also took over PIF’s Gaza operations. While not a member of Hamas, Sinokrot was arrested in 1998 by Israel for operating an investment company it believed was involved with Hamas. Three years later the U.S. Treasury designated the same company as a financer of terrorism associated with Hamas. A rumor in 2011 was that Hamas was hoping to name Sinokrot prime minister of a unity government with Fatah.
“You use a pack house in Argaman, right?”
“Yes.”
Argaman is a Jewish settlement about 26 miles north of Jericho. There are two produce-packing houses there, both owned by Jews. The problem quickly became clear: A Palestinian businessman participating in a U.S.-funded project was working with a Jewish company in a Jewish settlement when there was a Palestinian alternative. I doubt Fayyad was actively helping a Hamas affiliate, but he recognized a potential problem for his reputation and the PA’s political agenda. The instructions issued to Sammy were clearly politically motivated, even though they came at the cost of supporting a potential political rival and threatened the existence of a business that provided jobs to dozens of Palestinians.
“You know Sammy, there’s nothing I can do. We have a policy of not interfering in internal Palestinian decision-making. What are you going to do?”
“I do not know. I have told my employees, and asked them and their families to march in front of Fayyad’s office tomorrow.”
“How many people is that?”
“Maybe one thousand. My men have big families.”
“That’s a lot of people.”
“I am very worried.”
The USAID-funded program Sammy was participating in was a good one. As an American taxpayer I really liked the concept. It provided assistance to small- and medium-sized agrobusinesses in the West Bank to help them export their products to Europe and Russia, where profit margins were higher than the Palestinian, Israeli, and Jordanian markets where they normally were sold. The project provided affordable financing and, in partnership with Israel, access to materials and expertise to meet the required product standards of destination markets. Israel then, on its own dime, set up an Israel-West Bank border crossing dedicated to agricultural transport, and helped the participants partner with Israeli companies who could get their product to market via Israeli ports. I had met a number of participants, and all of them seemed pleased with the project. I could understand why Sammy was worried.
A young Palestinian boy directs a water stream to his family crops in the Palestinian village of Battir. Battir’s farmers use an ancient irrigation system that uses man-made terraces dating back to the Roman era in the region.
(Photo: Hadas Parush/Flash90)
A young Palestinian boy directs a water stream to his family crops in the Palestinian village of Battir. Battir’s farmers use an ancient irrigation system that uses man-made terraces dating back to the Roman era in the region.
(Photo: Hadas Parush/Flash90)
“Do you think it will work? Do you think Fayyad will back down?”
“No.”
I had a thought.
“Sammy, what time will your people show up tomorrow?”
“Lunch.”
“Okay, make sure they are there. I have an idea, but it is best you do not know what it is. I make no promises, but I will try to help. Make sure you tell no one we spoke tonight, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good luck.”
I felt for Sammy, and the families his business supported. My experience in Israel and the West Bank showed me something few witness: Israelis and Palestinians have rubbed off a lot more on each other than either is willing to admit. Palestinians have intimate experience with Israeli culture and business, and the innovative entrepreneurial spirit and capitalism that has catapulted Israel into the first-world Organization for Economic and Co-operation and Development club has rubbed off on many Palestinians. Sammy wanted to run a successful business free from crippling government bureaucracy, and was willing to work with Jews if it meant greater profits for himself and higher pay for his workers. I wanted to support him.
I called some journalists I knew in Jerusalem, several from global news agencies and several from local outlets, and told them Sammy’s story as an anonymous source. I also told them when and where the demonstration was taking place. I suggested they cover the story, and emphasized the power of the camera and what it could do for Sammy’s cause.
The story was not a sexy one. People did not die, and the oppression of the Palestinians involved came at the hands of the Palestinian Authority, not Israel. I never did see it on the news and that did not surprise me. But Sammy did not lose his export license. The next time he saw me, he thanked me for the “friends” I had sent. If I had to guess, I would say at least one reporter with a camera showed up and asked a government official to comment. This led to a reversal of policy, and thus a non-story for the media.
Yet behind the specific story of Sammy Khalidi is a more general one, and it is not a non-story at all. It is hugely important, and it is high time it was reported, because there are a thousand Sammy Khalidis in the West Bank whose problems with the corruption and cronyism of the Palestinian Authority are ours as well as theirs.
The cost of PA corruption is monumental. More than anything else, it makes Palestinian political and economic progress all but impossible. The poor quality of governance and the resulting lack of political inclusiveness and economic opportunities in the Palestinian territories are a surefire model for the kind of economic and political repression that typifies underperforming societies. You will not find a single example of a people governed by such a regime that has achieved long-term success. The inevitable result is social stagnation and the kind of discontent that can lead to violence and even war.
In one of my favorite examples of how Palestinian governance is subservient to political power, the PA still pays its Gaza-based employees even though they are unable to perform their duties due to the Hamas takeover. In other words, the PA—using donor funds—is paying people not to work. There is only one reason for this: It allows PA President Mahmoud Abbas to maintain his political base in Gaza.
Perhaps more infuriating, however, is the fact that an enormous amount of PA money—foreign and domestic—goes to line the pockets of the Palestinian political elite. About two years ago, Hasan Khreishah, the deputy speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, spoke out on the issue. “Since the signing of the Oslo Accords,” he said, “we have had 12 Palestinian governments…. Each government [has]… at least 24 ministers. This means we have had 228 ministers, in addition to advisors. All receive high salaries and luxurious vehicles.” He went on to point out that the aforementioned PIF pays its chairman $35,000 per month, which is over 12 times the West Bank’s per capita gross domestic product in 2008—the most recent data available.
This is, unfortunately, the PA’s standard operating procedure. An EU audit of the years 2008-2012 found that around 2 billion Euros of its aid were lost to corruption. It has also been shown that Yasser Arafat and his advisors stole millions of dollars in foreign donations, turning them into billions as they moved the money around the world. According to several reports, this practice has continued—and may have gotten worse—under Abbas. And with the Palestinians’ acceptance into the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, the PA will now have a shield with which to protect itself from any real reform.
A Palestinian farmer harvests wheat in the West Bank village of Abu Falah, north of Ramallah.
(Photo: Issam Rimawi/Flash90)
A Palestinian farmer harvests wheat in the West Bank village of Abu Falah, north of Ramallah.
(Photo: Issam Rimawi/Flash90)
Many supporters of the PA tend to look for ways to explain away these problems. They have composed a popular narrative in which, despite the PA’s corruption—or perhaps regardless of it—the Palestinians’ problems are primarily Israel’s fault. Economic and political development in the Palestinian territories, it is claimed, can only move forward if Israel withdraws from the West Bank, voids its security requirements for border movement, and allows the free flow of people and goods.
I have witnessed something different. I have observed the West Bank economy and labor market from within, and have come to understand that the best opportunities for Palestinians are abroad. Not only do foreign markets offer larger consumer bases and greater profits for exporters, but most importantly they do not suffer from the corruption experienced under the Palestinian Authority that stifles prosperity well beyond any other factor. Even within the West Bank economy, many of the best opportunities come from Israeli and foreign assistance.
Given that the highest profit margins for Palestinian goods are found outside the territories, such assistance is essential. And given that Israel is the Palestinians’ main point of access to foreign markets, its help is equally important. Even though many opportunities for economic development are initiated by aid agencies and NGOs from the West and Asia—such as the project Sammy Khalidi participated in—they not only require Israel’s help, but also benefit from direct Israeli participation that mostly goes unreported. This is partly because Israel’s assistance can be politically unpopular domestically, but it also because, as in Sammy’s case, it does not fit the narrative people are comfortable with.
Sammy needed more than access to affordable financing and Israel’s ports to successfully and profitably export. He needed to produce products that met the higher standards of the export markets he was targeting. And he needed to reduce his costs through more advanced and efficient techniques. To do this, he needed help. Enter Israel.
Israel’s agricultural policy in the West Bank includes active facilitation of foreign-funded development projects. As previously stated, Israel has built, at its own expense, an agriculture-only border crossing to ensure timely transport and help connect Palestinian farmers with Israeli companies that can transport their products to market. But Israel’s support goes beyond this, and in many cases actively contributes to Palestinian economic success.
The agriculture department of the Civil Administration paid for and organized at least six seminars and conferences for Palestinians while I was there. At these events, experts gave lectures and demonstrations on agricultural practices. Each of them took place in Israel and were one to three days in length. Israel bused the participants to the events, paid for food, and—when necessary—overnight accommodations as well. Between 25 and 30 people usually attended.
I was lucky enough to be present at many of these conferences. One took participants to the Eshkol Forest in the Judean Hills, where experts from the Jewish National Fund explained the best methods for building sustainable forest roads, including drainage techniques that aid in substantial water reclamation. Among those present was the director of soil management for the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Agriculture. A three-day conference in Haifa covered the best ways to manage grazing land, which is a particularly important topic for a society of herders unaccustomed to the implications of private property. Private property is a relatively recent development in the Palestinian territories and has complicated grazing patterns that are often centuries old. Grazing lands, improperly managed, quickly lose their nutrients and become useless and result in underfed animals. Four experts from Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture taught the seminars, which were attended by 30 Palestinians.
A Palestinian farmer cuts newly harvested herbs in the West Bank village of Ouja.
(Photo: Meital Cohen/Flash90)
A Palestinian farmer cuts newly harvested herbs in the West Bank village of Ouja.
(Photo: Meital Cohen/Flash90)
My favorite trip was to a facility operated by Tnuva—Israel’s biggest dairy producing conglomerate. I love dairy, especially yogurt, which happens to be my favorite food. So I was ecstatic to find a conference table covered with Tnuva products for us to sample. And I was over the moon when we were all given a large, insulated picnic basket of Tnuva products on our way out. Between these two favorite memories of mine, Tnuva’s head scientist and dairy quality manager gave lectures and took the participants on a guided tour of the entire facility. After leaving, we visited a nearby dairy farm to receive an overview of sustainable practices. This event was not only for farmers, but also public health officials, veterinarians, and those involved in animal policy. Members of the PA’s central veterinary laboratory and a Hebron veterinary service attended, as did the PA’s directors of public and animal health.
Farming practices, the topic of most interest to Sammy, was a common theme. One event focused on product and safety standards. Another included irrigation techniques, at which Israel is particularly adept. The cost of a year’s worth of these events was in the hundreds of thousands of shekels, and it came directly out of Israel’s budget. Their sole aim, moreover, was to improve the performance and competitiveness of the Palestinian agricultural sector. This goal, if met, would come at a cost to the Israeli agricultural sector, which would face stronger competition domestically and internationally. This fact was not lost on many of the Palestinians who prized their spots on these trips.
The Palestinian Authority also recognized the benefits to Palestinians who attended the events, and therefore would sometimes deny a person’s attendance. If someone we expected for an event pulled out or did not show up, we knew they hadn’t paid their taxes or, just as likely, had done something to irk the PA—like fail to pay a bribe or seek a particularly robust business relationship with non-Palestinians.
The best part of these trips for me was that, from time to time, Palestinian attendees would feel safe enough to speak candidly about their lives and their thoughts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I got to know several of them quite well, and they gave me a unique look at a cross-section of Palestinian society.
This was largely due to the unique position I held. I worked for the Israelis, but I was not—and am still not—Israeli. My fellowship was as much about learning as it was about participating, and it was for only a limited period of time. I was open about this with the Palestinians I came into contact with. As they came to know and trust me, they also came to understand that I was going to take my experiences back to the United States. As a result, they wanted to make sure I understood certain things.
Some who shared their “insights” and “reflections” with me were clearly trying to indoctrinate me. A farmer who lived near a settlement contacted us several times to complain that settlers were stealing from his water supply. I took him seriously until I made a surprise visit to his farm where I learned that the PA had coerced him into dismantling his well in order to influence an NGO conducting a research trip. Several very pleasant visits to the Sinokrot pack house had me believing that they could be a valued partner in the export development project Sammy was participating in. Then came Sammy’s phone call, and I realized Sinokrot had been using its political influence to send more business its way.
Other conversations and experiences were more helpful and more honest. Most of them came during agricultural field trips as the day was winding down. Those who opened up to me did not do so to the group. Once in a while, one of the senior advisors to the PA’s Minister of Agriculture attended. On those trips, no one felt like chatting over dessert or a beer. But when the advisor was not part of the trip, I could usually count on the opportunity to discuss things with one or two people. The trips always included private business owners and farmers, but also a substantial number of people from the Palestinian Authority. The middle-managers were usually the most interesting and informative to talk to. And as with Sammy’s story, I will never forget what Izzat Faruq told me.
Izzat worked for the Palestinian Authority and was a middle manager in one of the Agriculture Ministry’s departments. Smart and articulate, Izzat had worked his way up the bureaucracy through hard work. Sadly for him, however, he lacked the political connections to progress any further. He was aware of his station in life and stoic about it. We were on several trips together, and after dinner one night, he spoke openly to me.
“Izzat, why do you come on these trips?” I asked.
“It is a good chance to learn. The Israelis are very good at this work.”
“Do you enjoy coming to Israel?”
“Sometimes yes, but it is not home.”
“Would you like to live in Israel? Do you like the cities? Everything is available here, much more than in your town.”
“That is true, but it is not home. It does not feel like home. My family has lived in the Jordan Valley for a thousand years, that is my home.”
“Will that be your children’s’ home?”
“I hope not.”
Izzat was in his late 30s. He was married and had two sons and a daughter. I knew this because Izzat is one of those fathers who carries pictures of his kids in his wallet, and needs little if any prompting to display them. Clearly a proud father, I wanted to understand what a committed bread winner in the West Bank thought about what is, objectively, the more materially advanced society of Israel.
“I hope Palestine becomes like Israel, but does not become Israel.”
“What do you mean? Does that mean you support the two-state solution? Or do you mean you just want more McDonalds and some Gap stores? Or do you want a democratic government?”
“In Israel children will have a better life than their parents had. I want this for my children. I want them to grow up thinking that they can be more successful than me. But that is not the case, they do not think this, and I do not believe this.”
“Why?”
This is when Izzat paused to look around the dining room. He wanted to make sure there was not anyone around who, if they overheard him, would get him into trouble. A composed man, he took a deep breath before answering.
“Do not misunderstand me, Israel is at great fault. But Israel is not why my people have failed to be a nation. You know my job, you know what I do, and you know the people I work for. Their interests are not the same as mine.”
“They do not want what is best for your children?”
“No, they want what is best for their children. A father wants what is best for his kids.”
I did not need Izzat to finish the thought; I knew what he was implying. His bosses wanted what is best for their children, which is not the same as what is best for his children. His bosses are part of the elite class that derives its power and wealth from corruption. Izzat earned what little was left over through hard work and subservience to the dysfunctional system, and with his small salary had to support his family and likely some extended family as well, if not also his aging parents.
“If I could give you and your family Israeli citizenship, would you take it?”
“I do not know. I have friends in Israel, Palestinians and Jews, and I could maybe make more money in Israel. My kids might have a better life. It is a nice country, but it is not home.”
“Would a successful two-station solution make your life better? Would it help your kids have a better life than you have had?”
“I do not think about that, it is pointless. I want a better life for me, and for my family. I want economic opportunity. Would a two-state solution help that? If so, then yes, I want it. If not, then it is not the most important thing.”
Izzat’s comments haunted me on my way home the next day. I genuinely felt bad for him, and I still do. He is completely shut out of the political process and stuck in a position below his talents through no fault of his own. In my experience, Izzat’s story is as powerful as it is common. That is to say, very powerful and very common.
A few months earlier, I and those in my fellowship program had the opportunity to visit Kfar Vradim, an Israeli town nearly equidistant between Nahariya and Tzfat, and meet with its mayor, Sivan Yehieli. Yehieli is a charismatic and outspoken man. Our discussion with him was wide-ranging. He talked about his particular brand of Zionism, the existential importance of Israelis settling the north and south of the country, efforts he and other mayors were making to improve relations with Arab towns in the north, and his personal reflections on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During the discussion I had scribbled down some comments Yehieli had made, and one had come to strongly resonate with me as I spent more time in The West Bank:
“The Palestinians have the responsibility for themselves, but they have not taken that responsibility. They want a judiciary, where are their judges? They want schools, where are their teachers?”
A Palestinian farmer in a mentha field in the West Bank village of Ouja.
(Photo: Meital Cohen/Flash90)
A Palestinian farmer in a mentha field in the West Bank village of Ouja.
(Photo: Meital Cohen/Flash90)
What Izzat told me was that Yehieli oversimplified the situation. If the Palestinians were led by Izzat and Sammy and those who, like them, wanted to build a better society, things would be dramatically better. If Palestinian leaders reflected the common desire for an independent judiciary capable of enforcing the rule of law, there would be capable judges protecting businesses from government overreach. If Palestinian leaders recognized that schools capable of teaching all Palestinian children the skills and knowledge they need to achieve a better life than their parents are critical to the future of the Palestinian people, there would be more teachers interested in and capable of achieving these goals.
Unfortunately, the reality is just as Izzat implied. The elite class of politicians and businessmen that make up the Palestinian Authority have different interests and different responsibilities than the rest of Palestinian society. Put another way, the average Palestinian is not often the constituency the Palestinian Authority is serving. The PA Ministry of Agriculture did not have Sammy or his employees’ best interests in mind, and was clearly prioritizing its own needs; it was not responsible to the people it, as a government, has a duty to serve. And Izzat’s bosses in the same ministry did not care about the future of Izzat’s children, only the future of their own sons and daughters. Unfortunately for Sammy, Izzat, and a sizeable majority of Palestinians, the interests of the few in power are dramatically different than theirs.
Through the PA, a small group of elites has concentrated power and wealth, estranging the Palestinian people from its government and insulating the government from the people. Sadly, foreign attempts to aid the Palestinians are subject to the same regime, with devastating consequences. The attempt to use foreign aid to the PA as both a carrot and a stick has not closed the gap between the Palestinian people and their government. Rather, it has helped widen it.
American and European support for the Palestinian Authority now totals hundreds of billions of dollars—possibly trillions if non-governmental activities are included. With that money, we have helped build an elite-run system that bludgeons the entrepreneurial Sammys and marginalizes the pragmatic Izzats. Not a lot of Westerners get to see this dynamic from the inside, and that is a shame.
Much of the foreign support for the Palestinians is given with the best of intentions. This makes those who question it susceptible to all manner of criticism. That this questioning is often warranted, however, escapes many supporters and financiers of the Palestinian Authority, because it contradicts the comfortable mainstream narrative that reinforces their motivation. Meanwhile, the PA is as corrupt as ever, and uses our foreign aid to literally sell its people short.
The gap between the Palestinian people and their leadership is nothing less than catastrophic, and it will not be closed unless donors change the way they support the Palestinian Authority. A good first step would be to tie aid to greater PA transparency and responsibility to the Palestinian people. Donors should also insist on fiscal and legal reforms, as well as the establishment of robust and independent institutions—judiciary and education included. These are all necessary ingredients for economic growth and nation-building. Unfortunately, so long as we and other donors refuse to take these steps, we will remain part of the problem, not part of the solution.
5a)Official PA daily:
Israel doesn't care about kidnapped teens,
is exploiting kidnapping for self-interest
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
An op-ed in the official PA daily accuses Israel of not caring about the three kidnapped teenagers and of exploiting the kidnapping as an excuse for military actions. Since the kidnapping, the Israeli army, police and intelligence have undertaken a massive house-to-house search in the Hebron region, where they suspect the three youths may be held. The op-ed, written by the former editor of the official PA daily, refers to the extensive searches and arrests of Hamas leaders by the Israeli military as Israel's "war carnival." The op-ed even claims that if the youths were released Israel would be "in a panic."
The following is an excerpt from the op-ed by the former editor, Hafez Al-Barghouti:
"The Israeli right doesn't care about the lives of the kidnapped [teens]; all it cares about is the kidnapping itself, in order to market and exploit it. It [the Israeli right] is determined at all costs to resolve the problem using military means in order to prove its new policy: no freeing of prisoners, nonegotiations with the PA and no halting of settlement [construction]. If the kidnappers of their own free will were to release the settlers (i.e., the three kidnapped teens) now, the Israeli right would panic, and the war carnival it is now staging would be ruined; for it is interested in escalation and entanglement, not in resolving the crisis."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 16, 2014]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment