European Union to boost PA funding with $1.8 billion over three years

 The European Union will increase its financial support for the Palestinian Authority with a three-year package worth around 1.6 billion euros ($1.8 billion), the European Commissioner responsible for the Middle East told Reuters in an interview published Monday.  

Dubravka Suica, the European commissioner for the Mediterranean, said the financial support would go hand in hand with reforms of the Palestinian Authority, which has been accused by critics of corruption, bad governance, and incentivizing terrorism.

“We want them to reform themselves because without reforming, they won’t be strong enough and credible to be an interlocutor, not only for us, but an interlocutor also for Israel,” Suica said. 

Suica said 620 million euros would go to financial support and reform of the PA, 576 million euros to “resilience and recovery” of the West Bank and Gaza, and 400 million euros would come in loans from the European Investment Bank, subject to the approval of its governing body.

She said average EU support for the PA had amounted to about 400 million euros over the past 12 years.

“We are investing now in a credible manner in the Palestinian Authority,” Suica said.  

The commissioner’s remarks came ahead of a first “high-level political dialogue” between European Union foreign ministers and senior Palestinian officials, including PA Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa, in Luxembourg on Monday. 

The PA’s finances have been in disarray for years as donor states have cut back funding that once covered nearly one-third of its $6 billion annual budget, demanding reforms to tackle corruption and waste, and have only gotten worse since thousands of Hamas-led terrorists attacked Israel on October 7, killing nearly 1,200 people, kidnapping 251, and sparking the war in Gaza. 

The EU is the biggest donor to the Palestinian Authority, pledging 400 million euros in 2024, and EU officials hope the PA may also one day take responsibility for Gaza after the war between Israel and Hamas comes to an end. 

The West Bank-based PA, dominated by Abbas’s secularist Fatah movement, was ousted from Gaza in 2007 after a war with Hamas, which has controlled the Strip since then. Sources from the Gaza-ruling terror group have told AFP they would be ready to hand over the Strip’s civilian affairs to a Palestinian entity.  

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has vowed to vanquish Hamas, has thus far ruled out any role for the PA in Gaza, but failed to advance any alternative amid pressure from his far-right partners who want to establish settlements in the Strip. 

Israel has long accused the PA of inciting terrorism in its education system and by offering stipends to families of Palestinians detained in Israel for violent attacks.

Mahmoud Abbas, the PA’s longtime president, issued a decree in February canceling legislation that conditioned welfare payments to Palestinian security prisoners on the length of their sentences in Israeli jails, a practice that has been dubbed by critics as the “pay-to-slay” system.

Israel dismissed the move as “a new fraudulent exercise by the PA,” but the US called it “a positive step,” while saying it wants “to see actions — not words.”  

https://www.timesofisrael.com/european-union-to-boost-pa-funding-with-1-8-billion-over-three-years/