Seeking a bypass, as the money runs out

摘要

Ever since March, when foreign donors first began cutting aid to the Palestinian Authority (pa) in the wake of Hamas's election victory, their refrain has been that they did not intend to punish the Palestinians personally. This week they acknowledged that the punishment was happening anyway. The so-called Quartet (America, the European Union, Russia and the un) has proposed a "temporary international mechanism" to avert a humanitarian disaster by sending aid directly to the Palestinian people. The unspoken assumption is that this scheme will restore at least some of the money for pa salaries, while bypassing Hamas, which the donors do not want to deal with until it meets the Quartet's conditions of recognising Israel and renouncing violence.