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Bernier should disclose conditions for latest $300 million to Palestinian Authority

Naresh Raghubeer and David Harris - 3/13/2008

Ottawa, Canada - In December, Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier announced $300 million in new funding over five years to the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA). This amount was on top of the $500 million given to the PA since 1993. As part of the new announcement, Minister Bernier proclaimed that "our funding is not unconditional. We will need to see … a viable Palestinian state that is democratic, accountable, and living in peace and security as a neighbour to Israel.”

“Canadians look forward to Minister Bernier disclosing the exact conditions under which Canadian tax dollars will flow to the Palestinian Authority,”, said Alastair Gordon, president, Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD). "We are reassured by the promise of conditions, but disappointed that those conditions have never been made public."

CCD is deeply concerned that our tax dollars continue to fund the glorification of terror, the incitement of children and adults, a steady diet of Jew-hatred, and endless dependency on foreign aid, all being promoted by the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority and its military wing Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a designated terrorist entity in Canada.

This week, journalist Khaled Abu Toameh in Jerusalem reported that Fatah's military wing celebrated the murder of eight young students by calling the massacre "heroic," and proclaimed that the "option of resistance remains the only method to restore our rights, free our prisoners and liberate all our lands." Also this week, Palestinian Media Watch reported that in the Fatah-controlled daily newspaper, Al Hayat Al Jadida, a picture of the killer appeared on the front page, with the caption, "The Shahid Alaa Abu D'heim," honoring him as a holy warrior and a martyr to be emulated.

“The PA’s Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade is a designated terrorist entity in Canada. Any Canadian directly or indirectly funding that entity can be charged and imprisoned under our anti-terror laws”, added Gordon. “Do Canadians have to seek a court ruling to force disclosure of how our money is being spent in the Middle East and to determine whether or not our open-ended foreign aid to the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority violates our own anti-terror legislation or international treaties?"

"Should Canadians fund a Palestinian government whose charter -- as inviolable as our own Charter of Rights and Freedoms -- states 'Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine' (article 9) and 'Commando action constitutes the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation war' (article 10)? If we fund the PA, we are supporting these violent governing principles, not a peace process.

"The continued existence of Mahmoud Abbas' terrorist military wing, Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, the anointing of Alaa Abu D'heim as a shahid, and a governing Palestinian charter that calls for the destruction of Israel -- these abominations all serve to perpetuate the death cult that imbues much of Palestinian culture, a culture that Canada should not bankroll.”

"The Palestinians will receive nearly a billion Canadian tax dollars with Ottawa’s new funding commitments, and peace is more remote than ever. Clearly the medicine of foreign aid – more per capita to the Palestinians in today’s dollars than the Europeans received under the Marshall Plan -- is making the patient sicker and sicker,” added Gordon. "It is time for a new prescription."

“Minister Bernier needs to tell Canadians the exact conditions under which the Palestinians will continue to receive our aid, and to show he is enforcing those conditions. Taxpayers must continue to see that the present Conservative government is different from previous Liberal administrations when it comes to the unaccountable squandering of their tax dollars to perpetuate the racism, dependency, hatred and violence in Palestinian society.”