U.N. WORLD BANK DECRY DAMAGE IN PALESTINIAN AREAS.
The World Bank and the United Nations yesterday decried Israel's economic and military attacks on Palestinian-controlled towns and cities, saying the assaults have damaged water systems, roads and schools built with donor money, reports the Washington Times (A13).
"We are very disturbed by the life-threatening conditions under which the Palestinian civilian population is currently living, as well as the continuous deconstruction of the Palestinian economy over the past 18 months," U.N. Special Coordinator Terje Roed-Larsen and Nigel Roberts, the head of the World Bank programs in Gaza and the West Bank, said in a joint statement to reporters.
"The damage to livelihoods, infrastructure and organizational capacity runs counter to any serious pursuit of peace and security," they said.
In the last decade, international donors have given $4.3 billion to create a civilian infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Millions more have been invested through non-U.N.-related organizations, such as religious charities and nongovernmental organizations.
"The money has mainly gone towards building viable institutions, and for the infrastructure of peace - to roads, water systems, electricity networks, schools and hospitals - assets that are now being damaged or destroyed," said the World Bank's Mr. Roberts. The destruction of these assets "is a matter of tremendous concern to the international community," he said.
Both Roberts and Larsen said it was impossible to assess how much damage had been done in the last week of heavy fighting, or how much it would cost to rebuild. But they warned that the Palestinian economy and authority had disintegrated after a year and a half of enforced isolation by Israel.
Reuters adds that in a joint statement, Roberts of the World Bank and Larsen of the UN said: "We urge the Government of Israel to ensure that full respect is given to humanitarian principles and that relief workers...are given unimpeded freedom of mobility." They also asked donors to boost financing to agencies and non governmental organizations in the area and suggested the Arab League turn a recent pledge for financing for the Palestinian Authority into a regular flow of funds.
"The situation will be even more severe, if the actions we are witnessing... are sustained," the statement said. "If this occurs we will witness a steep slide into more widespread poverty and hopelessness. This is not an atmosphere in which any of us can call for nonviolence and reconciliation and expect to have much of an audience." The two organizations urged a review of the damage and a quick-disbursing fund to be set up to deal with repairs.
The Financial Times adds (p. 3) that Roberts warned that if Israel dismantled Yassir Arafat's Palestinian Authority, the world donor community - due to provide $1.5 billion this year - would lose the main conduit of aid to the Palestinian people.
"We are impressed by the performance of the Palestinian Authority in delivering services under extremely difficult circumstances," he said. "If they are incapacitated, eliminated or delegitimized, the donor community will lose its channel to the Palestinians." He said the donor community's nine-year-old program in the territories was intended to build up the institutions of an emerging state - "assets now being needlessly damaged or destroyed".
International aid officials and diplomats protested on Thursday that they were being barred from entering the West Bank by the Israeli authorities, who have declared the invaded cities closed military zones. "That is illegitimate and a violation of existing agreements," said Terje Larsen, the UN Middle East special envoy. Demanding unhindered access to the West Bank for food and medical convoys, Larsen urged the Israeli government to respect international law in the midst of a growing humanitarian crisis in which the civilian population was trapped under curfew.
AFP notes Roberts and Larsen said that after an 18-month recession, the proportion of the Palestinian population living on less than two dollars a day had climbed to half of those living in the West Bank and Gaza. "The most important cause of economic decline is the policy of closure," the two officials said. Dow Jones, FT Deutschland (Germany), Handelsblatt (Germany) and Bergens Tidende (Norway) also report on the joint statement.
Meanwhile, the Independent (UK) says that far more instructive than the Bush speech [Thursday] was the measured, fair way in which Larsen and Roberts tried to describe the tragedy. In a short press conference they appealed to both sides to end violence and respect international law and cited Israel as well as the Palestinians for breaking it.
In an interview with BBC Online, Nigel Roberts of the World Bank said he was concerned about the potential for psychological damage. "Political concerns tend to dominate. Very little thought is given to the severe economic implications and the impact on reconciliation. There is fertile ground for rage, hatred and political violence - and none of that is conducive to the business of running an economy."
In related news, Vårt Land (Norway) and TV2 (Norway) also report on a recent World Bank study that says mainly as a result of the heavy restrictions on the movement of labor and goods in the West Bank and Gaza (the 'closures'), the Palestinian economy is in severe recession. Unemployment has tripled, to almost one -third of the workforce. Real incomes have fallen by almost 30 percent, and are now lower than they were in the late 1980s. The proportion of the poor (those consuming less than US$2 per day) has doubled, to almost a half of the population of the West Bank and Gaza. Tremendous damage has also been done to the international donor effort to help bring peace to the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.