by Emanuele Ottolenghi and Jonathan Schanzer
The Commentator
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
Figure it out — billions of dollars, to kill a few thousand Jews. That works out to about $1,000,000 per Jew killed. That’s actually not much, compared to the cost of drones, missles, etc. for targeted killings. Jewish victims are sort of cheap.
Of course, they upped their donation to the falistinians. They are estactic that the Muslims are willing to do their dirty work for them in finishing off Hitlers’ work. It’s worth every penny/euro they pay. They don’t have to openly admit to their vampiric, unending, and insatiable appetites for devouring Jewish blood and Jewish flesh, and Muslim children, not their Christian children, die in the battle. It doesn’t get any better than that for the gooood Christians of Europe.
how much of this money will go towards killing jews?
Imagine their disappointment if they would know that a large chunk of the money will serve to…
PAY Israel for fuels, medicines, food, electricity, water… and more… 🙂
Much of the rest will stick to the pockets along the way…
Do you want to see them Gauls, Teutons and other such things stopping their donations?
Lets tell them where a good portion of that money ends up…
In Israel to pay for gasoline, diesel fuel, natural gas, electricity, medicines, food stuff, water, trunk telecom services, service parts, etc.
Another chunk go to Somali pirates and Bedouin smuglers to pay for smugled cigarettes, drugs, booze, (yes, booze…
And to the pockets of the HAMAS fellowship.
And last but not least, weapons from ran and arms dealers.
The anti-Semitic hopes of those elements help them of couse starve but still “donate”.
Please, anybody, ask if we give a flying petunia about them… Please.
Incompetence, lack of will will, anti-semitism and a desire to please their now oil masters in the Arab world lead to an easy conclusion that supporting a Palestinian Arab state will be beneficial to them. Europe has lost its soul and most likely will not get it back in the near future.
Let me add here that there seems to be a plan afoot to use the EU monetary crisis to bring the EU countries together in ways not specified in the Treaty of Lisbon. “Never let a crisis go to waste” implies that the monetary crisis in Europe arose de novo. In fact, it may turn out that the crisis has been manufactured or at least exacerbated to aid in producing a tighter union among EU countries similar to the union between the states of the US. The goal of the EU bureaucrats is to increase central control and decrease local powers. World government as a means of saving the human race is the EU’s goal and it will be attained by whatever means necessary. Unfortunately, central control is what will destroy any active evolving system, whether it is a country, a world economy or a human being. Put simply, these highly intelligent people are not more than ignorant lunatics in seeking their goals. The correct analogy for their actions would be a Caterpillar backhoe being used to fix a broken Rolex watch.
If it is true that the EU officials are ignorant lunatics when dealing with their own system of governance, how much more so are they when they try to meddle in the Middle East where their knowledge is more superficial and their interests are less benign.
As I recall, Hitler assigned military resources to continue the annihilation of the Jews that he could have used in his fight against the advancing Allied forces. Before his death, a person in our synagogue told of his war experiences that included stopping trains loaded with Jews on the way to still operating concentration camps even after American forces had eliminated opposing German forces in the area of the transport trains.
Historians agreed that it was a strange use of manpower in light of Hitler’s losing the services of these units in his fight for survival. Hate that deep may still exist in Europe at the highest levels of decision making. If there cannot be a pure victory over the Jews, then at least a Pyrrhic victory. If not a Pyrrhic victory, then at least do not leave the Jews in peace.
Hi, Yamit
Europe is having troubles. It has tried to integrate economically without doing so politically, and the folly of that is becoming evident. Militarily, it is already integrated and has been so for years — as the junior partner of the U. S. The weaker Europe becomes, the more it becomes a pawn of the powers who control the U. S. That is to say, NATO is effectively Imperial America’s armed forces.
If any Bible buffs are still looking for Europe to be the seat of the 10-horned beast of Revelation (and its equivalent in Daniel), I think they are waiting for something that has already happened. Europe’s days of glory were between about 1756 and 1956. Since then, a “little horn” (the united British colonies) has risen up among them. In WWII, it plucked up three horns (Germany, Italy, Japan) by the roots, and has since been the world’s dominant power. The nations of Europe have, in NATO, given their power and authority to the little horn that now boasts great things.
NATO is slowly encroaching on Israel. Iraq has been neutralized, followed by Libya, through direct military intervention. Egypt and Tunisia fell, merely with the threat of such. Syria is now in NATO’s sights. We’ll see what transpires. Europe is still alive, howbeit not well at the moment; and it is led by America.
I predicted 3-4 years ago the disinigration of the EU within 10 years as i maintained it was unsustainable and not viable. couldn’t find my post in the archives but i did find this, Read Pls. https://www.israpundit.org/2007/?p=4957&cpage=1#comment-103533
Laura, excuse me for following you however, you are pretty much on target and right, if you were any better there would be two of you.
Unfortunately the liberal left media doesn’t and won’t expose the truth. Anti-Semitism lives on and must be eradicated.
We all know the aid to the Palestinians ends up in the hands of Hamas.
Laura,
I think you’re wrong about the “Jew-hatred” angle. Hatred is a convenient way to move the masses, but it does not motivate governments. It is more likely, that the EU is catering to the Arab League and OPEC countries, as well as Moslem minorities in its midst, with its continuing support of what is characterized as a “Third World” and “Arab” cause.
Screwing over the Jewish state takes priority for Europe even over its own economic interests.
Because these donors are motivated by Jew-hatred. They know this money is going to be used to wage war against the Jewish state, which is precisely why they send money to the fakestinians.
This article ends with this question:
“The coming Palestinian unity government promises to fall short on both counts. Why should Europe’s tax payers increase their pledge?”
The answer is that helping the so-called Palestinians to eventually destroy Israel is a higher priority than taking care of their own urgent domestic needs. These Europeans are raising the ante on their bet against Geneses 12.3. If they lose they will lose REALLY big.