Geoffrey Aronson has prepared a paper for the Foundation for Middle East Peace thanks to a grant by Canada’s International Development and Research Center (IDRC) on "Financing the Palestinian Authority." Without rebutting each argument, we'd like to just focus on one aspect of the paper. Aronson writes with the assumption that there is a humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territories and that the financial boycott has caused or at least added to a humanitarian crisis.
Some define a humanitarian crisis as "an event or series of events which represents a critical threat to the health, safety, security or well-being of a community or other large group of people, usually over a wide area." Still others define it as "a health or otherwise natural disaster which mortally threatens a very large number of people." Regardless of which you more closely align with, one fact is undeniable -- government workers not receiving a paycheck may cause a decreased standard of living for some, but is not a humanitarian crisis by any sensible definition.
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