International Aid to Palestinians: A Cursed Gift (original) (raw)
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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.
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.
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.
Donor Aid Effectiveness and Do No Harm in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, 2018
On the 25th Anniversary of the Oslo Accords, this report assesses the approach taken by 9 of the top Western donor countries/institutions that have for decades determined the structure of development aid in the Occupied Palestinian territory (OPT). It does this by focusing on the period 2010-16 through a quantitative keyword and qualitative analysis of 80 of their combined reports, and interviews with several dozen officials who contribute to the shaping of policy. This examination was conducted in order to offer a better understanding of how these donors perceive the Oslo Peace Process, Palestinian development, Israeli military rule, the ongoing colonisation of Palestinian land and the conflict resulting out of the combination of these processes. This is all carried out using an ‘Aid Effectiveness’ lens, with an emphasis on local leadership and local knowledge, but while also bearing in mind a ‘fragile and conflicted states’ framework and the ‘do no harm’ principle. Thus, the report’s analysis acknowledges that all donors involved in a conflict situation become actors in that conflict. For this reason, they should strive to provide their assistance in as neutral a manner possible, and be cognisant of the actual context they are intervening in (through strong analysis) in order to not make conditions worse. The 9 Western actors analysed comprise not only some of the biggest sources of funding in the $30+ billion spent on ‘Oslo aid’ since 1993, but are also the ‘intellectual drivers’ who have determined just how that aid – and Palestinian economic and social institutions – is shaped. They include the United States, which has dominated the Middle East Peace Process (MEPP) politically as arbiter of Israeli-Palestinian peace-building; the European Union, which with its member states has acted as the leading financial contributor of Oslo aid, and the World Bank, which has played a leading role reporting on the state of Palestinian development and guiding donors through the bilateral giving process. Other influential actors analysed include the IMF, Canada, the UK, Norway, Sweden and Germany, all of whom have been funding a peace-building model built on an underlying precept that Palestinians need to be endowed with liberal democratic institutions in order for them to be able to cohabitate in peace with Israel, and where that peace will be cemented based on free market international trade and development funding to incentivise the Palestinians to abandon violence. This report also provides context for living and political conditions in the OPT, which are then compared to the donors’ policies and a description of each donor. In so doing, it sheds light on a gap that exists between the overarching Oslo aid model and donors’ policies, with actual conditions in the OPT and what is considered effective aid. The report also describes a noticeable rhetorical gap that exists between donors’ policies with their actions, and identifies nuances in the donors’ positions. The report further engages expert opinions on the state of Oslo and the OPT, while providing recommendations for future research into the role of these powerful and under-researched donors. Funding- The research for this study was carried out by Dr Jeremy Wildeman at the University of Bath’s ‘Department for Social and Policy Sciences’, with funding support from the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF).
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.
The European Union (EU) and its member states shoulder a significant part of the aid devoted to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestinians in Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). They do so according to a development aid model that is driven intellectually by the World Bank, under US political oversight. This article locates European aid in the World Bank-led approach and analyses its shortcomings. It starts with an overview of how such an approach came to characterize economic development in the Oslo Peace Process. It highlights its fundamental ambiguities when it comes to analysing the occupation and settlements. It then focuses on the issue of settlement-building and de- development in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) that punctuates the failure of the aid model. It concludes by analysing current thinking in aid effectiveness and how it could be adopted as an alternative approach by the Europeans.
Weaponizing Aid: How aid dependency maintains colonialism in Palestine
The Reality of Aid - Asia Pacific, 2024
The world is witnessing protracted conflicts on various fronts, with the most prominent being the Russian-Ukraine war and the Israeli attacks on Palestine. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 60 contexts are considered fragile wherein 24% of the world's population live. 1 The OECD defines fragility as the "combination of exposure to risk and insufficient coping capacities of the state, system and/ or communities to manage, absorb or mitigate those risks." 2 It measures fragility across six dimensions-economic, environmental, political, security, societal and human. Given that fragile and conflictaffected contexts have limited domestic resources and capacities to address crucial development challenges and to make progress towards the sustainable development goals (SDGs), Official Development Assistance (ODA) is a very important public resource that can contribute to their resilience to
The Politics of International Aid to the Gaza Strip
Journal of Palestine Studies, 2012
International aid to the Palestinian Authority is conditioned in part on democratization and good governance. However, since Hamas's victory in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections and its takeover of the Gaza Strip, aid agencies have supported the international boycott of the Hamas government. This article argues that aid agencies, by operating in Gaza while boycotting its government, subvert their mandates and serve the political interests of donors and the PA rather than the humanitarian and development needs of Gazans. As a consequence, assistance has, inadvertently and unintentionally, increased Gazans' dependence on humanitarian aid, impeded economic development, and enabled Israel to maintain its occupation and the blockade of Gaza.
Journal of Peacebuilding & Development
Official development assistance for statebuilding provided to the Palestinian Authority (PA) has increasingly been focused on technocratic governance reforms that fail to address the root causes of conflict between Israel and Palestinians. A prime example is an emphasis on preparing mediumterm development plans despite the fact that the ongoing occupation prevents their effective implementation. The donor community is bound by the Fragile States Principles to strengthen state capacity to help prevent recurrence of conflict. Drawing on publicly available data and government documents, as well as interviews with stakeholders in PA development policy, this article identifies shortfalls in statebuilding strategy benchmarked against the Fragile States Principles. In order to fulfil their peacebuilding mandate, it is crucial for the donor community to address the role of the Government of Israel in governance failures in the occupied Palestinian territory and engage civil society more effectively.