US gives millions to Palestinians without reporting where, exactly, the money goes ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Tuesday, February 07, 2023

US gives millions to Palestinians without reporting where, exactly, the money goes

The United States has a very nice web page that shows how much foreign aid is given and the specific recipients every year.

Here's a detail of what the West Bank/Gaza page looked like in 2020:

The highlighted text says, "USAID redacted this field in accordance with the exceptions outlined in the Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act of 2016."

I count about $90 million given to these anonymous Palestinian recipients since 2016.

Looking at the text of that Act, it appears that there are only two reasons to redact the names of the recipients:

(3) REPORT IN LIEU OF INCLUSION.—
(A) HEALTH OR SECURITY OF IMPLEMENTING PARTNERS.—
If the head of a Federal department or agency, in consultation with the Secretary of State, makes a determination that the inclusion of a required item of information online would jeopardize the health or security of an implementing partner or program beneficiary or would require the release of proprietary information of an implementing partner or program beneficiary, the head of the Federal department or agency shall provide such determination in writing to the appropriate congressional committees, including the basis for such determination.
(B) NATIONAL INTERESTS OF THE UNITED STATES.—If the Secretary of State makes a determination that the inclusion of a required item of information online would be detrimental to the national interests of the United States, the Secretary of State shall provide such determination, including the basis for such determination, in writing to the appropriate congressional committees.

Could it be that the reason that some of the recipient names are redacted is because they would be threatened if it was known they were accepting aid from the US? Or perhaps some of the programs are "under the radar" grassroots peace initiatives, that the Palestinian Authority tries to quash as "normalization"?

Either way, it seems like there is a bit of money sloshing around without any transparency.

One other interesting note. In 2019, the Trump administration announced that it ceased all aid through USAID to the Palestinians. Yet somehow USAID still managed to send millions to the Palestinians in 2019 and 2020 - much less than during the Obama and Biden administrations, but not close to zero.

It seems that the "Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act of 2016" leaves a lot of wiggle room for non-transparency.

(h/t Irene)

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