STATEMENT OF REP. GARY L. ACKERMAN

CHAIRMAN

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE MIDDLE EAST AND SOUTH ASIA

U.S. ASSISTANCE TO THE PALESTINIANS

MAY 23, 2007

Where do U.S. interests lie in the current chaos afflicting the Palestinians? It’s a difficult question. Each answer comes with political dilemmas and moral hazards. Although we are not responsible for the choices made by others, there is no avoiding the fact that a good deal of responsibility for the status quo lies at our feet.

            The emergence of a new Palestinian leadership committed to peace in January 2005 provoked little response from the United States beyond rhetoric alone. We did not perceive the fragility and significance of the moment, and within a year, it was lost. By January 2006 the inability of the Palestinian Authority to deliver political goods from Israel, to tackle internal corruption, or to produce economic recovery or personal security left Palestinians angry and ready to make changes. And thanks to the Bush Administration, which chose to ignore both good sense and the specific terms of the Oslo agreements, when Palestinians went to the polls, Hamas was on the ballot, providing a ready outlet for the frustrations of the Palestinian people.

            When the Palestinian people chose to empower Hamas, they implicitly, and perhaps unknowingly, sent a number of messages to the rest of the world: messages about the acceptability of terrorists and terrorism, about the durability of past commitments, and about their relationship with the world. Most Palestinians had more narrow objectives in their votes, but elections have consequences no less for Palestinians than for ourselves in the United States. A legitimate election doesn’t absolve candidates of their crimes, and there is more to democracy than a fair counting of ballots. Elected terrorists are still terrorists.

            The consequences of the Palestinian elections have been dire. Israel stopped transferring tax revenues and the movement of goods in and out of Palestinians areas has slowed to a stagnant crawl. The United States acted to prevent bank transfers to the Hamas-led PA, and Congress has required that U.S. assistance be given only through non-governmental organizations, or to the Office of President Mahmoud Abbas. To provide humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people, together with our Quartet partners, we have established a Temporary International Mechanism to deliver aid. The TIM, initially established in June 2006, allowed approximately $900 million in emergency assistance to be spent in the West Bank and Gaza by the end of last year. By comparison, in 2005, total PA revenue from taxes, transferred customs duties and foreign aid amounted to $1.3 billion, with another $700 million coming from commercial loans and proceeds from the Palestine Investment Fund.

            So today, instead of an economy, the Palestinians have a TIM cup. Instead of a unity government, they have warlords and clan leaders. They’ve replaced negotiations with Israel with fighting amongst themselves. Palestinians who once rightfully boasted of their high-levels of education and cultural sophistication, are now commonly compared to the hapless residents of Afghanistan and Somalia. Instead of being schooled in co-existence and peace, Palestinian children now get instruction in genocide and the joy of suicide-bombing from Mickey Mouse’s evil cousin, “Farfur,” the Hamas-T.V. Terror Mouse--another generation lost.

            For the ordinary Palestinian, nothing is better and almost everything is worse. Yet who do they blame? The United States. Bush. Olmert. Abu Mazen. The PA. The Arabs. The Quartet. The weather. The N.Y. Yankees. Anyone and everyone except Hamas.

            And how is Hamas responding to this crisis? The same way they always do. Hamas may have emerged as a political actor but they still have only one strategy: “Don’t just stand there! Kill some Jews!” Not surprisingly, scarcely a day has gone by during the so-called “cease-fire” when the 40,000 Israelis living in Sderot have not had to flee Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza. Instead of baiting the IDF to invade, Hamas has only cleared the way for the IDF to resume targeted killings–richly deserved, probably necessary, but ultimately sterile.

            Into this maelstrom of chaos and bloodletting the Bush Administration has proposed a set of benchmarks to facilitate greater Palestinian freedom of movement. The plan is heavy on administrative details and light on political reality. Variously described as "informal", "flexible", and "iterative", the benchmarks overwhelmingly focus on specific and often risky action items for Israel, and on fuzzy, notional aspirations for the forces under the control of President Abbas. Yet again, I’m afraid we have slaughtered more trees for paper that will fill the graveyard of still-born American security plans.

            To be clear, I am not opposed to benchmarks, or security plans, and I certainly agree that both Israelis and Palestinians have to take responsibility for improving their shared misfortune. Reciprocity is the only way out of this mire. If the past year has shown nothing else, it has demonstrated clearly the perils of unilateralism. Given the level of the PA’s disfunctionality, unilateralism was an experiment worth trying. But the results are now clear, and they are overwhelmingly negative.

Politically, diplomatically, and militarily, unilateralism has strengthened radicals, weakened moderates, undercut Israeli deterrence, and contributed little to Israeli security. Getting out of Gaza was worth doing, but in the long term, I see little prospect for Israel to achieve durable improvements in security without the cooperation of an effective Palestinian partner, and here we come to the heart of the matter.

            There is no such effective Palestinian partner. By virtue of the decisions and missed chances of the past years–American, Israeli, Arab and Palestinian–the Palestinian Authority is in danger of complete collapse. It may be just a shell today, but even that shell is now in danger of disintegration. It is this fact more than any other that gives an air of unreality to the so-called "access and movement benchmarks."

In their totality, whether they are "informal", "flexible", or "iterative", they are built on a flawed premise, they confuse symptoms with causes. The lack of access and movement is a problem, but it’s not the problem. The problem is a Palestinian Authority without a singular and exclusive authority. The problem is a political void that is being relentlessly expanded and filled by Hamas.

            Unless and until we can propose a plan that will address the problem, I fear our waste-paper graveyard is going to keep pace with real ones.

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