Reluctant reprieve

The Middle East Quartet has agreed to ease the humanitarian crisis in the occupied territories, though without addressing the context that caused it, writes Graham Usher

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After a day of gruelling closed-door diplomacy, on Tuesday the US, EU, UN and Russia agreed finally to act to alleviate the human and economic crises in the Palestinian Authority caused by Israel and their own punitive policies. "The Quartet expressed its willingness to endorse a temporary international mechanism that is limited in scope and duration, and operate with full transparency and accountability," said UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The mechanism will try to tackle the "basic human needs of the Palestinians", said one UN official.

The desire to be seen to be doing something for the cash-starved Palestinians was strong within the Quartet as well as the World Bank and the Egyptian, Jordan and Saudi foreign ministers, all of whom attended the meeting in New York. But clearly it was stronger in some members than in others. Condoleezza Rice, for example, was grim when she addressed the press.

"The thrust of this [new mechanism] is that the international community is still trying to respond to the needs of the Palestinian people," she said. But the ultimate solution to the crises lay with a "Palestinian government that would accept its international commitments and responsibility for governing".

It is easy to understand the secretary of state's exasperation. From the moment of Hamas's election in January the American policy towards it has been "pressure and isolation", in the words of David Welch, her assistant secretary of state. The aim, ostensibly, was to force Hamas to accept Israel and the Quartet's terms for international acceptance -- recognition of the Jewish state, adherence to previous PLO-Israel agreements and the renunciation of violence. In practice, "pressure and isolation" were concealed codes for regime change.

And change appeared to be coming. Last Saturday -- in a small but significant development -- PA teachers struck in protest at not being paid for two months. On Monday, in Gaza, the worst violence erupted between Fatah and Hamas since the elections, as the "government's" militia fought street battles with the "opposition's" security forces, leaving three Palestinians dead.

Even PA president Mahmoud Abbas -- whom many in the State Department now see as a wholly inadequate "counterweight" to Hamas -- started to talk tough. "If Hamas's behaviour continues in its present form" (he reportedly told foreign diplomats last week), "I will act against them -- since the international community's conditions are also mine."

These various processes were supposedly producing an American-favoured scenario in which "the Hamas government will collapse and (Abbas's) Fatah (movement) will regain control," said one Western diplomat. The Quartet's decision has put a stop on that denouement -- at least for now. So has the reality that made it necessary.

In engineering Hamas's demise -- whether by terminating their own aid or punishing other donors who try to replace it -- Israel and the Quartet have condemned the Palestinians to penury and other forms of collective punishment, such as inadequate healthcare.

On Tuesday Quartet members heard reports from the World Bank that earlier projections of 67 per cent poverty rate and 40 per cent unemployment rates in the occupied territories were now an "underestimation". On the contrary, "if the PA remains unpaid or minimally paid for several months... the ensuing institutional damage may be irreversible and could lead to a situation in which the West Bank and Gaza become ungovernable".

Similarly the Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi foreign ministers said the political outcome of the Palestinian institutional collapse would not be new elections but "civil war", with the Fatah and Hamas skirmishes in Gaza literally the opening shots.

Finally the naïve belief that the PA Health Ministry could be replaced by the World Health Organisation and other NGOs was brutally exposed. In fact the Palestinian Health Ministry is responsible for 64 per cent of all health services in the occupied territories and that all its non-salary expenditures (for medicine and medical equipment, etc.) are dependent on foreign donations, Quartet members were told. As they arrived in New York the US press was airing its first reports of entirely avoidable Palestinian deaths in Ramallah and Gaza hospitals. Without money for medicines and machines hundreds more will follow.

So Rice bowed to the inevitable and some form of international relief will be granted the Palestinians. But the form is still unclear.

Diplomats say the "international mechanism" will meet basic Palestinian needs -- especially in the health and education fields -- while still somehow bypassing the PA's elected government, including its health and education ministers. Nor is it clear if the "mechanism" will be used to pay all, some or none of the PA's 165,000 employees.

If they remain unpaid, the Quartet may be creating a "more dangerous situation", says PA cabinet spokesman Ghazi Hamad. "In two weeks we will have no money at all. It is not going to be enough to fund just the health or education sectors. The Quartet must talk to us. We were elected by the Palestinian people".