Further Cuts This Week in U.S. Aid to Palestinians
March 29th, 2007 by Stephen
The White House announced this week that it had reduced its security assistance package for the Palestinian Authority from $86 million down to $59 million, in response to objections from Congress, led by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-CA).
An article in last week’s Economist sees the financial boycott of the Palestinian government as producing only slight political gains but great economic damage.
Meanwhile, the AP recently reported that international aid to the Palestinians actually increased by 20% last year, despite the U.S.-led boycott, raising questions that Western aid may just be replaced by other sources. And Stratfor (subscription required) quotes Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad as saying yesterday that the Palestinian Authority expects a pledge of $2.7 billion from this week’s Arab summit in Riyadh.
Posted in Foreign Aid, Palestine |
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March 29th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
The report that international aid to the Palestinians actually increased by 20% last year is quite believable. While some Western aid to the Palestinian authority may have been replaced by other sources, the main reason for an aid increase is that Western aid has been redirected from the Palestinian Authority to non-governmental organizations and relief agencies in the West Bank and Gaza. While the U.S. an other Western donors have largely ceased assistance to the Palestinian Authority, they have always declared that humanitarian aid would be unaffected. (However, humanitarian aid programs that had contact with official PA institutions were impacted.)
Though the aid boycott is often characterized as “U.S.-led,” the U.S. has in the past very rarely provided direct assistance to the Palestinian Authority. The U.S. training and equipment for border officers and presidential guards is an exception rather than the rule, judging from the past few years. Most of the direct Western aid to the Palestinian Authority was provied by Europeans.