DUBAI, April 13, 2007 (WAFA) - Failing a resumption of EU aid to the Palestinian Authority, the Hamas-Fatah compromise structure risks collapse, said today a Dubai-based daily newspaper.

"Currently operating at under one-third of required annual expenses-and that too following more than a year of Western economic blockade- the Palestinian state system is in state of paralysis, with (at the risk of repetition) the common man facing the worst humanitarian conditions in more than half a century", opined the English language Khaleej Times.

EU's collective decision to limit extended engagement to 'technical involvement' betrays the bloc's bent with regard to the US-Israel choke on Palestine and the international outcry it has provoked.

"The West has clearly failed to live-up its part of the understood bargain, that political maturity on part of bickering Palestinian factions will be matched, if not bettered, by the more circumspect West", said the paper.

Israel, America and the EU, said the paper, have still not come to terms with the Palestinian people's decision to bring Hamas to power in a landslide vote a little over a year ago.

"Ironically, the economic sanctions have had a very direct impact on those very people, in effect teaching them a very harsh lesson for 'siding with the enemy".

"Unfortunately, though, the West seems unable to read the clear writing on the wall in the Arab hinterland." "In apparently trying to subdue the suffering Palestinians to a point from where mounting a collective, hard fought struggle is well nigh impossible, it is only further angering the mad mob of fanatics that is consumed with a hatred for all things Western." The paper said the most valuable lesson (for the West) to come out of the ongoing intercourse of events in the Middle East is "deja vu of how quickly democracies can find growing anger on the external front translating into public and therefore political minuses at home." "Indeed, continuing the financial squeeze will break the unity government, and in breaking it may well lie the seeds of further eventual weakening of the powerful though unwilling to bend West," concluded the Khaleej Times.

A.D (10:30 P) (07:30 GMT)