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For all their talk of “spreading democracy,” the
U.S. imperialists,
and their Zionist allies in Israel, have shown that they have
no intention of honoring the will of the oppressed Palestinian people, who overwhelming chose members of Hamas to represent
them in the January elections. According to an article in the New York Times, “The intention [of the U.S. and
Israel] is to starve the Palestinian Authority of money and international connections to the point where, some months from
now, its president, Mahmoud Abbas, is compelled to call a new election.”
“If
a Hamas government is unable to pay workers, import goods, transfer money and receive significant amounts of outside aid,
Mr. Abbas, the president, would have the authority to dissolve parliament and call new elections, the officials say, even
though that power is not explicit in the Palestinian basic law,” the article continued.
The U.S. plans to
cut off all aid to Palestine, and is pressuring other countries in Europe and the Middle East to do the
same. The Palestinian Authority’s total budget is around $1.9 billion. As a direct result of Israel’s invasion
and continued occupation of Palestine, about $1 billion of that comes directly from international
aid. “The hope is that Palestinians will be so unhappy with life under Hamas that they will return to office a reformed
and chastened Fatah movement (the corrupt political faction that lost its majority in the January parliamentary election).”
The U.S. adopted a similar strategy to destabilize the Nicaraguan
government after the Sandinista revolution in 1979.
Israel has already
cut off transfers of $50 million a month in Palestinian taxes and customs it collects. At the same time, the U.S. asked the
Palestinian Authority to return $50 million it gave last year to help fund badly needed infrastructure projects after Israel’s withdrawal
from Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has also suspended the reconstruction
of Gaza’s airport, which was destroyed by Israel in 2002,
and has even gone as far as considering to cut off water and electricity to the Occupied Territories.
Iran has offered
to fund the Palestinian Authority if the imperialists cut off aid; but Israel has already
promised to block any funds from Tehran.
In an attempt to justify their pending embargos on Palestine, neither
Israel or the U.S. has missed
an opportunity to remind the world that Hamas is regarded as a terrorist organization by several Western governments. Of course,
the real motivation of the embargo is to smash any and all resistance to Israel’s illegal
occupation of Palestine, so that it’s plundering can continue. While the two countries have been busy denouncing Hamas as a band of terrorists, the terrorists in the
U.S. and Israeli armies continue to kill scores of innocent
people. Hundreds of thousands have been murdered in Iraq and Afghanistan since they
were invaded by the U.S., and Israel has killed
over 3,600 Palestinians since the year 2000. And, as if the threat of a total
embargo on Palestine wasn’t enough, there is also the distinct possibility
of another Israeli military offensive in the Occupied Territories. The Israeli
government is considering classifying the Palestinian Authority as an “enemy state,” which would pave the way
for such actions, and if they’re successful, the forceful overthrow of Palestine’s democratically
elected government.
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