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| Volume X, Winter 2003, Number 4 |
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| EXCERPT: Missing the Mark: Foreign Aid to the Palestinians |
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| Judy Barsalou |
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Dr. Barsalou is director of the grant program at the United States Institute of Peace. This article was originally prepared as a paper for the United Nations Seminar on Assistance to the Palestinian People, Geneva, July 15-16, 2003.*
Throughout various stages of the
Israeli occupation of the West
Bank and Gaza, and especially
since the onset of the Oslo period in 1993, the Palestinians have relied heavily on development funding and humanitarian aid provided by the international community. While the international response to Palestinian aid needs has not always been as rapid or complete as the Palestinians have needed, and has not always taken the form the Palestinians have desired, the donor community has been relatively generous in its efforts to build up the capacities of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and to meet the basic humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people.
Foreign aid has proved crucial to the survival of the PA and the Palestinians, but it has fallen far short of meeting the development aspirations of both donors and recipients. The limitations of the provision of foreign aid as a development strategy have been obvious almost from the start of the Oslo period. With their emphasis on creating security for Israel, the Oslo agreements created 227 Palestinian enclaves separated by areas controlled by Israel, resulting in Israel's ability to prevent the free movement of Palestinian goods and people.1 The consequent disruption of the Palestinian economy has had a crucial impact on the shape and effectiveness of foreign aid to the Palestinians during the Oslo period and beyond.
Problems in the provision of foreign aid became especially visible with Israel's reoccupation of substantial portions of the West Bank and Gaza in March-April 2002, during which extensive portions of the Palestinian infrastructure and thousands of public and private buildings -- in part paid for by foreign aid -- were damaged or destroyed.2 Chronic malnutrition and a mounting humanitarian crisis in the West Bank and Gaza have been ameliorated, but not eliminated, by a massive outpouring of humanitarian assistance from the international community. As long as the occupation continues and the Israeli closure policy cripples the Palestinian economy, foreign aid can address primarily short-term humanitarian needs rather than longer-term development goals that remain the priority of the Palestinians and the international donor community.
This article addresses two sets of issues: First, it outlines the record of donor assistance to the Palestinian people over the last decade, and details a number of ways in which that record has differed from donor involvement in most other developing-country settings. Second, the article analyzes tensions and difficulties inherent in the donor-recipient relationship in general and the provision of foreign aid to the Palestinian people in particular.
* The author wishes to thank Ryan Sawak and Adam Bowman for their research assistance, and Peter Gubser for his insights. Judy Barsalou, and not the above-mentioned persons or the United States Institute of Peace, remains solely responsible for all the views expressed in this article.
1 Geoffrey Aronson, "Recapitulating the Redeployments: The Israel-PLO Interim Agreements," Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, Washington, DC, Information Brief No. 32, April 2000.
2 Salem Ajluni estimates that the total lost income-earning opportunities during the first 27 months of the intifada amounted to $4.8 billion, nearly equal to the Palestinian GDP in 1999. See his article, "The Palestinian Economy and the Second Intifada," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3, Spring 2003, p. 69. Physical damage resulting from the conflict rose from $305 million at the end of 2001 to $728 million by the end of August 2002. "Two Years of Intifada, Closures and Palestinian Economic Crisis: An Assessment," Washington DC: The World Bank, March 5, 2003, p. 1.
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