Hundreds of Paleostinians demonstrated outside the United Nation's Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the Gazoo Strip on Sunday to protest the agency's reduction of services, the result of an unprecedented financial crisis.
The United Nations
...a formerly good idea gone bad...
issued an urgent appeal for contributions last week to prevent such a cutback, but to no avail.
One of the banners raised by protesters read, "The reduction in services is leading to Gazoo being blasted by poverty, oppression and insecurity," according to the Paleostinian Ma'an news agency.
The special coordinator for the Paleostinian grinding of the peace processor, Nickolay Mladenov, warned the UN Security Council that UNRWA has a $100-million shortfall that needs to be solved in the coming weeks. Otherwise, he said, "there is a serious risk that UNRWA schools, which educate 500,000 children throughout the Middle East, will not open."
"This will have grave implications for Paleostine refugee children in Gazoo, the West Bank, Jordan, Leb and Syria, and for the stability and security of a region already in turmoil," Mladenov said. "I am deeply concerned about UNRWA's current unprecedented financial crisis."
Mladenov also urged donor nations to increase their support for the Paleostinian Authority, which is running at a $500-million deficit this year -- a gap which, he said, could not be covered with fiscal measures alone.
Walid al-Awad, an official from the Paleostinian People's Party, condemned the postponement of the school year, telling Ma'an that he and the people he represents refuse to accept the UN decision.
Talal Abu Zarifa, a member of the marxist DFLP -- the
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Paleostine... a breakaway faction of the Pöpular Frönt för the Liberation of Paleostine. The are regarded as the most intellectual of Paleostinian fedayeen groups, smoking cheap cigarettes and drawing heavily on Marxist-Leninist theory to explain their crappy lives. They can occasionally be seen strutting through the streets of Paleostine, dressed up like soldiers and lugging firearms, though they seldom manage to hit anything and then usually by accident. This may be because of their habit of wearing black masks that cut off most of their vision. That would also explain their habit of occasionally walking into walls, which is a well-known attribute of those immersed in true understanding of the dialectic...
-- told Ma'an that the UN needed to rethink its policies.
| A very good idea. The Palestinians have been funded for about seventy years; perhaps it is time to give that help to others in considerably greater need, though no doubt that is not what Mr. Abu Zarifa meant.. |