Monday, January 7, 2008
All that international aid is mostly going to go to pay salaries and for food aid, not "renewable resources" as it were: What Palestinians will do with $7.4 billion
When donors met in Paris last month and awarded $7.4 billion in aid to the Palestinians, a larger-than-expected package to be distributed over the next three years, many in the international community showed a new readiness to support the new Israeli-Palestinian peace push and provide a safety net for it in the form of economic stability.
Now Palestinian and foreign observers alike are keen to see how and where the money is spent, putting senior officials on the spot with questions of how they intend to avoid the corruption and mismanagement that characterized the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the past...
...Samir Barghouthi, an economist who runs a Ramallah investment firm, says that of the amount of aid pledged, approximately 70 percent of the amount will go to public salaries and 30 percent will go to development projects, food relief, and assistance – especially to Gazans.
The biggest problem, he says, is indeed the bloated PA payroll. "There are many thousands of public sector employees who are not working. Some are living in Jordan or Egypt, some work from home, some work in the private sector but still take a salary from the government. There are people who are not even showing up in work because there isn't something to do," says Mr. Barghouthi.
He suggests the PA needs to push ahead with offering a retirement program, perhaps giving incentives by offering highly subsidized loans for people to start businesses.
"The Paris aid is just a mechanism to help people survive, which means after three years, when those monies are spent, we have to face the problem again, and in another three years," he says. "We should use this commitment to push for deep restructuring."
So while the West is sending money to Gaza: Palestinian health ministry accuses Hamas of looting Gaza Strip hospital's reserve fuel
The Palestinian health ministry of the Ramallah-based caretaker government said on Thursday that "Hamas militias" have looted the fuel stores destined for hospital vehicles in the Gaza Strip.
A statement released by the health ministry said that fuel from the European hospital in the Gaza Strip had been stolen by the director of the hospital drivers to supply the Hamas-affiliated Executive Force...
