$HAME ON ARAB PETRODOLLAR$

By Khalid Amayreh Occupied East Jerusalem, 15 April, 2008

Is Arab oil more precious than Arab blood? This is a question that many Palestinians are asking these days in light of the oil-rich Arab states’ reluctance to help the Palestinians withstand the most ferocious onslaught ever being waged by Zionism against the Palestinian people’s very existence.

Today, four Arab states, (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and Qatar) produce nearly 20 million barrels of crude oil per day. Translated into dollars, these four states alone make more than $2 billion dollars per day, or $60 billion a month, nearly $720 billion a year.

Now how much of this colossal amount of money goes to prop up Palestinian steadfastness in the face of diabolical Zionism, which seeks to occupy, enslave and probably annihilate Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East and beyond?

How much of it is used to enable the 1.5 million Gazans to overcome Israel’s continuing Nazi-like blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has already killed and mutilated thousands and reduced the entire coastal enclave into a huge concentration camp?

How much of this money goes to help Palestinian college students stay in their country and not leave because they don’t have sufficient financial means to pay for their education at Palestinian colleges and universities?

The Arab Sheikhs, Emirs and Kings won’t have to sacrifice much of their oil and gas revenue for the sake of Palestine and its suffering people.

A day’s revenue of Arab oil and gas can solve all the Palestinian people’s financial problems. It can enable Palestinian authorities to pay for the salaries of all civil servants and help poor college students continue their education for an entire year. It can also serve to subsidize basic consumer products such as bread, sugar and cooking oil, especially for the most impoverished segments of society.

Needless to say, a sincere effort on the part of these rich Arab states would enable Palestinians to put up the most effective resistance to Israel’s ethnic cleansing designs without having to worry about providing a loaf of bread for one’s kids at the end of the day.

It would also save a lot of Palestinian blood since many Palestinians, desperately struggling to feed their children, often risk their lives by crossing into Israel in order to find work.

More to the point, a meaningful Arab solidarity with the Palestinians in their enduring plight would make it more difficult for the genocidal terrorist Israeli state to blackmail the hopelessly weak Palestinian Authority in Ramallah into surrendering to Israeli dictates and perpetuating the national rift between Fatah and Hamas.

This writer knows of many college students who had to quit college because they can’t pay their tuition. We are talking about intelligent young men and women who want to stay put in their ancestral homeland in order to consolidate and perpetuate Arab-Islamic presence in this land.

But in order to do so, they need a real helping hand from their supposed Arab and Muslim brothers, many of them are at a loss as to what to do with the billions of dollars they have amassed.

What value do Arab billions have if they can’t help preserve the Al-Aqsa Mosque from Israel’s nefarious designs?

What value do these billions or trillions of dollars have if they can’t shield a Palestinian child in Rafah or Khan Younis from the real specter of starvation, imposed by a Nazi state constantly emboldened by Arab betrayal of the struggling Palestinians who are made to pay in blood the price of Arab-Muslim weakness and subservience to an evil empire called the United States?

What value does Arab money have if they can’t develop a potent media machine to counter Zionist lies, propaganda and hasbara against Islam, Muslims, the Palestinians and the Arabs?

To be sure, the oil-rich Arab states can do a lot to help the Palestinians who are at the forefront of a historical confrontation against Zionist expansionism and regional hegemony.

The Saudis, for example, can easily resolve the nagging salary problem; the Kuwaitis can build three or four modern hospitals in Gaza and the West Bank, which would help save the lives of thousands of Palestinians who die of preventable illnesses and treatable injuries inflicted by Zionist terrorists.

The UAE can cover the college expenses of a few thousand university students in Gaza and the West Bank. Qatar, which has good open relations with Israel, can use its connections to help the Palestinians have their own power-generating plants. Qatar, probably in cooperation with other states, can pay Egypt to provide regular fuel and electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip, thus enabling the tormented Gazans to free themselves from constant Israeli blackmail.

And the four states combined can donate to Egypt the 1.5 billion dollars which the US uses to emasculate the collective will of 80 million Egyptians.

So, why can’t these rulers do it? Do they believe that their billions are more important than the blood and lives of Palestinian children? Or more sacred than Arab-Islamic dignity? Shame on them if they do.

Do they think that the Almighty will forgive them for betraying the Palestinians? They will die sooner or later and will be brought into account by the Lord of the Universe.

Perhaps the real problem has more to do with their inability and less with their willingness and inclination. But this is no excuse at all. In fact, it is an excuse that is more obscene than a sin, because then surrendering the national will to a foreign master borders on national and religious apostasy.

The Palestinian people may forgive these rich Arabs for their clarion failure to fight Zionism, the common enemy of Arabs and Muslims, for reasons known to everyone.

But the rich Arabs can never be forgiven for accepting enslavement by the evil American empire and for squandering their billions on trivialities and excessively lavish lifestyles while Arab children are starving to death in the Gaza Strip.

Shame on you. God will not forgive you, and history will not be kind to you.