America’s Role in Hamas’ Victory

By Congressman Anthony D. Weiner

Sometimes efforts to improve a bad situation fail.  Sometimes they even make things worse.

Since 2000, the U.S. has given more than $947 million in aid to the West Bank and Gaza.  That’s more U.S. aid in the last five years than during the previous 25.  Last year alone, we gave $275 million to the West Bank and Gaza and $50 million directly to the Palestinian Authority. 

Those in Washington who supported sending taxpayer dollars to the Palestinians did so with the best of intentions.  They wanted to provide humanitarian aid to a population living in squalor.  They wanted to build an economic infrastructure that would empower residents of the West Bank and Gaza to support themselves.  And they wanted to buttress the moderate Palestinian leadership represented by Abu Mazen’s Fatah movement.

But, as Hamas’ landslide victory demonstrates, our policy of providing aid to the Palestinans has been an abject failure, for two reasons.

First, it propped up a government rank with corruption.  Yassir Arafat stole billions of dollars in aid, leaving his constituents to live in poverty.  And even since his death, the Fatah movement and the old Palestinian leadership have proven to be so inept, failing to fulfill the most basic functions of government, from maintaining sanitation system to providing the infrastructure to create jobs. 

Second, it attached the United States to an inefficient, lazy governing regime.  Palestinians now associate the American government with the incompetent Palestinian leadership.

Just as you never increase a child’s allowance after he has skipped a day of school, we should not have rewarded Fatah with increased aid in the wake of their incompetent leadership in the Gaza and West Bank.

Let’s learn our lesson.

In October of 2000 – more than five years ago – I introduced legislation in Congress to cut off funding for the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank, and Gaza.

Now, more than ever, it is time we turn off the spigot of money we have sent to prop up ineffective leadership.

But more than that, it’s time that we set a new bar for aid throughout the world.

First, we should never again supply funding to a regime that does not share American values.  President Bush set up the “Millennium Challenge Account” as a new way of distributing aid to the world – rewarding competent, fiscally responsible countries with additional American taxpayer dollars.  Clearly, aid to the Palestinian Authority failed to meet that threshold.  We should stop making exceptions.

Second, we should only provide aid to regimes that are capable of promoting peace.  After Arafat’s double cross at Camp David, and Abu Mazen’s failure to reign in the terrorists that have sent suicide bombers into Israel, we should have stopped transferring aid.

Finally, we should only provide aid after a regime has gotten its finances in order – and made them transparent.  We were repeatedly told that the Palestinian Authority was cleaning up its act.  But, the dividends never reached the Palestinian people.

Today, we should begin to apply the lessons of our failures in the West Bank and Gaza to other recipients of American aid.  Our first focus: Egypt.  We are currently sending millions of dollars to an incompetent regime that that has squandered money, while violently suppressing the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

Everyone in Washington supports peace in the Middle East.  But unless we are able to critique our current policy with an open mind, we may see radical regimes like Hamas take hold where the United States is propping up corrupt regimes elsewhere in the world.