Put Plenty of Strings on Palestinian Aid

With the U.S. leading the way, 43 countries this week pledged $3 billion in aid for the Palestinian Authority, notwithstanding the authority’s abysmal record of financial corruption.

President Clinton, in announcing his administration’s commitment to provide $900 million to the Palestinian economy over the next five years, explained that real peace has little chance of taking hold “if it does not deliver results for ordinary people.”

He is right, and that logic is a founding principle of the Oslo peace process: Improving people’s lives economically counters political radicalism. But what of reports in the London Sunday Times this week that about $20 million in European Union aid, earmarked for inexpensive housing for Palestinians, was used instead to finance luxury apartments for Yasser Arafat’s cronies? Or the admission from the Palestinian Authority’s own auditors that 40% of last year’s annual $323-million budget was misused?

Such stories are not new. Widespread corruption in the Palestinian Authority, starting with Arafat himself, has been well documented. He has refused requests from donating countries for an accounting system. But the Clinton administration is so deeply committed to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, especially during these days of impeachment troubles, that it is willing to turn a blind eye to Arafat’s autocratic style of leadership.

Indeed, the only way the U.S. managed to hammer out an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians at the Wye Plantation in Maryland this fall was to promise each side serious financial compensation and to put itself in the middle of what had been a two-way negotiation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may still view Arafat as more of a terrorist than a peace partner, but he’s not opposing financial aid to the Palestinians. That’s because U.S. aid to Israel is linked to the package and Netanyahu knows that the alternative is chaos in the region. While the Palestinian Authority, which relies on foreign aid for half its budget, has done little to improve living conditions for Palestinians in Gaza--per capita income is down and unemployment is up--the militant fundamentalist group Hamas has gained popular support among the impoverished population by providing a wide network of social service programs. Any further weakening of the Palestinian Authority would only strengthen Hamas’ appeal, including terrorism as a primary means of venting frustration.

Most American Jewish groups will be lobbying on Capitol Hill for the Palestinian aid package, though not with much enthusiasm. One exception is the Zionist Organization of America, an outspoken critic of the Oslo peace process, which opposes the aid, insisting that the Palestinians should not be rewarded for failing to comply to the agreements these past five years.

The administration will not have an easy time convincing Congress of the wisdom of pouring more money into the coffers of Arafat’s despotic regime as the key to bringing peace to the Mideast. The Palestinian leader, though visibly ailing of late, shows no signs of easing up on his insistence to declare statehood next May 4, when the original five-year Oslo deadline expires, despite verbal assurances at Wye that he would cease such talk. Declaring statehood would end the Oslo process, cause Israel to retaliate by annexing the West Bank territory it still holds and hasten the next Mideast war.

But Arafat has learned these last five years that he can have it both ways, pledging peaceful cooperation with Israel in the West while calling for jihad, or holy war, at home and allowing his media outlets to engage in the most vile forms of anti-Semitism. Official Palestinian newspapers insist that the Holocaust was a hoax and that Jews use the AIDS virus against their enemies.

All of this behavior is tolerated because Arafat and the Palestinian Authority are considered less dangerous than Hamas and because the existing peace process, though deeply flawed, is better than nothing. Better Arafat should run the hellhole that is Gaza, figure most Israelis, than us. So in the end, Congress probably will approve hundreds of millions of dollars more for the Palestinians--though the more strings it can attach, the better--and hope that Arafat and company will come to realize that living in peace with Israel is the only way to improve the lot of the long-suffering Palestinian people.

But don’t count on it. Logic has never played a major role in Mideast conflicts, and Arafat, who built his career as the leader of a militant guerrilla group, makes decisions in secret and has never been accountable to outsiders, has yet to convince his people that he is looking out primarily for their own best interests.