Daniel Pipes explains in "The Palestinian Economy in Shambles":
Western financial aid to the Palestinians has, I showed last week, the perverse and counterintuitive effect of increasing their rate of homicides, including terrorist ones. This week, I offer two pieces of perhaps even stranger news about the many billions of dollars and record-shattering per-capita donations from the West: First, these have rendered the Palestinians poorer. Second, Palestinian impoverishment is a long-term positive development.[...]
Unsurprisingly, Hellman characterizes the Palestinian economy as "in shambles."
Such shambles should come as no surprise, for as the late Lord Bauer and others have noted, foreign aid does not work. It corrupts and distorts an economy; and the greater the amounts involved, the greater the damage. One telling detail: at times during Yasir Arafat's reign, a third of the Palestinian Authority's budget went for "expenses of the President's office," without further explanation, auditing, or accounting. The World Bank objected, but the Israeli government and the European Union endorsed this corrupt arrangement, so it remained in place.
Indeed, the Palestinian Authority offers a textbook example of how to ruin an economy by smothering it under well-intentioned but misguided donations. The $7.4 billion recently pledged to it for the 2008-10 period will further exacerbate the damage.
Paradoxically, this error might help resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. To see why, consider the two models, hardship v. exhilaration, that explain Palestinian extremism and violence.
The hardship model, subscribed to by all Western states, attributes Palestinian actions to poverty, isolation, Israeli roadblocks, the lack of a state, etc. Mahmoud Abbas, the PA leader, summed up this viewpoint at the Annapolis conference in November: "the absence of hope and overwhelming despair … feed extremism." Eliminate those hardships and Palestinians, supposedly, would turn their attention to such constructive concerns as economic development and democracy. Trouble is, that change never comes.
The exhilaration model turns the Abbas logic on its head: the absence of despair and overwhelming hope, in fact, feed extremism. For Palestinians, hope derives from a perception of Israeli weakness, implying an optimism and excitement that the Jewish state can be eliminated. Conversely, when Palestinians cannot see a way forward against Israel, they devote themselves to the more mundane tasks of earning a living and educating their children. Note that the Palestinian economy peaked in 1992, just as, post-Soviet Union and post-Kuwait war, hopes bottomed out to eliminate Israel.
Exhilaration, not hardship, accounts for bellicose Palestinian behavior. Accordingly, whatever reduces Palestinian confidence is a good thing. A failed economy depresses the Palestinians' mood, not to speak of their military and other capabilities, and so brings resolution closer.
Palestinians must experience the bitter crucible of defeat before they will drop their foul goal of eliminating their Israeli neighbor and begin to build their own economy, polity, society, and culture. No short-cut to this happy outcome exists. Who truly cares for Palestinians must want their despair to come quickly, so that a skilled and dignified people can move beyond its current barbarism and built something decent.
The huge and wasted outpouring of Western financial aid, ironically, brings on that despair in two ways: by encouraging terrorism and by distorting the economy, both of which imply economic decline. Rarely has the law of unintended consequences worked so imaginatively.
Read it all.
Don't feed the animals.
Of course, Dr. Pipes is correct in his analysis. But, by the reasoning of the dhimmi Western governments and aid organizations, the huge inflow of money should mean that Christians will not only stay in this new money-infused, peaceful society, but that ex-pat Christians will be returning to the Palestinian paradise by the planeload.
"The huge and wasted outpouring of Western financial aid, ironically, brings on that despair..."
Is this article supposed to make me feel better about paying my income tax?
In the next few days, the hopelessly murky and convoluted federal and state income tax booklets will magically appear in our mailboxes, bringing despair to millions. Personally, I believe that the paying of these taxes just creates more problems than it solves--exhilaration-based mass murder attacks on New York come to mind. So, maybe we might rethink our self-defeating annual tax paying ritual as well? Just a thought.
So, Islam's triumph is its own destruction?
With all due respect to the learned Dr. Pipes, I propose a better, less costly solution that will bring about the despair of the "Palestinians", supposedly followed by their moving "beyond their [Islamic] barbarism and build something decent."
The solution is simple: Israel shuts down electricity and water to the PA. The leaders of the Western nations who pledged $7.4 billion to the PA can use it to strengthen their police force, which has to deal with more numerous and increasingly more militant Muslim populations.
Also, I would really appreciate it if someone conveys to the learned Dr. Pipes that maybe he should start to emulate Hugh's consistent example and put "Palestinian" and "Palestinians" in quotes, instead of lending credence to the notion that those Syrian/"Jordanian"/Egyptian Arabs are a separate "people."
The jizya has always worked that way. Islam is of its own nature a parasitic culture which vegetates on its "infidel" neighbours. In the end this policy will kill the Muslims, but to some extent it may also depend on us; whether we allow them to continue their exploitation of ourselves.
How many hundred-millions of dollars did Arafat leave in Swiss banks when he died?
Another "unintended consequence" is bound to be that up-and-coming young terrorists want the power, prestige, and access to the international-aid gravy train that the Paleostinian leaders have. I'm sure it requires lots of money for the current "leaders" to hire enough security to protect themselves from the younger generation of wanna-be's.
Maybe they'll all blow each other up...?
There is also the simple fact that if you give them more money, that enables them to buy more weapons.
"Palestinians must experience the bitter crucible of defeat before they will drop their foul goal of eliminating their Israeli neighbor and begin to build their ...society..."
This idea has wider applicability than "Palestine."
Islam the fasicst death cult must experience the bitter crucible of defeat before it will drop its foul goal of eliminating all other belief systems and will begin to build a modern society--if that is even possible.
The Islamic ideology promises that Allah will back the Muslims in battle and deliver to them copious loot as a reward for their aggressive piety. Therefore, in confrontations with their target civilizations, the Muslims must conspicuously lose every battle, and be condemned to live in the economic desolation that is the natural product of their sociopathic attitudes.
Accordingly, Islam world-wide, should be quarantined. By forcing Islam to sleep in the bed of its own ideological making, the only possible conditions will be created for a true reform of Islam to be attempted, in response a natural despair-induced pressure from within.
Paying Islam off with all kinds of inducements--which the Muslims interpret only as jizya, properly owed by the dhimmi to the master race--merely reinforces their supremacist beliefs and delays the day that Islamic reform (or better, complete Islamic collapse) will happen.
"...foreign aid does not work..."
...when it comes to Muslim run countries...this is absolutely true.....
...sometimes it does work...
.....After WWII, the aid to Japan, Germany, and to Italy revitalized their countries quickly....
.....foreign aid to Muslim countries only fosters more violence....
....no more foreign aid...not one more dime...
...and ban Muslim Immigration
CC:"Don't feed the animals."
Oh hardy har.
Another fine post, Standec
Quarantine is indeed the answer. Enough with this pitiful "Give 'em DemAAAAcracy" crap.