Donors Pledge $3 Billion in New Aid to Palestinians

Cautioned by President Clinton that poverty and economic stagnation breed terrorism, international donors Monday pledged more than $3 billion in new aid to the Palestinian-ruled areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The figure was well above the expectations of the U.S. officials who organized the daylong donors conference, attended by representatives of 43 countries, most of them affluent, and six international organizations.

“For too long, too many young people have turned to terrorism and old hatreds partly because they had nothing better to do,” Clinton said during the opening session. “We must give them a different future to believe in.”

Both Clinton and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat acknowledged that the Palestinian economy has deteriorated during five years of self-rule, despite the infusion of about $2.5 billion in foreign aid.

Arafat blamed Israel for the Palestinians’ economic troubles.

At the conclusion of the conference, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said the pledges were still being tabulated but would clearly top $3 billion. That is almost 50% more than the goal set by the Clinton administration when it called the conference following the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement negotiated in October at the Wye Plantation in Maryland.

“I am satisfied,” Arafat said at a post-meeting news conference. “I am confident that these pledges will be carried out.”

The United States pledged $400 million, in addition to its usual contribution of $100 million a year. The European Union promised a little less than $500 million. Those were the two largest contributions.

At a Washington conference Oct. 1, 1993, immediately after Arafat and Israel’s then-prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, signed the historic peace agreement negotiated in Oslo, the international community pledged $2.3 billion over five years to support the Palestinian economy. In the ensuing years, the pledges grew to $4.2 billion, of which $2.5 billion has been delivered.

The pledges collected Monday also are to be distributed over the next five years.

“Despite our best efforts since 1993, an honest assessment would lead us to the conclusion that we have not realized all our intentions,” Clinton said. “There has been too little tangible improvement in the lives of the Palestinian people. Per-capita income is down, unemployment is too high, living conditions are extremely difficult.”

Arafat told representatives of the donor nations that despite their generosity, Palestinian economic indicators had gone down during the past five years.

He said the deterioration was caused by repeated Israeli blockades of the West Bank and Gaza following terrorist attacks in Israel. The closures are supposed to prevent Palestinian terrorists from reaching targets in Israel, but they also prevent Palestinian workers from reaching their jobs in Israel and strangle the Palestinian economy.

“The Israeli closure policy is the primary and direct cause for the dangerous decline in the performance of the Palestinian economy over the past five years,” Arafat said.

In a report issued Monday by the generally pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Middle East expert Patrick Clawson said that Israeli closures certainly have contributed to Palestinian economic distress, but that the Palestinian Authority also played a part.

Foreign aid this year accounted for 15.5% of the Palestinian gross domestic product, or about $200 for every man, woman and child living in Palestinian areas, Clawson said. If the latest pledges are delivered, those figures will be similar during the next five years.

Administration officials said congressional approval is required for Washington’s new pledge. Many lawmakers are skeptical about aid to the Palestinians.

Albright said the $500 million pledged by the United States at the first donors conference in 1993 had “improved access to water for more than 250,000 people, provided 10,000 loans to Palestinian entrepreneurs, and helped fund the first-ever elections in Gaza and the West Bank.”

Clinton said the additional funds would be used to “help create jobs, improve basic education, enhance access to water, support the rule of law.”

The president said the purpose of the conference was to “send a clear signal that this peace is more than a piece of paper, that the promise imagined at Oslo can become a concrete reality; a true peace, a growing peace, good for Palestinians, good for Israelis, good for the region and the world.”

In 1993, Rabin’s Israeli government urged the international community to give generously to the Palestinians. Israeli-Palestinian relations are far less warm today, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a delegation headed by Eitan Bentzur, director general of the Foreign Ministry, to the conference.

Monday’s conference focused on aid to the economically strapped Palestinians. But Clinton promised during the Wye Plantation talks to help Israel pay for the withdrawal of its troops and military infrastructure from parts of the West Bank.

Although the administration has not said how much money that will require, sources say the Israelis are seeking about $1.2 billion.

Clinton plans to visit Israel, the West Bank and Gaza on Dec. 12-15. He will address the Palestinian National Council, called into session to nullify the provisions of the Palestine Liberation Organization charter calling for destruction of Israel. Arafat agreed to schedule the meeting as part of the Wye Plantation deal, which gives the Palestinians at least partial control of an additional 13% of the West Bank in exchange for new security guarantees for Israel.

Prior to the conference, Clinton and Arafat met at the White House. In a speech to an Arab American group Sunday, Arafat reiterated his vow to proclaim an independent Palestinian state in May. Although there was nothing new in the assertion, it upset U.S. hopes that the Palestinian leader would soft-pedal the issue.

In Jerusalem, Netanyahu called Arafat’s statements “serious and insufferable.” His spokesman, Aviv Bushinsky, said, “These declarations by Arafat and threats of unilateral acts could bring about the collapse” of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

At Monday’s news conference, Arafat returned to the formulation that both the United States and Israel prefer, saying that creation of a Palestinian state and the status of Jerusalem were issues to be negotiated in the just-started talks about details of a final peace settlement.