According to Foreign Policy magazine, in an article titled Hard times in Hebron, the United States has spent $3.4 billion in development funds in the Palestinian territories of West Bank and Gaza
So, it appears that this poor, oppressed, underdeveloped Arab city has doubled the number of building permits issued since 2006, and is preparing to solicit bids for a road to a new $13 million water treatment facility — financed, of course, by USAID.
Not everyone is happy about spending so much money in the PA.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen: “By providing the Palestinians with $2.5 billion over the last five years, the U.S. has only rewarded and reinforced their bad behavior.”
The US State Department disagrees: “We think it is money that is not only in the interest of the Palestinians; it’s in U.S. interest and it’s also in Israeli interest.”
What is this money used for?
New schools were built to teach incitement [“The Zionist gangs stole Palestine … and established the state of Israel”], and judges were trained to sentence Arabs selling property to Jews to death [PA affirms death penalty for land sales to Israelis].
What about accountability? Where is the money really going? Where are hundreds of millions of dollars that went missing under Yasser Arafat?
Ghassan Khatib, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority: “This money is going mainly to development and humanitarian projects. There is no justified reason for holding it. It’s important for stabilization.”
From the objective of the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee, ‘development and humanitarian projects’ are those that “counter and limit Israeli settlements inside the Old city [of Hebron] by surrounding settlements with inhabited buildings to prevent their horizontal expansion; and avert the urban interconnection of these settlements by increasing Arab demographic density between them.”
There are others who believe and act otherwise. South Carolina State Representative Allan Clemmons initiated a resolution, passed unanimously, declaring: “Whereas, Israel has been granted her lands under and through the oldest recorded deed as reported in the Old Testament, a tome of scripture held sacred and reverenced by Jew and Christian, alike, as the acts and words of God; and Whereas, as the Grantor of said lands, God stated to the Jewish people in the Old Testament; in Leviticus, Chapter 20, Verse 24: ‘Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey’; and Whereas, God has never rescinded his grant of said lands.”
This resolution was used as a model for a similar resolution passed in Florida, called Florida Stands with Israel. And most recently, the Republican National Committee adopted a similar policy, with a resolution stating: “BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the members of this body support Israel in their natural and God-given right of self-governance and self-defense upon their own lands, recognizing that Israel is neither an attacking force nor an occupier of the lands of others; and that peace can be afforded the region only through a united Israel governed under one law for all people.”
Presently, USAID to Arab Hebron is in jeopardy as a result of Abu Mazen’s attempt to unilaterally declare a ‘Palestinian state’ at the United Nations as reported in the Foreign Policy article quoted above. This ‘threat’ to stop USAID to Arab Hebron must be consummated, and the flow of billions of American taxpayers money halted.
I have no doubt that as Rep. Allan Clemmons, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Rep. Louis Gohmert from Texas, (who introduced a similar resolution in the US House of Representatives) and other like-minded US politicians continue in major leadership positions in the United States, they will ensure that US tax dollars are properly utilized, rather funneled to their enemies and ours.