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Austerity for Europe – increased EU aid for the Palestinians
The EU is set to blunder into a new funding fiasco for the Palestinians. Why should the European taxpayer be asked to throw yet more money at a hopeless cause?
Amidst Europe’s worst economic crisis in recent memory, the European Parliament (EP) has just decided to raise Europe’s aid to the Palestinians by €100 million - 30 percent more than previous years.
At the end of tough negotiations among the European Union’s institutions over the 2012 budget, the EP somehow made room for an additional €18 billion over the €129 billion cap imposed by expenditures-wary EU member states. Among the additional line items is that extra €100 million for the Palestinians.
An extra €100 million may not seem like that much compared to an overall budget of €147 billion for 2012, but it cannot be ignored that this is money the EU does not have. Moreover, the EU is pledging taxpayer money at a time when the only guarantee it will be spent responsibly has just disappeared.
The EU budget decision was sealed just days before a highly anticipated summit between Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled Meshal of Hamas – a designated terrorist group in the EU. The two factions have been in a state of a low-level civil war since 2007, but agreed on Thursday to set a date for elections that would begin to end their feud.
According to reports in the Palestinian press, the two Palestinian rivals have not yet decided on their choice for the new premier. But their four likely choices look poor, ranging from Hamas loyalist Jamal al-Khodary to Mohammed Mustafa, the economic advisor to Mahmoud Abbas who has played a leading role in the creation of the ossified Palestinian political system.
No matter who is named, it will mean the end of Salam Fayyad – the moderate Palestinian Prime minister and former World Bank official who, thanks to his views, credentials and sound management, temporarily restored credibility, transparency and due diligence to Palestinian governance.
In other words, the EU investment is likely to backfire, and not for the first time.
The EU has been a financial backer of the Palestinian cause since 1971, when its institutional predecessor, the European Community, started funding The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN agency in charge of underwriting Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
UNRWA is a bottomless pit of international aid – designed to keep Palestinian refugees in limbo, rather than resettling them, as the UN has done for every other displaced population in history. UNRWA is a waste of money by definition, even under the most stringent accountancy standards, since its raison d’être is to perpetuate the Palestinian refugee problem instead of solving it.
EU support dramatically increased in 1994, when the signing of the Oslo Accords seemed to offer a promise of Palestinian-Israeli peace, with huge sums ploughed into Palestinian state-building. From its outset, the Palestinian Authority was rife with corruption and wastefulness, but the wastefulness never drove off donors.
From 1994 to 2009, the EU donated €4.26 billion to the Palestinian Authority through various channels – and this figure does not take into account individual EU member states’ donations to the PA.
A 2005 investigation launched by OLAF, the EU anti-fraud office, into allegations of misuse of funding by the PA to support terrorist activities found “no conclusive evidence of support of armed attacks or unlawful activities financed by the European Commission’s contributions to the budget. However, the possibility of misuse of the Palestinian Authority’s budget and other resources cannot be excluded, due to the fact that the internal and external audit capacity in the Palestinian Authority is still underdeveloped.”
Rather than suspending its financial support, the EU responded by continuing to contribute substantial sums to the PA budget, even after Hamas – the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood known best for its suicide attacks and other violent acts against civilians – won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections and briefly took over the PA government before the 2007 Palestinian civil war left Hamas in control of Gaza while PA President Mahmoud Abbas clung to power in the West Bank.
This time, at least, the EU made an effort to improve Palestinian governance, and began to exact more stringent conditions and guarantees for the use of EU funds. It also established an institution now based in Ramallah (EUPOLCOPPS) that, among other things, helps training law enforcement agencies’ personnel in anti-corruption practices.
In recent years, despite the fractured Palestinian political landscape, the first and last line of defence for Palestinian financial transparency has been Prime Minister Fayyad.
If Fayyad stays on as finance minister, he will no doubt attempt to enforce the practices of good governance and transparency that has earned him accolades in the West. However, there is no avoiding the fact that a unity government will represent an unpalatable marriage between Hamas and its jihadi ideology, and Fatah, replete with corrupt autocrats who have squandered international donor funds for years.
In a year of austerity, when European citizens must make additional sacrifices to avoid bankruptcy caused by reckless spending, opaque accounting practices and corrupt wastefulness, it is not too much to ask that public monies be pledged only against guarantees of nonviolence and good governance.
The coming Palestinian unity government promises to fall short on both counts. Why should Europe’s tax payers increase their pledge?
Emanuele Ottolenghi is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD); Jonathan Schanzer is the Vice President for Research at FDD
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Eeerm, Israel is by far the biggest recipient of US aid. It's unlikely Israel would even survive without aid, so why deny it to those whom they should be paying reparations and compensations to? Why should anyone keep funding Israel in times of austerity?
They are obviously getting returns for their money: the continuing war against the Jews.
@usually correct. Er the reason why the US gives aid to Israel is that Israel is an allied liberal-democracy facing down an existential threat for more than six decades. They use their aid well and transparently. The Palestinian leadership has consistently rejected peace and squanders aid on self-enrichment and the financing of terror. The difference between the two sides is pretty clear. Hence the differing postures the US adopts. Simple really.
@Dib Muslim-hating Nonsense. It's Palestinians who face the existential threat as their lands are being occupied and taken, that's why millions of them have been ethnically cleansed into refugee camps. Israel is a right-wing extremist Theocracy who wants to take even more land.
Incredible. How the various electorates stand for this I cannot fathom. When similar amounts were proposed for Greece, the EU thought the world was coming to an end.
A smarter deal would be to simply put the PLO and Hamas into the EU as another member state. And Israel could wash their hands of having to support them via electricity, fuel, taxes, cargo and such. Just toss it all over the wall to Brussels. And with the free movement of Arabs from the PLO and Hamas back and forth into Europe it would effectively end any arguments about 'blockade'. They could join the Eurozone and the EU could support them more directly and more efficiently. Europe is more or less finished in a generation anyway and in the next few years you're going to see Sharia inspired officially sanctioned Muslim Autonomous Zones in European nations. So they may as well start preparing for it. The EU gets...what is the number today? 400 gagziggity trillion Palestinians who are refugees. And in exchange, since they're going to be ethnically cleansed sooner or later, Israel takes in the million or so Jews in Europe today.
Usually incorrect, no actually Pakistan is. So unless you've finally uncovered the super secret 2000 year old plot that Jews covertly run Pakistan, I'd say you were off the mark.
There is no bigger fool than an European fool! This whole deal was done hush hush so no EU taxpayer would know about it.
Usually Correct is a highly inappropriate pen name when you have got so much, so wrong.
When the Arab states pay reparation to the Jews from Arab lands who were thrown out following the 1948 war, perhaps there can be discussions about reparations for the original Palestinian Arab refugees, but not the generations of children that followed them.
Secondly, I see no Muslim hating rhetoric here, so it must be your imagination.
Thirdly, 'millions' of them have not been ethnically cleansed - this is a total fabrication, so when you make this kind of ridiculous claim, your pen name is shown as being completely wrong. Perhaps you could change it to Usually Dishonest.
@Usually Correct: not this time. If I remember my statistics classes correctly, when a population is subjected to ethnic cleansing, the numbers go DOWN, not UP. The numbers of Palestinians keep on increasing, leading to calls for more and more money.
Which suggests that whoever is supposedly ethnically cleansing the Palestinians is doing a remarkably poor job of it.
Usually Correct: Did you even read the article? It's about European aid to the P.A. As such your comment about US aid to Israel rather makes it seem that you have a bee in your bonnet that prevents you from rational thought and you can only carp on about one subject.
While we're on it though, it costs the US about $7b a year just to maintain its bases of American troops in Germany. US aid to Israel is just under $3b a year, most of that is spent in the USA and no US troops are involved. Of course overall US spending to ensure the safety of Europe and Korea dwarfs the $7b. If there are savings to be had, that would be the best place to start. (I do commend you on your concern for the American economy.)
At least Israel contributes to the world via its scientific, medical, agricultural and technological innovations. The latter now to the extent that I doubt many ordinary, everyday people would manage to get through a day without using something that was either invented or developed in Israel.
As for aid to the Palestinians: any who support their cause should want to see them begin to built independant and productive lives for themselves, not remain in the permanent rut of refugeeism. These people are political pawns and are parasitically infested with those who have a vested interest in keeping them that way.
Israel receives no economic aid but military aid from the USA. And in fact it is mostly a subvention for American military industries. Israel not being part of NATO pays for US equipment a much higher cost than NATO members. So the truth is that their is no real aid to Israel.
It beggars belief that the EU is throwing good money after bad in this way. They're only making matters worse in the Middle East and taxpayers are being asked to foot tthe bill. Madness...