Effective aid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories?

Abstract

The Palestinian Territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, otherwise known as the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), have been a test case for international aid policies and practices for many years, especially since the Oslo agreement between the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Israeli government in 1993. Yet in many ways, the OPT are unique since they are not a state, not even a fragile state, therefore rendering the applicability of aid principles, as captured by the Paris Declaration, somehow problematic. Despite substantial aid flows over the last years, the problem of the absence of statehood is a fundamental block to development. Moreover, many aid programmes have been, partially at least, instrumentalised to stabilise the occupation. In the meantime, social and economic conditions have deteriorated. Although there are many reasons for that deterioration, we argue that the perpetuation of the Israeli occupation is the most important factor since it reproduces the social, political and economic dislocation of the OPT. This persisting occupation of the OPT, and the consequent external control over land, security, borders and so many other key elements of governance and sovereignty, explain the fact that the many attempts to make aid more ‘effective’, in the spirit of the aid effectiveness principles of the OECD, have failed.

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