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| New start? Israeli foreign minister Livni (l.) met Palestinian President Abbas Sunday amid hopes for political progress. Thibault Camus/AP |
International donors are cautiously optimistic on eve of Palestinian aid meeting
Palestinians hope for pledges of $6 billion over three years at the Paris conference.
By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the December 17, 2007 edition
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PARIS - With Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas seeking a large increase in aid for his would-be country, the international community gathers at a donors' conference here Monday to grapple with how to turn the billions of dollars the Palestinians receive into a tool for peace.
The answer is simple, the Palestinians and many donors agree, although achieving it will be anything but: Either the economic assistance is accompanied by political progress toward a Palestinian state and an easing of restrictions on Palestinian life, or the money the world gives will serve only as humanitarian aid with little long-term impact.
The Paris gathering – which Mr. Abbas hopes will result in nearly $6 billion in aid over the next three years – is a logical follow-up to the Anapolis Middle East peace conference that relaunched Israeli-Palestinian negotiations last month. If the economic and political tracks move forward together, experts say, prospects for an elusive peace accord brighten.
"The worst thing that could happen in Paris is an effort that essentially subsidizes the status quo," says Scott Lasensky, an expert at the US Institute for Peace in Washington. "There is a sense of optimism about a new start, but the challenge will be to break the mold of the last seven years and turn the aid that has become a short-term humanitarian lifeline back into the building blocks of Palestinian institutions."
The history of Arab-Israeli peace efforts offers hope that the challenge can be met, he adds. "If you look at the larger picture of the last 30-35 years, aid has been a fairly dynamic tool in Arab-Israeli diplomacy," he says. "It's given the parties a stake in building and maintaining peaceful relationships."
Examples include the Israel-Egypt peace accords, and Israeli-Jordanian peace.
But that constructive element of international assistance has been lost over the past seven years in the Palestinian territories, experts say, as violence replaced negotiations and living conditions in an occupied land hardened. The dismantling and collapse of Palestinian institutions such as schools, public services, and courts means that more money went to simply keeping people alive – and without viable institutions, more of that aid was lost down what experts refer to as the "rat hole of corruption."
International aid actually increased in 2006 in the wake of the Hamas electoral victory and the divide that followed between Fatah forces in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. In fact, aid to the Palestinians has doubled since 2000 – though little if any of that money went toward building much-needed civic infrastructure.
Outside experts are adamant that this scenario of "throwing good money after bad" won't change without political progress. In its latest report on the Palestinian territories, the World Bank concludes that international assistance can not have "sustainable effects" without a change in the day-to-day situation.
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