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International Donors Have Become Accessories to a Palestinian Protection Racket
(Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University) Hillel Frisch - In neither Gaza nor the West Bank is the Palestinians' economic welfare determined by a functioning domestic economy, but rather by financial aid. What is wrong, one might ask, with living a highly subsidized life as long as international donors such as USAID, the EU, and church-related NGOs are ready to foot the bills? The PA, its militia Fatah, and Hamas have perfected a deadly political economy rather than building a functioning one. It is the use of force, or the threat of the use of force, that assures the flow of aid from international actors who have become accessories to a form of protection racket. The writer is a professor of political and Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University and a senior research associate at the BESA Center.