The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) opened its office in Palestine in 1994. Its website, which is not longer, boasted of that since then, has “helps four million Palestinians.”
Now that the agency has been closed by the administration of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, it is pertinent to evaluate the statement that Usaid was a force for good in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Without a doubt, the closing of the agency has affected the Palestinians, especially those who benefit from their financing for education and education institutions. The humanitarian provision was also affected, with the World Food Program, one of the main humanitarian actors in the occupied Palestinian territories, which face great interruptions.
While the short -term negative impact is the team, the usefulness of USAID and other funds in the United States become questionable when placed in the broader political context of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
As a researcher, I have the leg directly and indirectly involved in the evaluation of the programs financed by USAID for years, and I have seen firsthand how they have contributed to put the occupation and colonization of Israeli. The American agency was far from “helping” the Palestinians to take better lives, as he said.
A pacification policy
Usaid opened his Strip Office of the West Bank and Gaza as part of the broader American effort to lead and shape the political settlement between the Palestinians and the Israelis initiated by the 1994 OSLO agreements.
The so -called “peace process” promised the Palestinians an independent state in the lands occupied by Israel in 1967, with a final age signed to be signed in 1999. It is not necessary to say that such agreement of this type, as Israel, was never intended that the never planned has not been confirmed, the never planned, never before it was intended, it was never intended to be presented to itself.
Instead, Oslo was used to cover the relentless colonization of Israel of the Palestinian territories occupied in the rhetoric of peace negotiations. The creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a local government body responsible for managing civil affairs for the Palestinians in the designated areas was part of this strategy.
While official Palestinian leadership imagined the AP as a transition police that would administer daily life until an independent state was established, it was finally designed and close to the United States to function as a client regime.
To that end, the PA was obliged to participate in a close coordination with the Israeli Security Forces to suppress any form of resistance in the territories it managed. Its two main security agencies, the intelligence and preventive security service were established to fulfill this duty.
While US intelligence agencies had the task of supporting and training the Palestinian security apparatus, channeling millions of dollars each year, USAID had the task of supporting the civil functions of the AP.
Between 1994 and 2018, Usaid demonstrated more than $ 5.2 billion to help the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Financed infrastructure, health and education initiatives, with the aim of gaining public support for peace negotiations.
A part of its financing was channeled through civil society organizations with two main objectives: depoliticize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and cultivate a network or civil society actors that would promote this agenda.
The depoliticization framework discussed the Palestinian issue as an economic and humanitarian matter. This approach addressed Palestinian economic and social problems in isolation, separated from its main cause: Israeli occupation.
He also tried to delegate the Palestinian resistance by portraying it as a source of instability and chaos instead of a political response to occupation.
To distribute its financing, USAID established a complex background verifications system, together with a set of Orwellian conditions. The investigation extended beyond the individual to his extended family, the name of the place and even the cultural context in which the funds would be used, none of which could be associated with the resistance.
In this context, it is not surprising that USAID programs or cannot improve the life of common Palestinians.
Standardization through people people programs
Many of the USAID funds entered into initiatives that sought to normalize Israeli colonization when trying to establish connections between Palestinians and Israelis. The premise was that the two people “can learn to live together”, which, of course, completely ignored the realities of apartheid and occupation.
One of the USAID financed programs that I evaluated was the conflict management and mitigation program (CMM), promised under the framework of people association to the USAID whore. For 2018, CMM had assigned more than $ 230 million to different initiatives and settled to distribute another $ 250 million by 2026.
The program included projects aimed at parents, farmers and students Beavenados to promote peace consolidation. One of these projects sought to promote cooperation between Palestinian and Israeli farmers through shared agricultural experiences.
Duration discussion of a focal group, I spoke with a Palestinian farmer who explained that the production of Palestinian oil has stagnated due to the Israeli occupation regime that restricted the access of the Palestinian farmers to the water and, to their lands. “These programs,” he said, “don’t talk about these problems.”
When I asked why he participated, he explained that the project allowed him to obtain an Israeli travel permit, which allows him to work on Israeli farms and obtain an income to survive.
The absurdity of this dynamic was surprising: on paper, the program talked about productive relationships between Palestinians and Israelis, building a shared and peaceful future where farmers become friends. In fact, however, Palestinian farmers signed to be able to travel and work on Israeli farms, many of which were established in confiscated Palestinian lands. Participation in the program did not solve any of the problems that Palestinian farmers faced in Israeli occupation policies.
Another program funded by USAID that I studied, Seeds of Peace, had the mission of gathering young people from the conflict regions that had the potential to become future leaders in their countries. The central activity of the program was a youth summer camp in a rich area in the state of the United States of Maine, where participants participated in the dialogue and leadership training.
The two largest participating groups were Israelis and Palestinians. While the Israeli Ministry of Education was responsible for selecting Israeli participants, the La Paz Seed Office in Ramallah supervised the recruitment of Palestinian participants. Each participant benefited from a very subsidized program, with costs of up to $ 8,000 per person.
A closer look at the lists of participants over the years revealed a surprising pattern: the sons and daughters of the leaders of the Palestinian authority and the rich families appeared frequently.
Curious about this employer, I once asked a programs officer about it. The answer was revealing: “In the Palestinian society, leadership often passes to children from high -ranking officials.”
This Mean that organizations, and by extension, the vision of the USS of political leadership in Palestine assumed that power in Palestinian politics is hereditary and, therefore, US initiatives should focus on the sons and daughters of the current elite.
Political interference
Seeds of Peace was, with much, not the only program that served to support Pa Cadader and their families. Some relatives of high -ranking officials have received a preferential treatment to ensure the lucrative USAID contracts; Others have directed non -profit organizations founded by the agency.
USAID has also been indirectly involved in the political scene in Palestine by supporting political actors favored by Washington.
Between 2004 and 2006, it implemented an expansive program for the promotion of democracy in the Palestinian territories in the period prior to the legislative elections of 2006. Although there is no direct evidence of financial support for specific candidates or lists of parties, the observers have indicated that civil society organizations (CSO) linked to Fatah or the candidates of the third way received USAID funds. In some cases, this support was channeled through organizations operating in unrelated sectors.
Despite substantial financing and political support, these groups failed to ensure enough seats to avoid the electoral victory of Hamas. After the control of Hamas Tok de Gaza, Usaid continued to support the Palestinian OSCs, in some cases increasing their financing.
Usaid also supported the POLICE FORCE to the AP through the law of the rule of law, although most of the funds for the repressive security apparatus of the Palestinian authority have arrived through the CIA and the international narcotics control and the application of the State of the State of State.
A more recent example and marking of USAID problematic participation is the malfunction of the spring built by the US army in 2024 to facilitate the delivery of help to Gaza, at a cost of $ 230 million. The project was promoted as a humanitarian initiative and Usaid was one of the organizations in charge of distributing the drip of help that came.
Actually, the dock served as a public relations trick by the administration of former president of the United States, Joe Biden, to obscure the complicity of the United States in the blockade of Gaza de Israel. It was also used by the Israeli army in an operation that resulted in the murder of more than 200 Palestinians, raising serious questions about militarization and misuse of infrastructure.
The spring farce is a good illustration of the US approach to provide help to the Palestinians: it was never done in their best interest.
It is true that some non -governmental Palestinians can be affected by the closure of USAID operations in the West Bank and Gaza. However, it is unlikely that the situation in the field is decisively. The aid limit will have a more dramatic impact on the American strategy to pry Palestinian civil society organizations to promote a pacification agenda and perpetuate empty rhetoric on peace.
In this sense, USAID’s closure could give the Palestinian civil society an opportunity to reconsider its commitment to the Donors of the United States government in the light of their moral obligations with the Palestinian people. Millions discharged in pacification clearly did not work; It is time for a new approach that the Real serves the interests of the Palestinians.
The opinions expressed in this article are typical of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.