Perpetuating Dependence

"Canada looks forward to a bright future for all Palestinians, one in which security and prosperity are enjoyed in a viable and democratic Palestinian state. The support we are providing today will advance those goals by furthering the peace process, generating jobs and economic growth through private sector partnerships, and helping to further advance security and justice sector reforms."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper Ramallah statement

This photo from the PMO shows Stephen Harper with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas at a joint press conference.  Jason Ransom/PMO

 

Canada is but one of many Western countries viewing it as a responsibility to aid those living in unfortunate parts of the world, in backwardness and poverty. There are many places in the world where help is urgently needed and it behooves the wealthy countries of the world to do what they can to give charitable aid as a global responsibility. As for the Palestinians, they have languished for generations unwilling to help themselves, unwholesomely dedicated to their vision of themselves as pitiful refugees, requiring assistance.

The United Nations, the European Union, the United States and countries like Canada have generously parted with treasury urgently required elsewhere, even at home to solve their own vexatious problems with social issues that afflict all countries, no matter how economically and technically advanced, let alone those who genuinely require a helping hand. Pity and guilt have prodded those who respond to the outstretched Palestinian Authority hand to continue the farce of huddling masses with no option but to beg.

The options of pride in self, of achieving self-sufficiency have all been drowned in a sea of self-pity, resentment, anger, hatred and a wish for revenge -- all encapsulated in a ferocious demand that the past be reversed. History is never kind to such demands, the present must be lived with an eye to the future, and if reason is not employed then the passion of self-destruction emerges. The Palestinians can only achieve what they demand at the destruction of another nation in their urgency to return to the past.

People who live with unwarranted and unhealthy illusions are said to be delusional. In this particular instance, it is an entire Arab 'nation' that exists in a fervid, unrealistic vision of themselves as entitled and others as interlopers to be dislodged, a mass psychosis that has caused irreversible damage to countless lives of Palestinians wasting their aspirational lives, and the deaths of far too many people on both sides of the debate between Jews and Arabs.

Canada alone has provided the Palestinians with almost a billion dollars of assistance over the years; in the past several $300-million, $30-million earlier in the past year, and an additional $66-million during this visit by Canada's Prime Minister to the Middle East. That Canada has taken an unmistakable stand in favour of the Israeli position, while still maintaining a charitable hope on behalf of the Palestinians that peace will prevail and they will achieve a state of their own, has not escaped the attention of the majority of Middle East countries.

"Our position is not an Israeli position or a Palestinian position. It is a Canadian position of principle supported by the overwhelming majority of Canadians. While Canada has its views, a settlement ultimately has to be decided through negotiations between the two parties", emphasized Prime Minister Harper. "Any attempt to have me, while present in the Middle East, single out the state of Israel for criticism, I will not do."

And while PA President Mahmoud Abbas made allusion to the situation whereby Canada was one of seven countries to withhold a vote on accepting the Palestinians into the United Nations as a full, but non-voting member in its attempt to bypass the peace process, he also acknowledged that Canada is free as any sovereign nation is, to pursue its own conscience. One that he hoped might be altered in favour of the Palestinian 'cause' at some future date.

Money, in the meanwhile, has a surprisingly placatory effect, piercing the shield of resentment and warming the outstretched hand eager to receive it from any source, to enable them to further the agenda they most value. In this instance, it seems, not necessarily putting in place the valuable infrastructure details of a future state, but the primary focus on intractable plans to continue agitating for just desserts; theirs and their neighbour's. 

"We do not seek death but we welcome martyrdom if it happens", said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Behind that oblique statement of resignation is the steely will to bend Israeli resolve and hopes for peace to the Palestinian demands in the full knowledge that their acceptance would sound the death knell for Israel. To which end, the PA under Mahmoud Abbas continues to incite to martyrdom in defence of Palestinian defiance of the presence of the Jewish state.

"Resistance" is the double-entendred language of Palestinian diplomacy.