Palis Leary about Israeli Humanitarian Gestures [Jews give welfare; Arabs give homocide bombs]

CNSNews.com | July 29, 2002 | Julie Stahl

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Palestinians Leery About Israeli Humanitarian Gestures By Julie Stahl CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief July 29, 2002

Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Israel planned to release millions of dollars in tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority and continue easing restrictions on Palestinians on Monday, but some Palestinians were leery about Israel's gestures, calling them a public relations ploy designed to please the international community.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Sunday named Foreign Minister Shimon Peres as the minister responsible for coordinating all assistance to the Palestinian civilian population in PA areas.

Sharon instructed the Israeli army, which has been deployed throughout the PA areas for more than a month, to try to make daily life less complicated for civilians not involved in terrorism.

That effort would include steps to limit curfew hours, removing some roadblocks, making it easier for Palestinian businessmen and merchants to enter Israel, assisting the movement of humanitarian aid organizations, expanding the fishing zone off the Gaza Strip and permitting some 12,000 Palestinians to work in Israel, according to a statement from the prime minister's office. (Permission for 7,000 Palestinian workers to enter Israel was already given; this represents an additional 5,000 permits.)

Ten percent - some 200 million shekels ($42 million) - of tax revenues withheld from the PA was to be transferred to the new PA Finance Minister Salam Fayad in three separate payments beginning on Monday.

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, who runs a humanitarian aid group in Ramallah, said he did not believe that the transfer of funds would help the Palestinians at all.

Physical damage to PA structures over the last two years has reached $800 million, the loss to the economy is about $3 billion, and 75 percent of the population is living under the poverty level, Barghouti said.

Unemployment in the Gaza Strip is running at 65 percent, while in the West Bank it is nearly 50 percent.

"This money will go to pay salaries of those already employed," Barghouti said. "I think the gestures have another function - a public relations function."

But Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Amira Oron insisted that Israel is making a sincere move designed to help the Palestinians, and taking a big security risk in doing so.

"It's a very big CBM [confidence building measure]," said Oron. "We don't want them to starve."

The money that Israel is transferring is supposed to go to the welfare of the Palestinian people and it will be entrusted into the hands of Fayad, Oron said. Israel believes he has good intentions, she added.

"We're taking major security risks [in easing restrictions on movement]," Oron said. But Israel wants the Palestinian economy to start to move, she said.

Israeli troops have kept seven out of eight Palestinian cities under strict curfew for more than a month, following two terror attacks on Israeli civilians. The curfew has been lifted for brief periods every few days in order to let Palestinians stock up on supplies.

The curfew was lifted for one day, on Monday, in Hebron, Kalkilya and Tulkarem.

Early this morning, the Israeli army arrested four wanted Palestinians in the West Bank following the arrest of two of the most senior Hamas terrorists in the Ramallah area, an army spokesman said in a statement.

According to radio reports, two of those arrested were planning to carry out suicide bomb attacks.

Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer was quoted on Monday as saying that the level of tension and violence among the Palestinians has reached a "boiling point." Ben-Eliezer said that he was taking the initiative to meet with Palestinian leaders this week to try to calm the situation.

Hamas, which vowed revenge attacks for the targeted killing of a top militant last week, denied that it was holding talks with the PA about quelling violence.

Meanwhile, the investigation was continuing on Monday into the circumstances surrounding the reported killing of a 14-year-old Palestinian girl, Neveen Jamjoum, and the wounding of several Palestinians in Hebron on Sunday.

Jewish settlers in the divided city went on a rampage following the funeral of Sergeant Elazar Leibovitch, 21, who was killed in a terrorist attack on Friday.

Fifteen Israeli policemen were wounded and several police vehicles damaged as the officers clashed with residents of the city, police spokesman Rafi Yaffe said. Four Israelis were arrested.

Yaffe said that the police had requested help from the PA security forces in the city to find out what had happened on Monday.

Palestinians said that some of the 10,000 mourners at the funeral started to throw stones at the Palestinian onlookers. When they threw stones in return, the settlers began firing at them, they said.

But Jewish residents of the community said the Palestinians threw slabs of stone and metal bars at the funeral procession and some of the residents fired in the air to disperse them.

Leibovitch was one of four Israelis killed in two separate terrorist ambushes on Friday. Three members of the same family were killed apparently by the same terrorists who lay in wait as they traveled along the highway near Hebron.

Ya'acov Dickstein, 45, his wife Hannah, 42, and their nine-year-old son, Shuv-el were killed and five of the couple's other children wounded in the attack. The couple left behind nine orphans aged two to 20.