Anne Lieberman had an extraordinary roundup of the economic aid the Palestinians have received over the last three years, since the death of Arafat (who himself had received billions in aid as a result of the “peace” process).
The billions in new aid provided or promised includes record donations through UNRWA, direct US aid to the PA, G8 nation pledges of annual assistance, EU contributions, UN assistance, American Jewish donations of greenhouses, etc., etc. — it takes a long time to read Anne’s post.
And what has been the result? Here is what Condoleezza Rice acknowledged last week, in the course of a Q&A session at the U.S.-Palestinian Public-Private Partnership:
[W]e’re going to have a donors conference on the 17th. This is an opportunity for the international community to signal very strongly that it intends to make sure that the resources are there for the Palestinian Government under Salam Fayyad to provide for the Palestinian people and to begin to provide a framework in which economic development can flourish. It’s going to take flat support of budgets for a while because there really isn’t a functioning Palestinian economy. And I think we all understand that. And so finding a way to help the government just function for a while has been a very strong preoccupation of mine.
As we head toward still another “opportunity” for the international community to “signal” that the “resources are there” to support a Palestinian government that has already been given billions but still needs an American Secretary of State “preoccupied” with helping it “just function,” Barry Rubin has an important article on “You Owe Us Bigtime: The Distortion of Palestinian Aid Politics:”
My favorite sentence of the week is this one: "Asking for record $5.8 billion in aid through 2010, Palestinians promise fiscal reform." Karen Laub wrote on this subject for the AP, December 5, 2007. The request came from "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas" to double projected aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA).
What is funny about that opening sentence is that the PA has received so much money before and squandered it. Reform promises have been made and broken for more than 13 years. It is hard to remember the PA has existed that long with so little positive achievement. If Palestinians have such a bad economy it is not due to the "occupation" or to Israel but to their own leaders’ greed, incompetence, failure to end violence, inability to present an attractive investment climate, and unwillingness to impose stability on their own lands.
So how does an AP story deal with the unintentional humor of the idea that pouring more money into the PA will lead to any diplomatic progress or that this regime will make better use of the funds? Remember that to a very large extent the
This is such an extremely important story that it is worth examining in detail.
According to the PA’s own plan:
"Seventy percent of the aid is to go for budget support, including $120 million a month to pay wages for the bloated public sector, and 30 percent is to be spent on development projects."
The article at least uses the word "bloated." Budget support is not development aid but simply pays the bill for those unable or unwilling to pay for themselves. But the article does not tell readers this nor that the public sector’s "bloated" nature is due to corruption, patronage for buying political support, and a hugely disproportionate military/police apparatus.
Staying on a war footing with
Anne Lieberman’s post and Barry Rubin’s article are both worth reading in their entirety.