Their task is enormous. The latest spasm of destruction has come on top of the ravages of 19 months of fighting that left countless families without income and 40,000 people hospitalized at one time or another.
Long before Mr. Sharon unleashed Israeli forces, he had regularly sent jets and helicopters to flatten police stations, jails, television facilities and buildings used by Mr. Arafat. He acted in response to suicide bombings by Palestinian terrorists that have come to haunt Israeli society.
Some, like the British-era police headquarters in Bethlehem, were bombed again and again. The Gaza airport was laced with deep trenches, the nascent seaport was destroyed, all part of what the Palestinians and donors took to be an assault on symbols of Palestinian sovereignty. "We started in 1994 with damage control after the occupation. In 1995 we moved to rehabilitation. In 1999 we were building new infrastructure, roads, apartments, a seaport, strategic projects," said Muhammad Shtayyeh, the director of the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction, PECDAR, talking of an era that now seemed ages past. "Then Sharon went to the mosque, God bless him, and we're back to damage control."
It is a matter of angry dispute between Israelis and Palestinians whether the visit by Mr. Sharon, then an opposition deputy, to the sacred site of Al Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem on Sept. 28, 2000, was the reason for the violence that erupted that day and has continued since.
Israelis contend that Mr. Arafat found it in his interest to fan the flames and has since supported the work of suicide bombers.
What is impossible to dispute is the calamitous setback to what had been a steady development of the Palestinian homelands. In 1999, the best year for the Palestinians, there were 20 million square meters of construction under way, $8 billion dollars in private investment, 143,000 Palestinians working in Israel each bringing home $30 a day, a 6 percent rate of growth.
The Palestinian budget actually had a surplus. The airport in Gaza was functioning, the private sector had created 3,500 new jobs, industrial zones were luring large new companies.
"The Palestinian administration was highly functional, and delivered good services," said Nigel Roberts, the World Bank representative for the West Bank and Gaza. "One of the good stories of the past 19 months was that they managed to maintain a functioning civil administration that delivered basic services, health, education, despite all the problems of delivering these services. Schools were running, municipalities were working, there was a government out there that was functioning." nytimes.com |
