In 1994, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) inaugurated its office in Palestine. Its website, which is no longer available, used to boast that since then, it has “helped four million Palestinians lead healthier and more productive lives”.
It is important to evaluate the claim that USAID was a force for good in the occupied Palestinian territories now that the agency has been shut down by US President Donald Trump’s administration.
Undoubtedly, Palestinians have been impacted by the agency’s shutdown, particularly those who receive funding for healthcare and education. Humanitarian provision was also affected, with the World Food Programme, one of the main humanitarian actors in the occupied Palestinian territories, facing major disruptions.
While the impact on the short-term is obvious, the value of USAID and other US funding is questioned in light of the Palestinian Authority’s larger political context.
I’ve spent years evaluating USAID-funded programs directly and indirectly as a researcher, and I’ve seen first-hand how they have helped to keep Israeli occupation and colonization. The US agency was far from “helping” Palestinians lead better lives, as it claimed.
A pacification strategy
In response to the wider American effort to influence and shape the political settlement between Palestinians and Israelis that was initiated by the Oslo Accords of 1994, USAID opened its West Bank and Gaza Strip office.
The so-called “peace process” promised Palestinians an independent state on the lands occupied by Israel in 1967, with a final agreement supposed to be signed by 1999. Needless to say, this agreement was never signed because Israel had no intention of achieving peace with the Palestinians and recognizing their right to self-determination.
Oslo was used to defend Israel’s repeated occupation of Palestinian occupied territories during peace talks. The creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a local governing body tasked with managing civil affairs for Palestinians in designated areas was part of this strategy.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) was initially intended as a transitional polity that would govern daily life until an independent state was established, but the US ultimately developed and closely monitored it, managing and controlling the occupied population.
In order to halt any form of resistance in the territories it controlled, the PA was required to work closely with Israeli security forces. Its two main security bodies – the Intelligence Service and the Preventive Security – were set up to fulfil this duty.
USAID was given the task of supporting the Palestinian security apparatus while US intelligence agencies were given the responsibility of funding and training it, which included millions of dollars annually in funding.
USAID assisted Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for more than $5.2 billion between 1994 and 2018. It funded infrastructure, health, and education initiatives, with the aim of winning public support for the peace negotiations.
With two primary goals in mind: to depoliticize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to establish a network of civil society actors who would support this agenda, a portion of its funding came from civil society organizations.
The Palestinian problem was seen as both an economic and humanitarian issue by the depoliticization framework. This approach addressed Palestinian economic and social problems in isolation — detached from their primary cause: Israeli occupation.
It also sought to delegitimize Palestinian resistance by portraying it as a source of chaos and instability as opposed to a political response to occupation.
USAID set up a complicated background check system as well as an Orwellian set of requirements to distribute its funding. The vetting extended beyond the individual to their extended 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 light of this, it is not surprising that USAID initiatives frequently failed to improve the lives of regular Palestinians.
People-to-people programs are used to normalize the world
A lot of USAID funding went into initiatives that sought to normalise Israeli colonisation by seeking to establish connections between Palestinians and Israelis. The idea that the two people “can learn to live together,” was completely untrue, despite apartheid’s and occupation’s realities.
The Conflict Management and Mitigation (CMM) Program, promoted under the People-to-People Partnership framework by USAID, was one of the USAID-funded initiatives I evaluated. By 2018, CMM had allocated over $230m to different initiatives and was set to distribute another $250m by 2026.
To promote peacebuilding, the program included projects aimed at bereaved parents, farmers, and students. Through the sharing of farming experiences, one of these projects sought to encourage cooperation between Palestinian and Israeli farmers.
During one focus group discussion, I spoke to a Palestinian farmer who explained that Palestinian olive oil production has been stagnating due to the Israeli occupation regime that restricted Palestinian farmers ‘ access to water and, in some cases, to their land. He continued, “These programs don’t talk about these issues,” saying “these programs don’t.”
When I asked him why he had signed up, he replied that the project had given him the opportunity to work on Israeli farms and make a living off of it.
The absurdity of this dynamic was striking: on paper, the programme spoke of fostering productive relationships between Palestinians and Israelis, building a shared, peaceful future where farmers become friends. Palestinian farmers actually agreed to a travel agreement and work on Israeli farms, many of which were set up on seized Palestinian land. The participation in the program failed to address any of the issues that Palestinian olive farmers encountered due to Israeli occupation policies.
Another USAID-funded programme I studied, Seeds of Peace, had the mission to bring together young people from conflict regions who had the potential to become future leaders in their countries. A youth summer camp in a wealthy part of the US state of Maine, where participants engaged in dialogue and leadership training, was the program’s main activity.
Israelis and Palestinians were the two largest participants. While the Israeli Ministry of Education was responsible for selecting Israeli participants, the Seeds of Peace office in Ramallah oversaw the recruitment of Palestinian participants. A program with high costs, costing up to $8, 000 per person, was offered to each participant.
A closer examination of participant lists over time revealed a startling pattern: wealthy families and their children frequently appeared.
Curious about this pattern, I once asked a programme officer about it. The response was revealing, stating that “leadership frequently passes to the children of high-ranking officials in Palestinian society.”
In order to achieve this, the organization’s and, consequently, the US’s, assumed that the current elite’s vision of political leadership in Palestine should be prioritized over its sons and daughters.
Political interference
Not just the PA cadres and their families were supported by Seeds of Peace, by far. Some high-ranking officials’ relatives have benefited from special treatment while securing lucrative USAID contracts, while others have taken the lead of nonprofit organizations that the agency has funded.
USAID has also been involved indirectly in the political scene in Palestine by supporting political actors favoured by Washington.
In the days before the 2006 legislative elections, it ran an extensive democracy promotion program in the Palestinian territories. Although there is no concrete evidence that a particular candidate or party list received funding from USAID, observers have come across reports that CSOs connected to Fatah or the Third Way candidates. In some cases, this support was channeled through organisations operating in unrelated sectors.
These organizations were unable to secure enough seats to stop Hamas from winning the election despite substantial funding and political support. USAID continued to support Palestinian CSOs even after Hamas gained control of Gaza, sometimes dramatically increasing their funding.
USAID also supported the police force under the PA through rule of law programmes, although the bulk of funding for the PA’s repressive security apparatus has come through the CIA and the International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) of the US Department of State.
The US military constructed a malfunctioning pier in 2024 to facilitate the delivery of aid into Gaza, at a cost of $ 230 million, which is a more recent and illustrative illustration of problematic USAID involvement. USAID was one of the organizations tasked with dispersing the trickle of aid that came through the project because it was referred to as a humanitarian initiative.
In reality, the pier served as a public relations stunt by the administration of former US President Joe Biden to obscure US complicity in Israel’s blockade of Gaza. The Israeli military also used it in an operation that resulted in the deaths of more than 200 Palestinians, which raises serious questions about the militarization and misuse of aid infrastructure.
The Palestinians’ humanitarian aid was never done in their best interests, according to the pier farce.
It is true that some impoverished Palestinians may be affected by the shutdown of USAID operations in the West Bank and Gaza. However, it’s unlikely to significantly alter the local circumstances. The US’s strategy of using Palestinian civil society organizations to advance a pacification agenda and perpetuate empty rhetoric about peace will be affected more dramatically by the aid cutoff.
In this regard, the shuttering of USAID could give an opportunity for the Palestinian civil society to reconsider its engagement with US government donors in light of its moral obligations to the Palestinian people. It is time for a new strategy that actually serves the interests of the Palestinians, after billions of dollars were clearly spent on pacification.
Source: Aljazeera
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