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COMMENTARY
September 17, 2011
How much now?
The desire to be loved is understandable in any human being. In many forms it is charming, and we should not forget that only a psychopath has no need to be loved. But it can be a source of real moral weakness and self-deceit. It can also take morbid forms, as people cling in abject dependence. Alas, in our democratic politics, the morbid forms have become institutionalized.A politician needs to be loved in order to be elected. His livelihood depends upon it, as it were. He is compelled to flatter, often quite absurdly, anyone who might ever vote for him. He becomes by nature incapable of anything resembling what is known colloquially as "tough love": of refusing to give people things to which they have no right, and that will only reinforce poor behaviour. I will write tomorrow about an especially sad case of this clingy spinelessness, in the province of Ontario. But for today, I am interested in abject dependence, on the planetary scale. Diplomacy has degenerated (as it has often done, even in non-democracies) into an extension of domestic politics, almost everywhere. In order to get and stay elected, western politicians find themselves flattering and buying off not only domestic constituencies but, through the miracle of multiculturalism, whole foreign countries. And even when there is not an ethnicity to be bought, the habit of throwing money (now mostly borrowed) at international whiners has become the preferred method of keeping peace in the world. Let us take Palestine for our example. The economy of the West Bank in particular, such as it was, tanked in the early 1990s, then further tanked in the early 2000s, so that, so far as I can make out, the population is higher and earned income lower than it was a generation ago. (None of the statistics are reliable.) Two reasons, chiefly: The progressive loss of income earned by Palestinians working across the demarcation lines in a high-wage Israel, that became walled. And, dysfunctions within the Palestinian territories themselves created by the proliferation of Israeli security barriers and checkpoints. It became almost impossible for many people with jobs - and no history of violent behaviour - even to get to work. This is a legitimate sob story, and one can easily imagine how these circumstances contributed to the further growth of Palestinian radicalism, expressed in the popularity of Hamas. But cause and effect must always be considered. The first extension of cumbersome Israeli security provisions corresponded to the First Intifada, and the second to the Second Intifada. The phenomenon of suicide bombers must also be recalled. It can be reasonably argued that the Palestinians as a whole brought this upon themselves; and that even those who did not participate in the violence carry some responsibility for cheering along those who did. Neither the West Bank nor Gaza (slightly different circumstances) now needs an economy, however. Rather than face down the root problem of violence, the "international community" opted to buy the Palestinians off. In the course of the last two decades, extraordinary amounts have been pledged and delivered to the West Bank, then Gaza, in a slew of bilateral and multilateral programs, mostly from the U.S., Canada, Europe and, believe it or not, Israel. So much, that by all accounts I have seen, the food markets of Palestine are well-stocked, and there are many examples of conspicuous affluence. This hardly means everyone is thriving, however: for as western donors continue to observe, much of this money is corruptly appropriated, and the specific development projects are frequently trashed in fratricidal conflicts between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. And while the PA has tangibly reduced attacks on Israel, Hamas has not. Moreover, the reduction of tensions in the West Bank can be attributed entirely to the Israeli security measures, in combination with the PA's simply desisting from direct sponsorship of the violence, as a tactical measure to collect the aid. In other words, it is only a "hudna" (tactical truce); money buys love only temporarily. With the prospect of a unilateral declaration of statehood by the Palestinians before the United Nations next week (to which end the PA and Hamas have arranged their own "hudna") - and the equivalent of a Third Intifada likely to follow from it - the same western aid donors are scrambling. The scramble is especially unedifying in the U.S., where the administration of Barack Obama seems only just to have realized that his party could finally lose the Jewish vote. In Europe, the Muslim vote has become much more substantial, so that such support as Israel may still enjoy is more a question of honour. On both sides of the Atlantic, however, the strategy remains: "How much must we pay to buy you off this time?" The alternative, tough-love option being: "What if we cut you off?" David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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