These governments all piously intone that the money will not end up in the hands of Hamas. This is utterly absurd. Hamas run Gaza. They control it. Nothing happens there without their say-so. UNRWA, which is apparently supposed to distribute the humanitarian aid, is riddled with Hamas operatives amongst its staff; Hamas won more than 80 percent of the vote in the last election for the UNRWA workers association and the UNRWA teachers association.

To avoid the money going to Hamas, we are told with a straight face, aid is to be funnelled through the Palestinian Authority. But the PA are in the West Bank. They are not in Gaza. Hamas run Gaza. The PA have no more power to stop that money from ending up in the pockets of Hamas than they have of flying to the moon.

Who can doubt that the $4.4 billion will go straight to Hamas so that it can buy yet more rockets and missiles and construct yet more death-dealing factories to enable them to bombard Israel and kill the innocent?

In no other global conflict do the nations of the world throw money at an area waging aggressive war, even while it is still lobbing missiles at its victims. According to Israel’s ambassador to the UN, there have been nearly 100 rocket and mortar attacks from the Gaza Strip since the ’ceasefire’ on January 18. These have been increasing in number, with 12 rockets fired at Sderot on March 1 alone. On Saturday morning, two new and improved Grad rockets, capable of yet greater destruction than before, hit Ashkelon; one hit a school.

And for this Gaza is to be rewarded to the tune of $4.4 billion.

Even the Saudis seem to think this is mad:

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al Faisal told al Arabiya TV that rebuilding Gaza would be ‘difficult and fool-hardy, so long as peace and security do not prevail’ in the territory.

But of course; Saudi knows full well that what America, Europe, Britain and the rest have just done is hand $4.4 billion to the Iranian war machine against not just Israel but the Sunni Arab world. Now look by contrast at what Douglas Alexander, Britain’s International Development Secretary, has said:

‘There is a desperate need for tough restrictions on the supply of goods to be relaxed,’ he said. ‘Gaza needs money, fuel and construction materials, and whilst these goods are turned away at the borders, repairs to homes, water systems and the electricity network will remain impossible. Israel must do the right thing and allow much-needed goods to get through to those men, women and children who continue to suffer.’

No mention of the materials getting through to be appropriated by Hamas in order to kill more Israelis. Alexander’s remarks reflect the collective derangement of Britain’s political class, which frames a genocidal war against Israel as a humanitarian catastrophe for the perpetrators who are said to be starving, even while they fire bigger and better weapons to kill Israelis.

As a result, Douglas Alexander, Hillary Clinton and the rest of them are effectively giving Hamas $4.4 billion to do just that. Clinton’s own remarks were just pure newspeak.

‘Our response to today's crisis in Gaza cannot be separated from our broader efforts to achieve a comprehensive peace,’ she said. ‘Only by acting now can we turn this crisis into an opportunity that moves us closer to our shared goals.’ She added that ‘by providing humanitarian aid to Gaza, we also aim to foster conditions in which a Palestinian state can be fully realized, a state that is a responsible partner, is at peace with Israel and its Arab neighbors and is accountable to its people.’

Her remarks reflect the lethal liberal delusion that the establishment of a Palestinian state would bring peace to the region, and that humanitarian aid is necessary to make that state more possible. No recognition that the Palestinians have received more aid than any other people on earth – and have used it to wage genocidal war, because their grievance is not the absence of a state but the existence of Israel.

Clinton’s delusion is the distillation of the key liberal fallacy that the perfection of the world lies in the application of reason; that people are all innately reasonable, and will always act in furtherance of their own rational self-interest.  Seen through this prism, Israel’s destruction of Palestinian infrastructure – indeed, any action it takes to prevent Gazans from murdering Israeli citizens – is frightfully inconsiderate because it mucks up the only real agenda in the Middle East which is to set up a Palestinian state -- not the fact that Israel is under permanent siege from a real agenda of genocide. So Gaza’s donors told themselves this:

A new drive to revive the Middle East peace process is needed because violence could easily erupt again in Gaza, wrecking aid efforts, international donors were told at an aid conference today... ‘We are confronted with a serious dilemma,’ Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told the final news conference. ‘Will we once again reconstruct something we built a few years ago and now has been hammered and flattened?’

Note – the dilemma is not whether the donors’ money will be used to hammer and flatten Israel; it is only whether Israel will give the donors a poor return for their investment in Gaza, by having the gall to seek to protect its citizens against the violence that the donors’ money will fund.

As Tony Blair said after a visit to Gaza and Sderot:

‘I wanted to come to hear for myself first-hand from people in Gaza, whose lives have been so badly impacted by the recent conflict. These are the people who need to be the focus of all our efforts for peace and progress from now on.’

Note -- the people of southern Israel, who have been living in shelters almost continuously, aren’t the real victims of this conflict. That honour goes to those who have been trying to kill them. It is those people who will now be ‘the focus of all our efforts for peace and progress’. And Blair poses as a friend of Israel.

Did I say liberals were rational?