There is already a shortage in some thirty products including syringes and dialysis drugs.
Some essential products for surgical procedures will be missing soon.
So doctors are cancelling all non emergency procedures.
Since the beginning of March, the hospital, like all public institutions is functioning with its thin reserve, his 346 employees, like the 150000 functionaries of the PA have not been paid. The money collected from taxes on imported goods for the PA by Israel have been severed as well as the aid from the US and the EU. The fact that Hamas is on the list of terrorist organisations forbids NGOs who depend on the US and the EU to do any dealings with Hamas and NGOs have been respecting the interdiction so far.
Today, tuesday May 9th, the quartet (France, USA, GB, Russia) will be meeting at the UN to discuss the aid to the PA and its counterpart; the Israeli demand to Hamas,adopted by the US and the EU, to recognize Israel. Meanwhile, some 85 basic drugs will be missing from the central pharmacy in Ramallah. The situation is so bad that even if the quartet decided to send the money today, the crisis will be there anyway because it is already too late. The situation is made worse by the absence of some health care workers, unable to pay for their transportations since they have not been receiving their wages. Before Hamas took power the PA was running on a huge deficit. And now the banks won't even lend money to the PA fearing reprisals from the US which is making sure that no money is ariving to the PA in a form or another.
The same conditions prevail in Education and Palestinians are growing angry...not against Hamas but against Israel and the US.
What did the Palestinians do for that ? They exerted their democratic right by electing Hamas.
The US has been 'encouraging democracy' in the middle east but at no time did it say that democracy means voting the way the US wanted you to vote. Next time, I am sure people in Palestine will understand what democracy really means. If they don't understand they will have to pay with their lives !
UPDATE: 'Punishing innocent Palestinians is a crime' (Jimmy Carter in the IHT) Thanks to Cosmic Duck
Since March 29th 2006
2 comments:
Sophia.
This is a very good post. On May 7 former US president Jimmy Carter wrote in International Herald Tribune:
"Innocent Palestinian people are being treated like animals, with the presumption that they are guilty of some crime. Because they voted for candidates who are members of Hamas, the United States government has become the driving force behind an apparently effective scheme of depriving the general public of income, access to the outside world and the necessities of life.
Overwhelmingly, these are school teachers, nurses, social workers, police officers, farm families, shopkeepers, and their employees and families who are just hoping for a better life. Public opinion polls conducted after the January parliamentary election show that 80 percent of Palestinians still want a peace agreement with Israel based on the international road map premises".
So this is just humanitarian good sense. Why deprive a whole people of decent treatment. What have they done to deserve this? It is high time to start efficient support movement for the Palestinians around the world.
Sanctions never hit the leadership and always hit the common people. We've seen this also in Iraq.
What's more, it's unbelievable that the "experts on democracy" don't understand that the vote for Hamas was essentially a vote for change, not for terrorism...
Perhaps the rather sorry state of so many Western democracies explains a thing or two...
If in Britain sooner or later Zanu Labor get kicked out in favour of "New caring Conservatism", would that mean the people have collectively veered to the right? No, it'll be a protest vote.
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