Israel Matzav

Your tax dollars at work funding 'Palestinian' terror and a stagnant economy

This article ought to be read by every member of the incoming Congress. Caroline Glick provides a primer of where American tax dollars are going in the 'Palestinian Authority' and in Hamastan (yes, in Hamastan). It's not pretty.

DESPITE HIS campaign to boycott Israel and punish Palestinians with economic ties to the Jewish state, Fayyad is the US's favorite Palestinian. Since PA President Mahmoud Abbas appointed Fayyad to lead the rump Fatah government in Judea and Samaria after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, US aid to the PA has increased by more than 700 percent. Most of this aid has gone to propping up Fayyad.

The US directly finances his budget. It funds and trains a Palestinian military. And it subsidizes his programs to build governmental institutions that loyally carry out his anti-Israel policies.

Last Wednesday, during a joint press conference with Fayyad, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the US will give the PA an additional $150 million in aid to supplement the $400 million in financial assistance that President Barack Obama pledged in June. This supplement comes in response to Fayyad's claim that he needs $500 million to close his budget shortfall.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the PA is the largest recipient of foreign assistance in the world. According to Bloomberg, it received $1.2 billion in 2009 and will receive $1.8 billion by the end of the year.

The US provided the PA with $500.9 million in 2009 and, before Clinton's announcement, was scheduled to provide it with $550 million in 2011. This assistance does not include US financial support for UNRWA, an agency devoted exclusively to providing welfare benefits to Palestinians while subordinating itself to a Palestinian political agenda. The US is the single largest donor to UNRWA. Last year the $268 million US taxpayers gave the UN agency constituted 27 percent of UNRWA's budget.

...

Take US security assistance to the Palestinians. The US responded to the Hamas takeover in Gaza by massively increasing its military assistance to Fatah. According to the CRS, between 2007 and August 2010, US assistance to the PA security services totaled $400 million. They received $100 million in 2010 and are set to receive $150 million in 2011. This assistance has paid for the training and outfitting of 400 Presidential Guards and 2,700 soldiers in the National Security Forces. The US plans to train five additional 500-man NSF battalions.

The CRS report acknowledged these forces have improved the law and order situation in Judea and Samaria. But it also asserted that "uncertainty remains over the durability of these improvements and their connection with broader Palestinian economic and civil society development and with progress on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as well as over the willingness and ability of the forces to incapacitate militants."

Indeed, there is little reason to believe that these US-trained forces will not join forces with Hamas and turn their guns on Israel in the future. Since 1996, PA security services have taken a leading role in the terror war against Israel.

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Then there is the US direct assistance to the PA's operating budget. The US has provided $350 million in direct budgetary assistance to the PA in the past two years. There are three problems with this aid.

First, it is far from clear that the PA needs this assistance. According to the International Monetary Fund and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2009 real GDP in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip grew by 6.8 percent, (8.5% in Judea and Samaria). The report also claimed that unemployment declined. So if things are going so well, why is it necessary for foreign donor countries to increase their direct assistance to Fayyad's budget?

Second, given Fayyad's rejection of free trade principles, particularly as they relate to Israel, the PA's largest trading partner, it is hard to see how his economic leadership is credible. As the failed stimulus packages in the US have shown clearly, government bureaucracies do not create jobs. That is the work of the private sector. And yet, Fayyad is barring Palestinians from having trade ties with their most important business partners and commercial market. This is not the behavior of a leader who is interested in facilitating sustainable economic growth.

Finally, the simple truth is that it is impossible to prevent US budgetary assistance to the PA from financing Hamas, in contravention of US law. Each month Fayyad transfers funds to Hamas-controlled Gaza to pay the salaries of PA employees there. Fayyad has argued that this assistance cannot be considered material aid to Hamas, since the employees are employed by the PA. But this is nonsense.

There's much more. Read the whole thing and send it to your Representatives and Senators.

Labels: Dayton forces, Palestinian Authority, settlement product boycott, US foreign aid

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:56 AM