Word: wolfensohn
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...former World Bank chief James Wolfensohn's appointment by the international community to help lay the economic foundations of Palestinian statehood was an expression of optimism in the prospects for peace following Israel's withdrawal from Gaza last year, then his resignation last Sunday should sound an alarm. Trained as a banker rather than a diplomat, former World Bank chief Wolfensohn didn't mince words about his reasons for stepping down. He said the current U.S.-Israeli financial blockade of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority looks set to destroy the administrative institutions on which a two-state solution would...
...Israeli government seated on Thursday has made clear that it plans to redraw the borders between Israel and the Palestinians on its own terms, insisting that it will not negotiate with a Palestinian government led by Hamas. But Wolfensohn is warning that the current siege of the West Bank and Gaza makes it increasingly unlikely that what will emerge on the Palestinian side of Israel's new border wall will be a viable state...
...Once the U.S. and European Union forbade him from working with the new Hamas-led Palestinian government, Wolfensohn's job became untenable. Israeli papers report that Wolfensohn's decision also came in response to the U.S. - at the behest of Israeli officials - blocking a plan by Britain, the E.U. and the Arab League to have salaries of PA employees paid directly into their bank accounts, bypassing the Hamas administration. U.S. Treasury officials have warned that any banks processing such transactions would face sanctions from Washington, and none dared risk being shut out of the international finance system. That blocked...
...While the financial blockade is clearly an effective weapon against a government led by what the U.S. and E.U. deem a terrorist organization, the decision to use it appears to be premised on a fanciful notion of what will follow if it succeeds. Wolfensohn's warnings foresee a long siege, which he says would leave three quarters of the Palestinian population living in poverty within two years. But Washington may be banking on a quicker result: By putting the squeeze on ordinary Palestinians and forcing a breakdown in governance, some Israeli and U.S. officials may be hoping that President Mahmoud...
...keeping the river for tourists. "We value the [Bujagali] falls, but development is about making options and choices," says Kahangire from his office overlooking Lake Victoria in Entebbe, Uganda. Some in the rich world agree. In his 2004 book, The World's Banker, on former World Bank president James Wolfensohn, journalist Sebastian Mallaby argues that NGOs often do more harm than good to the world's poor. Uganda's National Association of Professional Environmentalists, he wrote, was a tiny single-issue group that, with the backing of Western NGOs (including the IRN), was able to halt a project that could...