Barghouti: Salary problem not due to EU or US embargo, but to Israel’s theft of 600 million
Institute for Middle East Understanding
This article was originally published by the Palestine News Network Aug 24, 2006
Qalqilia’s commerce and industry exhibit is in “clear defiance of the racist Wall that surrounds it,” says Dr. Moustafa Barghouti. “The Wall is a nightmare for the people of the city, turning them into prisoners of a narrow area not exceeding four square kilometers.”
The Palestinian Legislative Council member and head of the Palestinian National Initiative visited the Qalqilia Municipality’s trade fair that includes work from Palestine and Lebanon and was organized in cooperation with the Chamber of Commerce.
PNN sat down with Dr. Barghouti to discuss forming a unity government and the current spate of Israeli arrests of elected Palestinian officials. The attorney said the PLC must create a safety net to care for the people and combat the arrests. He pointed out that the local Qalqilia government has not come to a standstill, in spite of Israel arresting its Mayor and Deputy Mayor.
As far as the lack of salaries is concerned, Dr. Barghouti said, “The salary problem is not with European countries sending assistance to the Palestinian people, but rather Israel’s theft and detention of Palestinian money in the amount of nearly 600 million dollars. This amount is sufficient to meet the needs of employee salaries without any European or American aid. The media has ignored this issue and does not adequately cover the role the occupation plays in this issue, having contrived it.”
He praised the municipality’s role in organizing the exhibition in the current circumstances, placing great value on the role of the municipal council to choose the time, place and name, which also reflects the close relationship between the wounds of Palestine and those of Lebanon.
He told PNN that the budget should be approved at the beginning of September in order to give the government enough time to prepare. Dr. Barghouti also said that any government in the world has three basic tasks; providing security, providing food, and achieving sovereignty. “If Israel continues to prevent the government from introducing these things, the occupation bears the full burden of subjugating a defenseless people.”
Regarding Hezbollah’s perceived victory during the 34 day war that Israel waged against Lebanon, he said, “This Hezbollah victory for the resistance has turned the regional tide and enhanced the resilience of the peoples of the region.”
Dr. Barghouti also revealed that he met with the Indian ambassador who told him that India would refrain from buying weapons from Israel after discovering how vulnerable their weapons are to the resistance of Hezbollah. Several European countries buy arms from Israel and Barghouti says, “We are now in a campaign to prevent European countries, such as Sweden, from buying weapons from Israel.”
“The call to boycott Israeli goods will cost the occupation four billion dollars annually,” Dr. Barghouti pointed out.
Standing amongst the displays at the Commerce and Trade from Lebanon to Palestine exhibit, the PLC deputy and PNI leader said, “Today I am proud to honor this achievement that was created under blockade in the shadow of the Apartheid Wall.”
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+ Article two:
Palestinians struggle merely to govern
With cabinet members in jail and sanctions grinding on, authority is breaking down, CAROLYNNE WHEELER reports from Ramallah
Special to The Globe and Mail
RAMALLAH — Mohammed Barghouti was on his way home from a late cabinet meeting in Ramallah when he came across an Israeli military checkpoint and realized all was not well.
Three days earlier, an Israeli soldier had disappeared into the depths of Gaza after a daring cross-border raid by Palestinian militants that killed two soldiers and resulted in the capture of a third. Israel had resolved to go on the offensive until the soldier was returned.
So Mr. Barghouti, the Palestinian minister of labour and a member of the ruling Hamas party, found himself being pulled over just outside the West Bank’s most prestigious university — well inside Palestinian territory — and told, along with every other man in the surrounding cars, to strip to his underwear.
“I represent the government. I am a minister. I would have rather died than strip for them there,” he said in an interview yesterday, a week after his release from an Israeli detention centre and 50 days in jail. “I understood later that the checkpoint was set up specifically to arrest me.”
Mr. Barghouti was caught up in a sweep of arrests of Hamas-linked legislators in the West Bank. Right now, 39 Palestinian legislators and five cabinet ministers — including the speaker and the minister of finance — are still behind bars.
The arrests came after five months of international sanctions against the Palestinian Authority for the governing party’s refusal to recognize Israel, formally renounce violence or abide by previous negotiated accords.
“If they act like terrorists, they can’t be surprised that Israel treats them as such,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said, noting the continued rocket attacks from Gaza and the kidnapping of Corporal Gilad Shalit. “The Hamas leadership cannot claim that they are a legitimate elected leadership, and have the rights and respect of elected leadership, and yet in practice behave like terrorists.”
Now, approximately 160,000 civil servants — including teachers at government schools, doctors and nurses at government-funded hospitals and security forces — are at their wits’ end after five months without pay. A general strike has been called for Sept. 2, the first day of school.
“Inshallah [God willing], we will be on strike,” said Majid Ali, 33. A history teacher in a Ramallah school, neither he nor his wife, a government statistics employee, have been paid since March. With two children to support and a third on the way, they are deeply in debt.
“Both the government and president have to take care of their people. Neither side seems to care about the needs of the people.”
Even Mr. Barghouti conceded that the government is struggling heavily, although fundraising tours through Arab states will allow officials to pay employees the equivalent of about $6.9-million (U.S.) next week. The remaining cabinet ministers are trying to fill in for imprisoned colleagues with the help of bureaucrats, and a temporary speaker has been appointed.
In the meantime, frustrations are growing.
“Frankly, people want this government to stay, but with the money of the former government. Then we will have the best government in the Middle East,” said Ikram Shalabi, 43, a nurse whose nine-year-old son will have to stay home at school next week if teachers go on strike. “The second-best thing is to tell this government to go away. And I voted for Hamas.”
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has been in crisis talks with members of his Fatah party’s central committee in Amman this week, trying to negotiate terms of a national-unity government to at least end Fatah-Hamas infighting.
If the talks fail, he will come under heavy pressure to dissolve the government, a move that would undoubtedly trigger more fighting.
The situation in Gaza is particularly volatile. With no word of the kidnapped soldier’s fate, a group of gunmen on Aug. 14 abducted two Fox News journalists — correspondent Steve Centanni, 60, and cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36. Yesterday, the gunmen identified themselves as the previously unknown Holy Jihad Brigades and called for Muslim prisoners in U.S. jails to be released within 72 hours.
Their written statement was accompanied by a video of the two hostages, delivered to the Palestinian news agency Ramattan and later obtained by The Associated Press. In it, the two men are seated on the floor wearing sweatsuits against a black background, with no logos or banners showing. Mr. Centanni said in the video they had been provided with clean water, food, clothing, bathrooms and showers.
The abduction does not follow the normal pattern of capturing foreigners for just a few hours or days, and signals growing instability.
“The way it is now, it’s extremely dangerous,” said Samih Shbeeb, a political science professor at Bir Zeit University. “None of the ministries and Palestinian Authority institutions are functioning at all, anyway. . . . As a Palestinian society, it is impossible to continue the way it is now.”
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