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The Palestinian Authority, by the numbers
Opinion parading as fact edited out. Questions had been asked at Rantburg about PA funding. Here are some answers.The Palestinians are the most foreign-aid dependent society on earth. So the threat by the United States to cut off most aid to Palestine after its 3.6 million people last month elected the militant group Hamas into government, is foreboding. Foreboding is not actually the word the writer wants, but who are we to expect proper language use from a journalist? The European Union is weighing similar action. but then decided to go ahead and throw their money to the murderers anyway. And Israel says it will withhold $55 million a month in taxes and other fees collected by Israel, but owed to Palestinians. There's no dispute that slashing US aid will lead to greater deprivation in the West Bank and Gaza. The US provided about one-third of the nearly $1.1 billion in aid disbursed to the Palestine Authority (PA) and for Palestinian projects last year. That amounts to about $300 per man, woman, and child. In relation to a gross national income for the average Palestinian of $1,327 last year, any cut in foreign aid and tax revenue is serious. Of course, the writer neglects to mention what percent of the donated monies stuck to the fingers of those Palestinians through whose hands it flowed. In effect, Palestinians have a third-world income - a few dollars a day. And they live next door to first-world Israel, with a per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of about $22,200 last year. Israel gets about $420 per capita each year in aid from the US, partly as a result of the 1979 Camp David peace accords between Israel and Egypt. Though that's more aid per capita than Palestinians get, Israel is less dependent on it. But don't let's notice that Israel uses those funds to pay part of the cost of protecting itself against those self-same Palestinians, which she wouldn't need to do if the Palestinians would just stop trying to kill everybody. Aid to Palestine comes from multiple sources. A World Bank trust fund gave $125 million to the PA in 2004. A new Congressional Research Service report lists nine other aid sources for the PA. At the top was the European Union with $105 million. Saudi Arabia gave $76 million, the US $20 million, and so on down through Libya, Britain, Norway, Japan, Canada, and Egypt. Even more aid comes from the EU, the US, and Persian Gulf nations for specific development projects ($300 million, $345 million, and about $200 million respectively in 2005). A World Bank report this month reckons real GDP in the West Bank and Gaza grew 8 to 9 percent last year, continuing a modest recovery that began two years ago. Extra foreign aid helped. Yet the economy is still 29 percent below where it was in 2003. Unemployment is at 23 percent. Another issue is that the Palestinian population grows more than 3 percent a year. Each Palestinian woman in Gaza has close to six children on average; in the West Bank, 4.4 children is the average. These numbers match the CIA FActbook, but we know that the reported numbers are in dispute (remember that missing million of Palestinian population due to double counting, using projections as absolute, and ignoring emigration?). Posted by: trailing wife 2006-02-28 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=144004 |