Soccer Dad

Refusing to throw good money after bad

Last week Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post reported "Restrictions imposed on aid to Palesitnians." Naturally this was cast in the worst possible light:

Congress imposed the tight restrictions on aid to the Palestinians that President Bush had announced with fanfare in his State of the Union address, possibly dealing a blow to U.S. efforts to support new Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Mystery Achievement celebrates the news by declaring this an instance When Democracy is Beautiful. Alas not everyone is happy.
Edward Abinton a paid consultant for the PLO is not happy:

Edward G. Abington Jr., a consultant to the Palestinian Authority, said the congressional action is a "huge slap in the face to Abu Mazen," whose party faces a strong challenge in the upcoming municipal elections. He said it was a "pretty startling setback" for Abbas because Abington believes the aid restrictions are now more stringent than when Arafat was alive.

The PA, naturally, claims that the restriction amount to "A slap in the face."
Not surprisingly we find the editors of the NY Times upset at "A no-confidence vote for Mr. Abbas.":

A few months ago, President Bush announced that he would ask Congress for $350 million to support Palestinian political, economic and security reforms. Following on his word, he did just that, in his budget proposal to Congress.

But last week when the House approved $200 million of the aid, it attached enough strings to strangle those good intentions. President Bush had requested that the first $200 million go directly to the Palestinian Authority, whose new president, Mahmoud Abbas, has been struggling to rein in extremist factions.

The problem is the Times's implicit premise that more money means an easier road to peace. However, it that were true, we would have had an Israeli-Palestinian peace long ago, as Daniel Pipes noted in "Palestinians Don't Deserve Additional Aid", the Palestinians are the highest per capita recipients of foreign aid in the world.:

Aid-wise, residents of the West Bank and Gaza have hardly been neglected until now. They receive about $300 per person, making them, per capita, the world's greatest beneficiaries of foreign aid. Strangely, their efforts to destroy Israel have not inspired efforts to crush this hideous ambition but rather to subsidize it. Money being fungible, foreign aid effectively funds the Palestinian Arabs' bellicose propaganda machine, their arsenal, their army, and their suicide bombers.

So not only hasn't foreign aid helped create the conditions for a Middle East peace, it likely has been counter-productive. What's been lacking has been accountability, not money.
The Times seems particularly exercised over an intersting irony:

Adding insult to injury, the House then gave $50 million to Israel to build terminals for people at checkpoints surrounding Palestinian areas. House lawmakers directed an additional $2 million to Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America. So a quarter of Congress's Palestinian aid disbursement so far is actually going to Israel.

So Congress has greater confidence that Israel will use the aid to help Palestinians than that the PA will! Elder of Ziyon emphasizes that point:

Congress is making clear what everyone knows but no one wants to say: Like most pre-teens, the Palestinians are not mature enough to handle their own money.

(And note, according the excerpt reproduced on EoZ, apparently the Bush administration is not going to fight Congress on this. President Clinton would have never gone along with this.)
So until Mr. Abbas shows that he is committed to fighting rather than co-opting terrorists, there is no reason to support his "reforms." Let him show that he is willing to live up to his commitments. Else with the lack of accountability his government will be just as corrupt as his predecessor's was. There's no reason not to demand performance from him. Good for Congress.
UPDATE: What does the PA need the money for?
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad

Posted by SoccerDad at May 10, 2005 06:52 AM | TrackBack