The Palestinian government has produced a 33-page draft document outlining sweeping security, fiscal and political reforms for the creation of a Palestinian state.
A typical scene of the Intifada that dashed hopes for a Palestinian homeland and peace with Israel. Now the U.S. is trying to bring Palestinians and Israelis together to find a way to end war and live in peace as neighbours.
It hopes the plan will help reverse the seven years since the collapse of the Camp David talks and the beginning of the intifada.
The Palestinians will present the document at an international donors' conference in Paris next month. It has been described as strongest effort to date by the Western-backed administration loyal to the President, Mahmoud Abbas, to demonstrate that it can develop the capacity to run an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza.
U.S.-sponsored peace talks between Palestinian and Israeli leaders begin in The United States next week. (See related IPS feature)
The draft is intended to persuade the international community to provide the Palestinian with about US$5.8 billion over the period 2008 to 2010.
It warns that the Israeli regime in the occupied territories has gravely damaged Palestinian economic and social life by fragmenting the Palestinians and contributing to a deficit that has cross US$1.6 billion.
The draft also sets out a vision of the future state with sovereignty over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital. The plan calls on Israel to withdraw to borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war.
It promises that Palestine will be a stable democratic state that respects human rights, guarantees the equal rights and duties for all citizens and which identifies with Arab Palestinian culture, humanistic values and religious tolerance.
It bases its projections on the idea that a unified Palestinian authority will be back in control of Gaza, suggesting that the Hamas control over Gaza is temporary.
Key points of plan:
1. The Palestinian Authority must impose law and order, and build institutions to govern a Palestinians state; Israel must remove obstacles to creation of a viable state.
2. Security: Start made on better policing and seizure of illegal weapons but streamlined service on way with US$230m upgrade scheme for training, communications, new vehicles and prisoner rehabilitation.
3. Make utilities self-financing while ensure they still supply the poor.
4. Improve teacher training, and school materials and channel special help to the 100 worst performing schools in Gaza and the West Bank.
5. Reform complex network of social protection, including NGOs to ensure help goes to those who really need it.
6. Major drive on infrastructure especially water poverty (10 per cent of Palestinians have no access to running water while for others consumption is only 10 per cent of prescribed WHO levels.)
7. Major road works and prospect of reopening Gaza airport and building new one in West Bank.
8. Realize "enormous potential" of private sector currently stalled by settlement growth and closures and more "quick impact" projects.
Jai Parasram | Toronto, Nov. 21, 2007
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