At least this is how the donors' role has become to be perceived, not by a minority but by the mainstream Palestinian, as was proved both by the landslide victory of the Hamas-led opposition in the January 25 legislative elections and by the failure of the "Oslo camp" to avert that victory in spite of the billions of dollars channelled to it by the donors.
The donors' collective punishment against the Palestinian people after the victory of Hamas has only reinforced that perception among the Palestinians and at the same time added fuel to the fire by exposing the donors' aid as also devoid even of its widely-promoted humanitarian aspect to be seen as it is: A conditional political funding.
Their financial and diplomatic embroilment in the Palestinian internal dialogue has affected their image from bad to worse. The donors and their democracies are now publicly criticized as being in collusion with a plan to bring down the Palestinian government and to bring the PA to its knees politically.
The Fatah-led Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the former ruling government of the PA, had accepted the conditions from the start and the survival of the PA became hostage to the ensuing status quo, but the Hamas-led incumbent government who won the January elections is refusing to subscribe to the same conditions; hence the internal crisis.
Taking sides in the crisis by the donors is a position encouraged by Israel, with an eye on escalating a dispute into a conflict with the aim of doing away with the outcome of the January elections, including the winning Hamas, its government and its ideology that adopts all forms of resistance to the Israeli occupation, hopefully to bury for the foreseeable future any expectations that such an ideology might inspire.
Meanwhile the people's plight keeps worsening. The PA bureaucracy went on an open-ended strike early in September, paralyzing the Fatah-dominated rank and file of the government, whose executive, legislative and local branches were brought to a halt by Israel's kidnapping of more than 60 cabinet ministers including a deputy premier, MPs including the parliamentary speaker, and mayors.
Only the PA presidency is kept floating politically and financially, thanks to the donors, who are now in a predicament trying to whitewash their collective punishment and counterproductive role by meagre and selective "humanitarian" aid.
True the donors' money has been a vital lifeline for the survival of the grateful Palestinians under the Israeli occupation, but it neither alleviated their economic plight nor served their political goals of liberation and self-determination, and doesn't promise to do so in the foreseeable future.
"The Palestinians are today the largest per capita recipients of foreign aid in the world. (But) According to the 2004 World Bank report, they are suffering 'the worst economic depression in modern history.'" (2)
The World Bank predicted that the PA's GDP per capita will fall to $1,063 in 2007; the unemployment rate will rise to 31%, and the poverty rate to 50%.
"The paradox is that although at the declaratory level there has been a growing acceptance of the two-state solution, the feasibility of its materialization dramatically decreased as the decade unfolded," Anne Le More, of Oxford University, wrote in a study titled "Killing with Kindness: Funding the Demise of a Palestinian State." (3)
"In the course of the last decade, the international donor community has financed not only Israel's continued occupation but also its expansionist agenda-at the expense of international law, of the well-being of the Palestinian population, of their right to self-determination, and of the international community's own stated developmental and political objectives. Looking ahead, this bodes well neither for the emergence of a viable Palestinian state nor for the security-collective and individual-of the Israeli and Palestinian people," Le More concluded. (4)
It is high time for the Palestinian donors to reconsider their mission to be conducive to peace-making.
*Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist in Kuwait, Jordan, UAE and Palestine. He is based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
Notes
(1) Agencies quoting United Nation's top aid official, Jan Egeland, in Stockholm on August 31, 2006.
(2) Ghada Karmi, The Guardian, December 31, 2005.
(3) International Affairs, Volume 81, Issue 5, Page 981 - October 2005.
(4) Ibid.
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