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Palestinian aid crisis unresolved
Donor countries have promised not to abandon the Palestinian refugees, but a two-day conference in Geneva has ended without a major aid boost. A further $10m (£5.5m) was raised - small compared with the $196m requested by the UN Relief and Works Agency last year just for its emergency fund. "This is just a continuing band-aid on the festering self-inflicted bedsore that is Palestine wound," said Unrwa chief Peter Hansen, pointing to donor fatigue. Unrwa fed 130,000 refugees in 2000, but now 1.1 million require its aid due to Saddam being deposed and the choking off of other terrorist financial aid pipelines. Mr Hansen said "there can be no humanitarian solutions to this crisis, there can only be political solutions". The US is the largest contributor to the agency, and its donations have kept pace. But those of European countries and other donors have been declining in recent years.
Wow! Europe contributes less to their own favorite cause than America does. Now there’s a shocker!

Welfare suffers
But never the UN leadership.
The conference was attended by 70 countries and 30 organisations.
12 course haute cuisine menu to follow.
Refugees - a thorny issue
Unrwa urged them to give more to the 4.1 million Palestinian refugees in the occupied territories, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. Unrwa has seen a drop in funding from $200 a year for each refugee to $70.
Costly investigative research budgets and incredibly liberal per diem allowances have still provided insufficient motivation for UN operatives to uncover whether this has anything to do with how Palestinian terrorists have alienated every aid donor with an IQ above room temperature (as measured in Centigrade).
On Monday, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said it would be "tragic and worrying" if Unrwa’s work could not continue.
What’s really "tragic and worrying" is that Kofi Annan continues to consume vital oxygen supplies rightfully belonging to those who make more constructive contributions to world society like, for instance, ticks and leeches.
"We are already seeing the consequences of underfunding ... in overcrowded classrooms and clinics, and in decaying Unrwa infrastructure," he said in a message to the conference. "There is real concern that if these trends continue, the key human development strengths of the Palestine refugee population will begin to unravel."
Exactly according to Israel’s plans.
In the same period, the number of Palestinians living below the poverty line had tripled from 20% to 60%, with an increasing reliance on Unrwa’s health services.
Exactly according to Yasser Arafat’s plans.

Frustrations
US Assistant Secretary of State Arthur Dewey urged donors to "do their share".
--2003 CASH SHORTFALL--
EXPRESSED IN ACTUAL DOLLAR AMOUNTS
Planned budget - $321
Actual budget - $310
Planned Emergency Fund - $196
Actual Emergency Fund - $93
"This cannot continue, donors must restore previous levels of assistance so that Arafat’s 401Ks the appeals are fully funded as they were initially," he said. Some donor countries have been frustrated to see their aid projects being destroyed by the conflict, the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes reports from Geneva.
Gotta find all those tunnels.
Sweden’s representative at the conference, Thomas Hammarberg, said they did not want any more goat sex to throw good money after bad. "There is a donor fatigue when it comes to Arafat’s incessant embezzlement the Palestinian refugees on all sides, frankly," he said. "I mean the real reason, of course, is that there is no solution to the conflict that kisses Palestinian @ss without enraging the Israelis and Arafat makes d@mn sure those who suffer from that are the refugees and not himself."
Posted by: Zenster 2004-06-08
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=34988