Lavishing funds on Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to achieve peace has been a mainstay of Western, including Israeli, policy since Hamas seized Gaza in June. But this open spigot has counterproductive results and urgently must be stopped.
Some background: Paul Morro of the Congressional Research Service reports that, in 2006, the European Union and its member states gave US$815 million to the Palestinian Authority, while the United States sent it $468 million. When other donors are included, the total receipts come to about $1.5 billion....
....One report suggests the European Union has funneled nearly $2.5 billion to the Palestinians this year.
Looking ahead, Abbas ...won pledges for an astonishing $7.4 billion (or over $1,800 per capita per year) at the donors' conference. [$1,400 per year is about what an Egyptian earns annually.]
Well, it's a bargain if it works, right? A few billion to end a dangerous, century-old conflict – it's actually a steal.
But innovative research by Steven Stotsky, a research analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) finds that an influx of money to the Palestinians has had the opposite effect historically. Relying on World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and other official statistics, Stotsky compares two figures since 1999: budgetary support aid provided annually to the Palestinian Authority and the number of Palestinian homicides annually (including both criminal and terrorist activities, and both Israeli and Palestinian victims). ....In brief, each $1.25 million or so of budgetary support aid translates into a death within the year. ....
....The Palestinian record fits a broader pattern, as noted by Jean-Paul Azam and Alexandra Delacroix in a 2005 article, "Aid and the Delegated Fight Against Terrorism." They found.... the more foreign aid, the more terrorism.
If these studies run exactly counter to the conventional supposition that poverty, unemployment, repression, "occupation," and malaise drive Palestinians to lethal violence, they do confirm my long-standing argument about Palestinian exhilaration being the problem. The better funded Palestinians are, the stronger they become, and the more inspired to take up arms.
....Rather than further funding Palestinian bellicosity, Western states, starting with Israel, should cut off all funds to the Palestinian Authority.
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Dec. 20, 2007 update: Using the Stotsky materials and extrapolating to include the $7.4 billion committed earlier this week, Hal M. Switkay comes up with an estimate of 4,600 Palestinian-caused deaths .... in the three years ahead:
Extrapolation of Stotsky's analysis for $7.4 billion over three years.
[Homicides by Palestinian Terrorists (1,000s) vs Foreign Aid (US$b)]
....One must be cautious, as the authors are, and explain that correlation – even perfect correlation – does not imply causation. One must present a plausible explanation that could justify the claim of causation, and I have one.
Most of the ignoramuses who opine or make policy regarding the Middle East and jihadists worldwide, believe that poverty causes war, just as poverty causes crime at home, and that terrorists must be given hope to stop their deadly rampage.
However, we know that quite the opposite is true: poor people can choose to study hard, work hard, and lift themselves and their communities gradually out of poverty; crime causes poverty; terrorism causes poverty; and terrorists are given hope by the craven appeasement of the empty-headed Western intellectuals and politicians who come to bargain for their lives – at others' expense, of course. My theory is justified, I believe, by the strong relationship between foreign aid and homicides that occur one year later.
Based on the strong linear correlation between foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority and the number of homicides committed by Palestinian Arabs one year later, I have used extrapolation to predict the consequences of a promised $7.4 billion in aid to the Palestinian Arabs. Please understand that extrapolation is far less reliable than interpolation. Nevertheless, my model predicts approximately 4600 homicides can be expected within a year after the infusion of the pledged foreign aid. This is equivalent to the murder of some 215,000 Americans.
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