Much of the talk since the Palestinian people decided that Hamas best reflects their views has centered on the question of whether the US and the EU should continue to send aid to an organization pledged to destroy Israel, and on the humanitarian consequences of discontinuing that aid. Interesting questions, those, but largely irrelevant, for two reasons.
First, after much to-ing and fro-ing, the donor nations will continue the flow of money, if not directly to Hamas, then to ‘the Palestinian people’ through a variety of UN and other agencies. Indeed, the EU has already handed the UN a check for $78 million to see the Palestinians through their current cash crunch. Europeans would not be able to bear the television images of starving children, hospitals without medicine and other pictures of the sort that produced the progressive weakening of the restrictions on trade with Iraq. The Times had it right when it reported that EU foreign ministers are meeting ‘to consider how to continue providing aid to Palestinians without endorsing what is regarded as a terrorist organization by the EU and the US’. Not whether to continue aid, but how to keep the money flowing.
