Palestine Times & US AID
I went across the street to the grocery store this morning to buy the Palestine Times, a new English-language daily newspaper. The owner, now recognizing me as a new regular, asked me where I was from. When I told him the US, he asked if he could ask me a question but said he didn’t want to offend me. The question was what did I think about George Bush messing everything up since, the grocer told me, Palestinians and Jews could live together just fine if the US stayed out of it.
When I started to tell him there was a long list of things George Bush was doing wrong he smiled and shook my hand. We talked a few more minutes, and he agreed with me that most Palestinians and Israelis, left to themselves, would be able to sort things out in a reasonable way, but that governments of all kinds and the all-or-nothing extremes on both sides were determined to keep things from being resolved.
Palestine Times, by the way, is online, sort of. The early issues from the paper’s start just a few weeks ago are posted as pdf files. That makes it hard to find things, but at least it’s a beginning. The paper is trying to be politically independent and journalistically respectable, and seems to be making a good start, with opposing op-eds on a regular basis alternately supporting and criticizing both Fatah and Hamas. Independence is in short supply here, and the paper did a lot of advertising to make sure people would notice.
Also starting a new advertising campaign, however, is the American taxpayer. According to something I read last week but can’t locate now, George Bush’s people decided that everyday Palestinians like the grocer across the street don’t understand how much the US is really doing for them. That’s why they’re blanketing Ramallah with billboards showing how grateful so many Palestinians are for the US Agency for International Development.
They’re even covering all those Palestine Times independence ads.
All of them, it looks like. We taxpayers must like advertising.
Somehow, though, I don’t think the grocer across the street will change his mind about George Bush.
December 22nd, 2006 at 7:54 pm
“Somehow, though, I don’t think the grocer across the street will change his mind about George Bush.”
I agree with you. There are many layers of skepticism and cynicism that need to be peeled back before the average Palestinian would trust in the intentions of the US. Nevertheless, there was a glimmer of hope that fateful day when Clinton visited Gaza. Let’s hope for such a visit that’s more than a photo-op.