ANARCHY IN THE PA
Things must be getting bad - even the BBC seems to be realising that all is not well with the Palestinian Authority. Yesterday's Up All Night on 5Live featured a five minute section with a pro-Israel guy for a change (link valid for 7 days, interview after twenty minutes or so I believe) and today this:Campaigning is under way in the first Palestinian parliamentary election for 10 years. But the talk in Gaza is not so much of issues and policies and the prospects for parties.The Beeb then goes on to find root causes for the troubles and ends up blaming poor leadership and poverty. Hmmm. I wonder whose fault the latter is? Nothing to do with Arafat and his cronies siphoning off huge amounts from foreign aid, of course.
The focus is more on the law and chronic problems, and whether the polls will be held at all.
Foreigners have been kidnapped. And every day there are angry anti-government protests. Public buildings are stormed as armed demonstrators demand jobs, or sometimes the release of prisoners.
There have been attacks on police stations, clan feuds and clashes between militia groups.
According to their correspondent, the other root cause of the chaos is essentially that the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza has put too many terrorists out of a job:
In this broken, crowded, poverty-stricken place there is an intense struggle for resources that can lead to lawlessness. A number of the kidnappings have been carried out by militia groups demanding jobs in the formal security agencies.I'd love to see their resumes. Do you think they put
Maybe they've heard tales of computer hackers being recruited by big business to protect their systems? I have to say though, I'd rather have a greasy computer scientist who speaks in COBOL working in the public sector than a terrorist prone to kidnapping and mortaring, but there we are.
posted by Dan @ 5:11 pm
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