The Palestinians have been pledged over $7,400,000,000 by 66 countries, including $550,000,000 by the USA.
PARIS — Sixty-six countries pledged billions of dollars in aid to the Palestinians on Monday, in the most ambitious fund-raising effort to help Palestinians create a viable, peaceful and secure state of their own in more than a decade.
The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said donors pledged $7.4 billion over the next three years, of which $2.9 billion was for 2008 alone, Reuters reported.
With Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice representing the United States at the one-day conference here, the Palestinians had hoped to secure $5.6 billion in budgetary and development support over the next three years.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, had told the conference that a “moment of truth†had arrived, urging the world to increase its aid for Palestinians — or risk disaster.
“Without this support, without the payment of aid that will allow the Palestinian treasury to fulfill its role, we will be facing a total catastrophe in the West Bank and Gaza,†Mr. Abbas said.
In appealing for the financing, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, an economist who is the appointed head of the Palestinians’ caretaker government, formally presented his new recovery plan for economic, institutional and security reform for a future Palestinian state.
The United States pledged $555 million, up from $75 million this year. “The Palestinian Authority is experiencing a serious budgetary crisis,†Ms. Rice said. “This conference is literally the government’s last hope to avoid bankruptcy.â€
However, the American pledge was misleading, since much of the money has been announced previously by the White House but has not been approved by Congress.
The European Union, the largest aid donor to the Palestinians, pledged $650 million for 2008; France $300 million, Germany $200 million and Britain up to $490 million over three years. Sweden offered $210 million in 2007 and 2008.
What have the Palestinians done to earn this good will and extravagant charity? Well, they had a police force that supported the Hamas coup, they lost Gaza to Islamist extremists, they squandered billions in previous aid with corrupt handouts to people close to the plate, they have not budged an inch in their demands for “peace” even after starting a war last time when their demands were less stringent, attacks against Israelis continue to be planned and executed (thankfully the IDF and Shin Bet stop almost all of them), they rain down rockets daily on Israeli civilian communities (no, it’s not just Hamas, this was happening well before when Fatah controlled Gaza), they have a sophisticated propaganda machine spread all over the world vilifying Jews and Israel, they continue to teach their young that Israel has no right to exist and will eventually be a Palestinian Palestine, they continue to teach their young that violence is an acceptable tool, and worst of all, they have made the keffiyeh some sort of fashion item so that even political ignoramuses can wear a reminder of war around their necks to look cool.
Can’t wait until they upgrade their arsenal, provide it to their soldiers who will then help Hamas take over the West Bank and score all that shiny new equipment that they’ll turn on Israelis.
I have an idea! Why not MAKE THE PALESTINIANS PROVE SOME GOODWILL, AND AT LEAST SOME MEASURE OF CONTROL OVER THEIR PEOPLE, FIRST? Where is the accountability?
TM, suppose it’s like with kids: it’s easier to bribe the naughty kid with cookies to do what you want than teach it to comply with you and then eventually reward it with cookies.
Except with the kid in question, this has never worked.
Great. use my tax dollars to try and kill my friends and family.
I was impressed with the inspirational portrait provided in the background.
If only you bastids hadn’t poisoned him, things would be the same as they are now.
Oh, and the US keeps acting like it has more money than brains, when in reality……it now has neither.
And I thought we had to wait ’til the election for a Democratic approach to foreign policy.
The weird thing about all those pledges is that they were made at a big dinner at which Ace Greeberg got on the dais and started “calling” pledge cards and making each country stand up and announce how much they were pledging to the 2008 United Palestinian Authority Appeal campaign.
(sorry, obscure reference to UJA Wall Street division annual dinner in NYC)
well, I guess you could at least say that Abbas doesn’t lie like Ara-Fat did (or if he does, he doesn’t do it as shamelessly and as conspicuously as the resident of the great muqaata in the sky – and someone here coined that, too, if I’m not mistaken). listening to the guy speak when confronted made him sound more like a demented little rat than anything. mad props to Abbas for at least making the Palestinians seem like they think that a respectable public face might be in their interests – ’cause G-d knows that nothing else that they do is.