MORE EUROPEAN MONEY, a lot, for the Palestinian state (via LGF):

The European Commission announced ambitious plans to help build a politically and economically viable Palestinian state, including injecting hundreds of millions of euros in extra aid.

The aim is to use the opportunity created by Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and put in place a comprehensive medium-term assistance strategy, external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said.

"We intend to be a major partner in a viable Palestinian state," she told reporters in Brussels. "We should not let the chance provided by the Gaza withdrawal slip through our fingers."

She said that if the withdrawal led to implementation of the roadmap peace plan and other donors also came forward, she would urge EU states to earmark the Palestinians a further 200-300 million euros (240-360 million dollars).

Of course there's a strong anti-Israel sentiment in play here, as well as anti-Imperialist-BusHitler as its biggest ally. But there's also another component that, I believe, has a bigger, albeit unspoken, role: fear. Europe is trying to buy its safety by helping a cause used by Islamofascists to justify their unjustifiable actions. Europe thinks that it'll thus avoid young Muslims -in Mark Steyn's unbeatable phrase- exercizing the right to the self-detonation of the Palestinian people, because by paying money to the Palestinian cause they'll redeem themselves for all the associations and collaboration with the US in so many other fields.

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