Arab nations stingy with their pledges to PA

An AP story I missed last week:

Arab countries only provided about half the US$660 million a year in aid they pledged to President Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority in 2007, an Arab League report said Friday. Still, they were preparing to renew the promises this weekend.

Arab countries promised in 2001 to give the Palestinian Authority US$55 million a month in aid, and the pledge has been renewed at every annual Arab summit since.

But a document prepared by Moussa for this year's summit and obtained by the AP showed that a total of only US$368 million was transferred to the Palestinians through the Arab League in 2007.

Majdi al-Khaldi, an adviser to Abbas, told the AP that Arab countries have paid less than 40 percent of their pledges since 2002.

At last year's summit in Riyadh, Arab leaders also promised an additional US$150 million for 2007 alone to go to Palestinian reconstruction. It is not clear if any of that money was paid.

According to the document, Moussa has written to Arab governments urging them to send the pledged money.

But while their Arab brethren are reticent about putting even a tiny percentage of their windfall billions ($225 billion revenue surplus in 2007) into the Palestinian Arab black hole, Western governments are rushing to throw their money away.

Norway has announced that it would give $44 million to the Palestinian Authority to be spent this month alone.

The UK just announced it would provide an additional $63 million to PalArabs putting its contribution in one year to $126 million.

It appears that the Palestinian Arabs are being disproportionately propped up by the West, while their Arab brethren really don't care about them anymore.