The Palestinians Where has all the money gone? -

A 2008 United Nations Report states:
The signing of the Oslo Accords between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Israel, raised high expectations. Over the next five years, the occupied Palestinian territory witnessed a period of unprecedented economic growth, with real GDP growing at an annual average rate of eight point five percent and a substantial increase in public and private investment. This was sufficient to reduce unemployment by 5 per cent and increase GDP per capita by an annual average of four point three per cent.

This growth came to an abrupt halt in 2000, and the gains made have now vanished. The year 2000 was a watershed in the occupied Palestinian territory: it witnessed the start of the second Palestinian intifada and the subsequent intensification and expansion of the Israeli closure policy and other measures that restrict the movement of people and goods within the occupied Palestinian territory and between the latter and the rest of the world.

According to this report, unemployment among Palestinian almost DOUBLED from 21% in 1999 to 41% in 2002. These statistics clearly show that, regardless of what the Intifada may have accomplished politically, it has severely damaged the economic hopes of the average Palestinian. We haven’t been able to pin down definitive numbers, but it’s not exaggerating to say that over the last 60 years, billions and billions of dollars have been given in foreign aid to the Palestinians.

Considering there are only about four million Palestinians currently in the West Bank and Gaza, you’d think that all of that foreign aid should have resulted in every Palestinian being able to live comfortably. But this same UN report states that close to SIXTY percent of the population of the occupied Palestinian territory lives below the poverty line, with FORTY-FOUR percent living in, quote, "absolute poverty".

So we have to ask what the UN and others apparently don’t have the courage to ask how can this be? Why, with all of the money given to the Palestinians in the last 60 years, do they still live in refugee camps and squalor? Where has all the money gone? Recently, as a result of the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an additional 5 billion in humanitarian and project-based aid for the next two years have been pledged to the Palestinian community from North America, Europe and others.

Obviously, someone is making a lot of money. Sadly, very little of it has apparently made its way to the actual people for whom it was intended, and who desperately need it. We, and they, should demand answers.