The Palestinians are ready for statehood, according to a
report to be presented to major aid donor countries in Brussels this week by
Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

He will present facts and figures to show how his
Palestinian Authority has used hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign
assistance over the past two years to create justice, education, energy,
health, water, security and housing services.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad pauses during a news conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah April 14, 2011. Fayyad briefed the media about the outcome of his meeting with representatives from donor countries in Brussels on Wednesday, where he said major organisations had endorsed his efforts to create an independent Palestinian state. REUTERS

“I believe that our governing institutions have now
reached a high state of readiness to assume all the responsibilities that will
come with full sovereignty on the entire Palestinian occupied territory,”
Fayyad says in the 63-page document.

But he underlines that unless Israel’s military occupation
comes to an end, these accomplishments can only achieve so much.

“Without a change to the status quo, the positive
impact of internal reforms to build a strong and healthy economy will be
limited in both scope and sustainability,” the report says.

Palestinian leaders aim to ask the United Nations General
Assembly in September for recognition of statehood on all of the territory
Israel occupied in 1967, including Gaza — over which Fayyad and President
Mahmoud Abbas have no control.

Israel has warned that such unilateral moves are not a
substitute for a Middle East peace treaty that would establish a Palestinian
state by mutual consent.

“Palestinians seek to go to an international forum and
avoid peace negotiations,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told
EU diplomats on Monday. “It pushes peace further back.”

International support

But the Palestinian leadership is plowing ahead with clear
signs of international encouragement. The number of countries that recognize
Palestine as a state has risen this year to 110, more than half the membership
of the United Nations.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund last week
praised the performance of the PA, saying in separate reports that it was
well-positioned to run an independent nation.

Fayyad said his government had connected all Palestinian
residential areas, including remote ones, to the electricity grid, and paved
and fixed 1,400 miles of streets.

While they make up two parts of the same future state in
theory, Gaza and the West Bank have never been more divided, politically and
geographically.

But the Israeli occupation, says the report, remains the
“most significant challenge to economic development in Palestine.”

“Restrictions on movement and access, as well as lack
of control over borders and natural resources, continue to be real barriers to
the growth of the economy.”

Palestinians administer their own affairs in islands of land
in a West Bank landscape peppered with Jewish settlements. They have no access
to some 60 percent of West Bank land.

“Lack of access to natural resources for example,
including land and water, severely constrains any sustainable progress
throughout the economy,” the report says.

Meanwhile,  two
months since the ouster of longstanding president Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s new
transitional government is turning its attention to unpopular Mubarak-era
foreign policies — with the ongoing Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip
top of the list.

“There are strong indications that Egypt’s approach to
the Gaza Strip will change as Egyptian foreign policy increasingly comes into
line with popular opinion following the January 25 Revolution,” Tarek
Fahmi, political science professor at Cairo University, told IPS.

In 2006, Israel sealed its border with the Gaza Strip after
resistance movement Hamas swept democratically-held Palestinian legislative
elections. One year later, after Hamas seized control of the coastal enclave
from the U.S.-backed Fatah movement, Egypt closed the Rafah terminal — the only
crossing along its 14-kilometer border with Gaza — to human and commercial
traffic.

The blockade, now entering its fifth year, has hermetically
sealed the territory off from the rest of the world, depriving Gaza’s roughly
1.8 million inhabitants of many basic commodities and humanitarian supplies.
Following Egypt’s recent revolution, the Rafah crossing was opened up to
Palestinian students, medical patients and expatriates. However, construction
materials — especially cement — remain banned from being taken to Gaza from
either Israel or Egypt.

Ever since Israel’s devastating three-week-long assault on
the territory in 2008-2009, the Gaza Strip has remained in dire need of
reconstruction. Along with killing more than 1,400 Palestinians, the assault
completely or partially destroyed tens of thousands of homes, the vast majority
of which have yet to be rebuilt. Gaza remains subject to frequent Israeli
attack: within the past four days alone, 19 Palestinians have been killed by
Israeli air strikes and artillery barrages.

A coming war?

After several days of intense violence, during which the 19
Palestinians were killed and one Israeli wounded, a fragile calm has returned
to Gaza. But political commentators argue that this could well be a precursor
to Israel’s next war on the coastal territory.

During the last week the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)
launched a series of attacks following a rocket attack from Gaza which hit an
Israeli school bus, seriously injuring a 16-year-old pupil.

Palestinians countered that Israel’s assassination of three
Hamas commanders a week before the latest bloody confrontations was the spark.
Israel blamed elements in Gaza that it says were planning the kidnapping of
Israelis in the Sinai.

Following Israel’s strike, resistance fighters from a
variety of factions in Gaza retaliated by launching dozens of rockets and
missiles at Israel.

Many of those killed in Gaza were Palestinian resistance
fighters but civilians were among the dead and injured. The precise figure of
civilian casualties is being disputed by Israeli and Palestinian officials.

Israeli intelligence has argued for a number of years that
Israeli soldiers were the targets of potential kidnappings. Every year during
the Jewish Passover, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, warns
Israelis not to travel to the Sinai due to a stated risk of kidnapping. There
has been none to date.

This has raised questions about Israel’s timing of the
killing of the Hamas commanders. Many are asking whether Israel intends to
follow up with another brutal military assault along the lines of Operation
Cast Lead, the previous war on Gaza at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009,
which left over 1,400 Palestinians dead, most of them civilian, including 300
children.

“The goal that we have settled on, of seeking a return
to calm, is a grave error because it will allow Hamas to reinforce along the
lines of Hizbullah,” Israel’s outspoken foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman
told Israeli Army Radio.

“The objective must be to force Hamas out of power. To
return to calm accepts a war of attrition in which Hamas can determine when
there is a lull and when the front is heating up,” he said.

Lieberman’s controversial comments provided a peek into the thinking
of the Israeli cabinet which met Tuesday to discuss the flare-up on the
country’s southern border with Gaza. Military sources were quoted in Israeli
media as saying that the truce would be followed by an even wider-scale
confrontation.

“Hamas has been busy rebuilding its forces for the past
two years, and this can only mean we’re facing an all-out clash,” a senior
IDF officer told Israeli media.

An Israeli cabinet member told the Israeli daily ‘Y-Net’
that “in any event, it is not in our interest to launch an extensive
operation until after Independence Day, so for now we seek to calm things down.
However, if the rocket fire is resumed and Israel hit, there’s no telling what
will happen.”

Dr Samir Awad from Birzeit University near Ramallah says that
not only will the Israelis attack but the timing and agenda of another
full-scale war is reliant purely on Israeli dictates.

“Hamas and the other Palestinian factions are in a weak
position. They can threaten Israel all they like but Israel has superior
military power. It also controls Gaza’s coast, airspace, border-crossings and
has the entire strip under lockdown so there is very little Hamas can do in
reality,” Awad told IPS.

“One of the reasons behind the timing of the
assassination of the three Hamas commanders was the prospect of Fatah-Hamas
unity talks resulting in some concrete and positive developments as the two
sides met recently,” added Awad.

“Israel greatly fears a united Palestinian front. Now
there is tension and chaos again in Gaza and unity talks are once again on the
backburner. Furthermore, Israel has also taken advantage of the confusion and
unrest sweeping the Arab world when Hamas is weakened by a disaffected public
in Gaza and is struggling to control the smaller factions.”