U.S. offers $900 million to Palestinians
A couple of days ago, I read the headline: Arab Countries Have Not Delivered Pledged $1B to Rebuild Gaza, and was dismayed at the explanation:
A senior Arab League official says Arab countries have not delivered any of the more than $1 billion they pledged to rebuild Gaza after Israel’s devastating offensive. The official says the money pledged in mid-January has been held up because of disagreements between rival Palestinian groups Fatah and Hamas about who should receive donations.
Here is today’s headline: U.S. offers $900 million to Palestinians. According to the article:
“Only by acting now can we turn this crisis into an opportunity that moves us closer to our shared goals,” Clinton said at a Gaza donors conference hosted by Egypt in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh.
“By providing humanitarian assistance to Gaza, we also aim to foster conditions in which a Palestinian state can be fully realized.”
She said the U.S. aid package — which must be approved by Congress — has been “designed in coordination with the Palestinian Authority” to make sure the money “does not end up in the wrong hands.”
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is difficult to explain, and divisive to discuss, but one thing is clear – playing politics and delaying diplomacy does not help the victims on both sides of the conflict.
About The Author
Julio Bracero
Julio Bracero, MD, is a pediatrics resident at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and is currently the editor-in-chief of Global Pulse.
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Anyone interested in the situation in the OPT should check out the Lancet Special Series issue at http://www.thelancet.com/series/health-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory.
The last article, “The health care system: an assessment and reform agenda” by A. Mataria et al., is especially interesting in its analysis of the interplay of military occupation, direct violence, internal corruption, and “inappropriate priorities repeatedly set to satisfy the preferences of foreign donors” through the last several decades in the OPT. As Julio writes above, the situation of the OPT is “difficult to explain and divisive to discuss” — and desperately needs to be informed by sober research and a health-rights perspective.