Weaponizing Aid: How aid dependency maintains colonialism in Palestine (original) (raw)
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Geographies of Aid Intervention in Palestine | 2010
Recent scholarship has not only highlighted the minimal effectiveness of the aid industry in the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories, but also its complicity in sustaining the Israeli occupation. This research has shown that blind faith in economic development keeping alive the “peace process”, and the dominant “post‐ conflict” framework shaping most development intervention since the Oslo accords, have altogether contributed to the burial of the root causes and socio‐political realities of contemporary Palestine. Less research, however, has been done on the micro‐geographies of aid intervention and the ways in which these practices are negotiated, implemented, and contested. The aim of this conference is to critically explore the ways in which aid intervention reshapes socio‐political, spatial, economic relations and the environment, and consider alternative forms of aid that respond to Palestinians needs and rights not only in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but across multiple borders.
International Aid to Palestine: Time to Change Course
Middle East Eye, 2017
Regardless of the quantitative dimensions of aid flows, facts on the ground and the socio-economic indicators point to an obvious conclusion: it is time to lay the Oslo’s failed aid model to rest. A quarter of a century is sufficient to draw multiple lessons but one lesson is particularly pertinent: aid flow, however big it becomes, will never be effective if it continues to be poured in the skewed and distorted political and economic frameworks of the Oslo Accords. The development paradigm in Palestine must urgently be shifted from one that considers development as a technocratic, apolitical and “neutral” approach into a model that recognises structures of power, relations of colonial dominance and rearticulates processes of development as linked to the struggle for rights, resistance and emancipation.
Is Donor Aid Empowering or Occupying Palestinians
Foreign aid has long been an instrument of foreign policy and diplomacy in Israel-Palestine used to «buy peace » by providing Palestinians with development aid. Starting with the first international donor conference of the Oslo peace process in October 1993, foreign aid was intended to demonstrate tangible peace dividends to Palestinians through development policy designed to engender economic growth and modernization, thereby building public support among Palestinians for further diplomacy. Yet, despite great optimism by international donors that well-designed aid policy would lead to growth, the very idea that aid can sustain economic development is highly controversial. On one side, critics argue that development aid is not neutral and development policy a rationalizing technical discourse concealing a bureaucratic power used to dominate aid recipients. That power is sustained by unspoken and unwritten aims constituting a hidden agenda, for which aid is really given. For that reason, critics argue aid should be resisted. This view stands in stark contrast with policy instrumentalists, who have dominated the Palestinian aid process. Those believe that well- designed policy is a rational (and objective) problem solving exercise that can solve real world problems. Their approach is characterized by an emphasis on projects designed per specific normative values (neoliberalism), over results. This paper describes the heated debate about Palestinian aid through these different viewpoints, before arguing that the critics are closer to the truth as Palestinian aid has been exerting a hidden dominance over Palestinians that helps to sustain Israeli settler-colonial policy financially and politically.
International Aid to Palestinians: A Cursed Gift
Current Anthropology, 2017
Over $30 billion has been spent since 1993 by international donors as aid for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip (OECD 2016). This “investment” in peace and development has made Palestinians one of the highest per capita recipients of nonmilitary aid in the world. In spite of those sums, however, peace and development remain elusive, and this aid has failed to achieve its three main objectives: lasting peace, effective and accountable Palestinian institutions, and sustainable socioeconomic development. Instead, Palestinians are forced to live in an aid-development paradox: increased amounts of aid are associated with major declines in socioeconomic and development indicators. This aid has failed the Palestinian people miserably. It has failed to make them feel more secure, it has failed to reverse the cycles of de-development, it has entrenched the status of a captive Palestinian economy that is unproductive and aid-reliant, it has created structural deficiencies in the governance realm, and it has sustained and subsidized the Israeli military occupation. It also sustains the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), which is a heavy burden on the Palestinian people, and has resulted in major negative transformations in the Palestinian civil society, creating an “NGO republic” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Around 10% of aid is received by the highly aid-reliant Palestinian NGOs (DeVoir and Tartir 2009).
2012
“Receiving aid is not just like receiving an elephant but like making love to an elephant; there is no pleasure in it, you run the risk of being crushed and it takes years before you see the results. Aid is twice cursed: it curses him who gives and him who receives” (Streeten 1976). Aid and Development in Palestine: Anything, but Linear Relationship. Can Aid Contribute to Development?, Birzeit University Working Paper 2012/4, February 2012.
Political Economy of Foreign Aid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories: A Conceptual Framing
Political Economy of Palestine: Critical, Interdisciplinary, and Decolonial Perspectives, 2021
Over $40 billion has been spent by international donors as foreign aid for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip since the Oslo Accord was signed in 1993. This makes them one of the highest per capita recipients of non-military aid in the world. That aid was designed as development programming meant to foster conditions that Western donors considered necessary for peacebuilding with Israel. However, their development aid has failed to achieve three main objectives peacemakers envisaged: a lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis, effective and accountable Palestinian institutions, and sustainable socioeconomic development. This chapter addresses the political economy of the nexus of development aid and the Palestinian de-development process taking place under Israeli colonial rule, by examining the different donor approaches to understand what went wrong. It does this by categorizing and assessing the way policymakers and analysts have approached Palestinian development, based on analysis of key features, underpinning assumptions and arguments. This resulted in four categories – Instrumentalism; Critical Instrumentalism; Critics; and Neo-Colonialism – some of which are comfortable with the status quo, and some that want to challenge it. The chapter concludes by arguing any political economy driven analysis or framing of the impact of foreign aid in the Palestinian context, necessitates recognizing the inherent and embedded structures of power and relations of colonial dominance and control in the development paradigm and de-development processes.
2014
Since 1993 the international community has invested more than $24 billion in 'peace and development' in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). That aid was meant originally to support the Oslo Peace Process through economic development. However, neither peace nor development has been realized, and both seem increasingly unlikely. While examining donor operations, priorities and the 'aid-for-peace' agenda, this article investigates whether patterns in oPt donor aid have changed following the Arab uprisings of 2011. Building on 28 original interviews with Palestine aid actors, it was found that patterns remain unchanged and that donors remain transfixed on a long failed 'Investment in Peace' framework that was designed for economic development by the World Bank back in 1993. By comparing these research findings with the literature on aid to Palestine, this article argues that donors are not ready to alter a framework dominated by policy instrumentalists who emphasize pre-determined normative values over actual results, quietly trading financial inducements to Palestinians to forgo political rights within a 'peace dividends' model. Meanwhile, critics of the existing aid framework remain largely ignored and have little influence on aid policy, in spite of two decades of instrumentalist failure to produce peace or economic growth using the existing model.