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The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) opened its office in Palestine in 1994. Its website, which has not been available, has since boasted since then, it “helped four million Palestinians lead a healthier and more productive life”.
Now that the agency has been closed by the administration of American president Donald Trump, it is relevant to assess the assertion that USAID was a force for good in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Without a doubt, the agency’s closure affected the Palestinians, in particular those who benefit from its funding for education and health establishments. The humanitarian provision has also been assigned, the World Food Program, one of the main humanitarian actors in occupied Palestinian territories, confronted disturbance.
Although the short -term negative impact is apparent, the usefulness of the USAID and other American funding becomes questionable when put in the broader political context of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
As a researcher, I have been directly and indirectly involved in the evaluation of the programs funded by the USAID for years, and I saw in the first hand how they helped maintain Israeli occupation and colonization. The American agency was far from helping the Palestinians to lead a better life, as it claimed.
A Pacification Policy
USAID opened its West West Bank office of the West Bank and Gaza as part of the wider American effort to direct and shape the political regulations between the Palestinians and the Israelis initiated by the Oslo agreements from 1994.
The so-called “peace process” promised the Palestinians an independent state on the land occupied by Israel in 1967, with a final agreement supposed to be signed by 1999. No need to say that such an agreement has never been signed, because Israel has never intended to conclude peace with the Palestinians and to recognize their right to self-determination.
Instead, Oslo was used to cover implacable colonization by Israel of the Palestinian territories occupied in the rhetoric of peace negotiations. The creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a local director responsible for managing civil affairs for the Palestinians in the designated areas was part of this strategy.
While the official Palestinian leaders envisaged the AP as a transitional policy that would administer daily life until an independent state was established, it was ultimately it was designed And supervised by the United States to function as a customer regime, manager and controlling the occupied population.
To this end, the AP was forced to engage in close coordination with the Israeli security forces to remove any form of resistance in the territories it has managed. Its two main security organizations – the intelligence service and preventive security – have been set up to fulfill this obligation.
While the American intelligence agencies were responsible for supporting and training the Palestinian security apparatus – being the subject of millions of dollars each year – USAID was responsible for supporting the Civil Functions of the AP.
Between 1994 and 2018, USAID provided more than $ 52bn In the aid of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He financed infrastructure, health and education initiatives, with the aim of gaining public support for peace negotiations.
Part of its funding was channeled by civil society organizations with two main objectives: depoliticizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and cultivating a network of civil society actors who would promote this program.
The depoliticization framework has dealt with the Palestinian issue as a humanitarian affair. This approach addressed Palestinian economic and social problems in isolation – detached from their main cause: Israeli occupation.
He also sought to delegitimize the Palestinian resistance by describing it as a source of instability and chaos rather than a political response to the occupation.
To distribute its funding, USAID has established a complex system for verifying history, alongside a set of Orwellian conditions. The verification extended beyond the individual to his enlarged 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 resistance.
In this context, it is hardly surprising that USAID programs have often not improved the lives of ordinary Palestinians.
Normalization through people’s programs to people
Many USAID funds have been devoted to initiatives that sought to normalize Israeli colonization by seeking to establish links between the Palestinians and the 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 programs funded by the USAID that I assessed was the conflict and mitigation management program (CMM), promoted to USAID Partnership of people to people frame. By 2018, CMM had allocated more than $ 230 million on various initiatives and was to distribute an additional $ 250 million by 2026.
The program included projects targeting bereaved parents, farmers and students to promote peacebuilding. One of these projects sought to promote cooperation between Palestinian and Israelis farmers thanks to shared agricultural experiences.
During a discussion group discussion, I spoke to a Palestinian farmer who explained that the production of Palestinian olive oil stagnated due to the Israeli occupation regime which restricted the access of Palestinian farmers to water and, in some cases, to their land. “These programs,” he said, “don’t talk about these problems.”
When I asked why he had participated, he explained that the project had enabled him to obtain an Israeli travel permit – allowing him to work on Israeli farms and win an income to survive.
The absurdity of this dynamic was striking: on paper, the program spoke of promoting productive relations between the Palestinians and the Israelis, building a shared and peaceful future where farmers become friends. In reality, however, Palestinian farmers have signed so that they can a travel permit and work on Israeli farms – many of which have been established on confiscated Palestinian land. Participation in the program has solved any of the problems with which Palestinian farmers have faced the olive tree-that is to say Israeli occupation policies.
Another program funded by the USAID that I studied, Seeds of Peace had the mission of bringing young people to the regions of conflict that had the potential to become future leaders in their country. The central activity of the program was a summer camp for young people in a district rich in the American state of Maine, where the participants engaged in a dialogue and a leadership training.
The two largest groups of participants were the Israelis and the Palestinians. While the Israeli Ministry of Education was responsible for the selection of Israeli participants, the Ramallah peace seed office supervised the recruitment of Palestinian participants. Each participant benefited from a strongly subsidized program, with costs reach up to $ 8,000 per person.
A more in -depth examination of the lists of the participants over the years has revealed a striking scheme: the sons and the daughters of the leaders of the AP and the wealthy families have frequently appeared.
Curious about this scheme, I once posed a program agent on this subject. The answer was revealing: “In Palestinian society, leadership often goes to children senior officials.”
This meant that the vision of the organization – and by extension, the United States – of political leadership in Palestine assumed that power in Palestinian politics is hereditary and, therefore, American initiatives should focus on the sons and daughters of the current elite.
Political interference
The seeds of peace were by far the only program to support the executives of the AP and their families. Some parents of senior officials received preferential treatment to obtain lucrative contracts from USAID; Others have led non -profit organizations funded by the agency.
USAID was also indirectly involved in the political scene of Palestine by supporting the political actors favored by Washington.
Between 2004 and 2006, he implemented a vast program for the promotion of democracy in the Palestinian territories in the 2006 legislative elections. Although there is no direct evidence of financial support for specific candidates or parties of parties, the observers noted that the organizations of civil society (CSO) linked to FATAH or to candidates of the third way were beneficiaries of the funding of USAID. In some cases, this support has been channeled through organizations operating in unrelated areas.
Despite substantial funding and political support, these groups have not succeeded in obtaining enough seats to prevent Hamas’ electoral victory. After Hamas has taken control of Gaza, USAID continued to support the Palestinian CSOs, in some cases, considerably increasing their funding.
Usaid too supported THE police Under the PA through the law programs, although most of the funding of the AD’s repressive security apparatus has passed through the CIA and the international control of drugs and the police (ingrude) of the US State Department.
A more recent and brutal example of the problematic involvement of the USAID is the default Pier built by the American army in 2024 to facilitate the delivery of assistance to Gaza, at the cost of $230m. The project was promoted as a humanitarian initiative and USAID was one of the organizations responsible for distributing the aid net that came there.
In reality, the pier served as public relations by the administration of former American president Joe Biden to obscure the complicity of the United States in the blockade of Israel of Gaza. It was also used by the Israeli army in an operation which led to the murder of more than 200 Palestinians, raising serious questions about militarization and the abusive use of aid infrastructure.
Pier’s farce is a good illustration of the American approach to provide help to the Palestinians: this has never been done in their best interest.
It is true that some poor Palestinians can be affected by the closure of USAIDAn and Gaza USAIDA and Gaza operations. However, it is unlikely that it decisively changed the situation on the ground. The help threshold will have a more dramatic impact on the American strategy to take advantage of Palestinian civil society organizations to promote a pacification program and perpetuate empty rhetoric on peace.
In this regard, the Fermontage of the USAID could give Palestinian civil society to reconsider its commitment with the donors of the American government in the light of its moral obligations towards the Palestinian people. Millions of people paid in pacification did not work clearly; It is time for a new approach that really serves the interests of Palestinians.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
