Our shameful betrayal of democracy

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi of Malaysia has promised help to the people of Palestine and condemned the actions of the US and EU in refusing to deal with Hamas.

"They need aid from other countries. The Palestinian people should not be punished for their choice of government. Their decision should be respected."

Meanwhile in Israel:

Prime Minister Olmert said Israel will buy drugs and medical equipment needed by Palestinian hospitals in the Gaza Strip using some of the tax monies and customs receipts being withheld from the Palestinian Authority.

"We will pay if necessary out of our own pockets," he said, and get what is needed directly to the hospitals "as soon as possible," circumventing the Hamas government, Olmert said. "We wouldn't allow one baby to suffer one night because of a lack of dialysis. We care. We want to save their lives."

That he could even make such a speech when the reality on the ground is so different speaks volumes for the way the western world perceives events in the Middle East. For the reality is that people are already dying because the US/EU/Israel refuse to accept the Palestinian's democratically elected leaders, and have set out to punish the Palestinians for making a democratic choice that they disagree with.

The collapse of the Palestinian health system due to the freeze of the tax revenue by Israel, and the stoppage of international aid is the focus of a new position paper published by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. Some of the cancer patients in the Gaza Strip have not received chemotherapy for over a month. Ending the funding to the health system will lead to the death of thousands of people in the short term and to extensive morbidity in the long term.

At least four patients have died as a direct result of this lack of funding.

The problem is not, as Olmert states, finding ways to help whilst circumnavigating Hamas; it is the circumnavigating of Hamas that is, in itself, the problem.

Israel and the US and EU need to recognise that the Palestinians have made a choice, whether we like it or not, and we need to respect that choice.

We cannot say that we respect and believe in democracy whilst we hypocritically refuse to acknowledge duly elected leaders that we disagree with.

Olmert can make as many speeches as he wants, providing rosy sound bites for US consumption, but the reality on the ground is that people are dying; and they are dying because the west disgrees with the choice the Palestinian people made at the ballot box.

For any person who truly believes in democracy that fact should be a source of eternal shame.

Tags: Israel, Palestine, EU, US, sanctions, starvation, starve, Hamas, Abbas,