(Washington Institute for Near East Policy) Matthew Levitt and Jamie Chosak - As former World Bank leader James Wolfensohn, now Washington's special envoy for disengagement, lobbies world leaders to offer significant support for Palestinian development projects, a parallel effort is necessary to create new, transparent public and private social-service organizations unaffiliated with Hamas or other groups engaged in terrorism or political violence. This is not as massive an undertaking as some suspect; the amount of money Hamas actually spends on social welfare is relatively small compared with UN aid. The UNRWA cash budget for 2005 was $339 million, while U.S. and Israeli estimates of Hamas' annual spending on social welfare range from $40 million to $75 million. A serious international aid effort funding reformed Palestinian service providers could dwarf Hamas social-welfare institutions with qualitatively and quantitatively superior services to crowd out Hamas' competing services.
2005-09-09 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive