(Wall Street Journal) - Matthew Levitt President Bush's initiative in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking is threatened by the continued flow of financial and logistical support for Hamas terror attacks through the group's social-welfare infrastructure. European and Arab governments continue to whitewash the role of Hamas social-welfare organizations in facilitating the group's terror attacks. The social-welfare organizations funded by Hamas play a direct role in facilitating suicide bombings. Hamas is known to use the hospitals it maintains as meeting places; to bury caches of arms and explosives under its own kindergarten playgrounds; to use social welfare operatives' cars and homes to ferry and hide fugitives; and to transfer and launder funds from abroad for terrorist activity through local charity committees. The international community must insist that humanitarian support for Palestinians be divorced from support for terrorist activity - both to obstruct Hamas efforts to torpedo President Bush's peace initiative and to clear the names of humanitarian groups untainted by terror. It is essential that the EU, Gulf states, and others strictly regulate which Palestinian charities receive international aid and shut down front organizations raising funds for Hamas and other terrorist groups.
2003-06-10 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive