MOSCOW, (RIA Novosti political commentator Marianna Belenkaya) - The quartet of international mediators in the Middle East settlement - Russia, the United States, the European Union and the UN - has decided to create a provisional international mechanism for the direct transfer of aid, primarily financial, to Palestinians.
The decision was the quartet's last fleeting chance to retain its influence over the situation in the Palestinian territories.
After the radical Islamic movement Hamas won the January parliamentary elections in Palestine, the European countries and the U.S. halted the transfer of aid to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). Together with Israel's refusal to transfer relevant taxes and customs duties to the PNA, this provoked a humanitarian crisis in the PNA-controlled territories.
The treasury of the Hamas-led government is empty. There is no money to pay the 165,000 state officials or finance healthcare, education and other humanitarian and social projects. However, Palestinians' donors say Hamas must officially renounce violence and recognize Israel if it wants to be guaranteed continued aid.
Hamas is not budging, although the loss of donor assistance is wreaking havoc in the Palestinian territories, which is contrary to the interests of the Quartet. Moreover, money is the only chance now to influence Palestinian politicians. Halting financial assistance to the PNA is a suicide move for the Quartet.
Who needs the Quartet when the majority of Palestinians are busy trying to survive? What can it discuss with Palestinian politicians, who can think only about raising the money to buy food for the hungry? By boycotting the Palestinian government, the Quartet would lose its prestige of an objective intermediary and remove itself from the Palestinian political scene. Because he who pays the piper calls the tune.
Russia is the only member of the Quartet who has always protested against the political and financial blockade of Palestine, in particular Hamas. It was also the first country to transfer $10 million to the PNA.
Russia's partners in the Quartet seem to have accepted its reasoning this time. Europeans have long been pondering ways to preclude a humanitarian catastrophe in Palestine without having to cooperate with Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organization in the EU.
Russia has shown the way: the money is to be transferred to the account of PNA leader Mahmoud Abbas and not the Hamas-led government, with a special mechanism monitoring the distribution of the funds.
Russian diplomats suggested this mechanism before the Hamas visit to Moscow, because the international community mostly feared the money would be used not on humanitarian aid but to finance terrorism. In response to this concern, Russia suggested creating a mechanism to monitor the disposal of money. The new Palestinian government agreed to give the international community monitoring rights.
On the one hand, the Quartet's decision will not lead Hamas out of international isolation because it will not control the funds. On the other hand, the use of the new mechanism, the details of which are to be finalized by the EU soon, would have been impossible without the Palestinian government approval. The allocation of funds to Palestinians will lift a part of the government's concerns and postpone its political collapse by offering room for maneuver and the time for discussing the international community's conditions of cooperation.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia thought Hamas was making "the first feeble signs indicating that it has heard the [Quartet's] signals."
Russian diplomats think the Hamas-led government may soon correct its stand regarding the peace process and Israel, as proved by "Hamas proclaiming readiness to join the Arab peace initiative - if Israel recognizes it - and the recently reaffirmed commitment to truce," Lavrov said.
The main thing now is not to drive Hamas into a corner, and the Quartet has apparently opted for this policy. It may not succeed, but the Quartet simply had to look for other ways since boycotting the new Palestinian government would have precipitated chaos. The creation of an international mechanism for serving the needs of Palestinians is one more way to overcome the stalemate.
