Albert Einstein quipped that insanity was doing the same action repeatedly but expecting different results each time. Once again, as the smoke clears in Gaza, the European community is stepping in with calls for a donor conference. That’s simply crazy.
The Palestinians have received more per capita than any other national community, but have the least to show for it. The problem is not Israel, but rather an unwillingness to foreswear terrorism and concentrate instead on internal development. Sure, some Palestinians and Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth might complain that it’s not terrorism but rather resistance—but that’s just the problem: So long as their leaders and the international community indulge Palestinians in the notion that violence is honorable, then Palestinians have an excuse for their own domestic failings.
Make no mistake: Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have suffered during the recent conflict, although not nearly as much as some in the media suggest. The casualty numbers are most certainly exaggerated. Regardless, because Hamas and its surrogates claimed multiple casualties from single strikes, this suggests the number of destroyed civilian structures to be low. Gaza was never as desperate as many Palestinian activists and their fellow travelers have claimed. And while Gaza may be densely populated, density and poverty do not always correlate. Just ask residents of Singapore or Hong Kong about that.
But what harm can a donor conference do? Sometimes foreign aid can do good but never when it removes accountability from a government or society. If Hamas—or any Palestinian administration—knows that the international community will always step in and rebuild houses, schools, or government buildings, then it makes it easier to dedicate what revenue the Palestinian government does have to terrorism and military adventurism. The international community’s knee-jerk reaction to violence in the Middle East has always been to subsidize the Palestinians further to the tune of billions of dollars. Clearly, that strategy has neither worked nor in any way furthered peace. Seldom do European officials and Western donor nations consider that their strategy has actually made the situation worse.
A major problem, of course, is the United Nations Relief and Works Administration (UNRWA). UNRWA was never supposed to live out the 1950s. Economist Fred Gottheil did a masterful job of examining support for UNRWA as an illustration of moral hazard. Former UNRWA employee James Lindsay has also provided an in-depth study of what is wrong with UNRWA and how to fix it. The UN, however, has never been adept at either efficiency or bureaucratic reform. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is no more serious about reform than his predecessors, even the venal Kofi Annan, whose tenure was marked by multibillion-dollar corruption schemes. Had the secretary-general been serious, he would have replaced the leadership of UNRWA immediately for having allowed Hamas to transform UNRWA facilities into weapons storage centers and then to return missiles found in UNRWA stores to Hamas.
In northern Iraq, tens of thousands of Yezidi children are surrounded by Islamic State fighters who would like nothing better than their slaughter. In Jordan, Syrian refugees force their preteen and teenage daughters into exploitive marriages simply because their situations are so desperate. In northeastern Syria, Kurds have put together a functioning and stable government that now shelters tens of thousands of Christians and hundreds of thousands of Muslims, and yet the international community largely ignores them—and Turkey, the Syrian government, and Iraqi Kurdistan all prevent their supply with medicine. In every case, a fraction of what European donors would give to Gazans could make a world of difference to peoples who actually want to improve their lives, not eradicates others’.
Perhaps it’s time to stop treating taxpayer dollars—American, European, or otherwise—as an entitlement to Palestinians who have made bad choices (or elected a government which does so). Only when Palestinians in Gaza realize that Hamas brings nothing but ruin can there be a possibility for something better. It’s time the international community act as if it truly cares about Palestinians’ fate and show some tough love; no longer should they enable the Palestinians’ self-destructive lack of accountability. The problem isn’t money; it’s culture.
