Why the US
might cut Palestinian aid drastically
The Palestinian Authority (PA)
isn't concealing its concern over the future of its ties with
the new US administration, as President Donald Trump has made inconsistent statements about his position on Israel. The PA has set up a committee to
confront a worst-case scenario that might unfold under Trump.
The Palestinian Authority worries
that the new US administration will withhold aid, in part to pressure
Palestinians to return to the negotiating table with the Israelis.
TranslatorSami-Joe Abboud
Even before Trump was sworn in Jan.
20, he talked about relocating the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and at
one point spoke out against
UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemns Israeli
settlements. He has since modified the settlement position more than once,
at first warning Israel to stop announcing new settlements,
and then softening that message somewhat to say he doesn't believe
existing settlements will impede the peace process.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said
Jan. 25 that Trump would be reconsidering President Barack Obama’s decision to
release $221 million to
the PA in aid, as Trump wants to make sure US funds spent abroad serve US
interests.
Palestinian Minister of
Finance Shukri Beshara said Jan. 26 that the US
Congress has proposed several laws criminalizing the PA's
financial support for families of prisoners and families of
Palestinians who have been killed in fighting. If adopted, such laws
would limit the PA’s ability to manage Palestinian accounts in the
United States and abroad.
“The new US administration is more
biased [in favor of] Israel and less neutral when it comes to the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict," Ghassan al-Khatib, the former Palestinian labor
minister and former director of the Government Media Office, told
Al-Monitor.
"Under Trump, the road ahead
will be full of challenges, as US aid to the PA will be possibly reduced,"
though not enough to collapse the PA "because the world dreads
such a scenario," Khatib said. "Even Washington is keen on
maintaining the status quo in the Palestinian territories. Also, Trump might
influence the positions of international parties to halt the financial support
given to the PA due to the weak Palestinian impact on the international
political scene.”
Palestinian Prime Minister Rami
Hamdallah said in late August that the United States has provided
aid to the PA since the group was established in 1994 — one
year, he claimed, as
much as $1 billion — but in 2015, the United States only paid
$250 million, and the payment was dedicated to projects and institutions and
not paid in cash to the public treasury.
According to statements
issued by the Palestinian Ministry of
Finance on Sept. 28, 2015, between 2007 and 2015 the average
annual US support to the Palestinian budget amounted to $300 million.
However, in 2012, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited
the UN and secured nonmember-observer
state status in the UN, seeking to strengthen its odds of being recognized as a
state. Some in Congress opposed the move and the funding declined.
Nasr Abdel Karim, an economics
professor at An-Najah University in Nablus, told Al-Monitor, “Trump’s
administration is expected to reduce the aid provided to the PA, and it will
scrutinize the way the US aid to Palestinians is being spent. The
administration does not want to completely stop the aid and just wants to place
further pressure on the PA to resume direct negotiations with Israel."
Karim added, "US support in
2016 did not exceed $200 million, most of which was channeled to
nongovernmental organizations, infrastructure projects and good-governance
projects — and not to the PA treasury. Palestinians fear that Washington
will influence other countries such as Britain, Australia, the
Netherlands, Singapore and Japan to adopt its new policy.”
Saeb Erekat, the
secretary of the PLO Executive Committee, said Jan. 31 that following the
December adoption of UN Security Council Resolution
2334, which affirms that Israeli
settlements are illegal, the US Congress threatened Jan. 3 to cut
off aid to the PA should it pursue its case
against Israel in international forums.
A Palestinian minister told
Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that “despite its concerns over Trump’s
adoption of political and economic decisions against it, the PA can cope with
these policies through austerity measures and expenditure channeling."
He added, "However, the PA is
more reliant on clearing and tax money from Israel, and these funds amount
to $180 million a month and account for 75% of the PA budget. The PA has
concerns that Washington would pressure Israel into using these funds to return
to the peace process under US and Israeli conditions, without stopping the
settlements."
The declining US support to the PA
under Obama between 2008 and 2016, and its possible dramatic reduction under
Trump, could be blamed on:
·
The stalled peace process
between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
·
Political positions adopted by the
PA, which include joining international organizations to legitimize the
Palestinian quest for statehood.
·
An effort to pressure the PA to
reduce its negotiation demands.
·
The Palestinian domestic situation —
the split between Hamas and Fatah.
Palestinians expect history to
repeat itself and they believe Trump will want to oust Abbas, just as
former US President George W. Bush did with Yasser Arafat, when Bush called in 2002 for a change in
the Palestinian leadership.
"The US' partial
— not complete — cutting off of aid to the PA is highly probable, as
this would serve as a tool of pressure [on
the PA] to return to the negotiations
with Israel that have been stalled since
April 2014," Khalil Shaheen, the director of the Research Department
at the Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Strategic Studies - Masarat, told
Al-Monitor.
He added, “Although the PA’s primary
financial support comes from the European Union, not
the United States, the problem facing the PA is that Britain’s positions are
converging with Washington's and that France is headed to presidential
elections and may get closer to Israel.”
Most Palestinians believe that the
four coming years under Trump will be challenging for the PA, with aid
reduction being the most difficult challenge, in the absence of an Arab
financial safety net to offset the declining US aid.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/02/ palestinian-authority-trump-us-aid-decline-israel-talks.html
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