Focus On: International Aid to Palestine

The Trump Administration’s decision to cut aid to the Palestinians and cease USAID operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) must serve as a wake-up call for Palestinian policymakers to lay the Oslo Accords aid model to rest. Neither this model nor the masses of aid funds that have poured into Palestine – more than $35 billion since 1993 – have brought Palestinians closer to freedom, self-determination, or statehood, or provided for sustainable development. In fact, the opposite has been the case: Palestinians are forced to live in an aid-development paradox, with increased amounts of aid associated with major declines in socioeconomic and development indicators.

In this selection of pieces, Al-Shabaka policy analysts examine the effectiveness of international aid to Palestine, problematize its consequences and the harmful ramifications of aid dependency, and suggest ways forward to reform and re-invent Palestinian aid. The analysts argue that development cannot be understood as a mere technocratic, apolitical, and neutral process. Rather, it must be recognized as operating within relations of colonial dominance and rearticulated as linked to the struggle for rights, resistance, and emancipation.

The Failure of Aid

Donor Complicity in Israel’s Violations of Palestinian Rights

By Nora Lester Murad 

Nora Lester Murad elucidates donor practices that violate basic human rights, outlines eight questions that must be asked about aid complicity, and suggests mechanisms for oversight of the aid industry. Read more…

Persistent Failure: World Bank Policies for the Occupied Palestinian Territories

By Alaa Tartir and Jeremy Wildeman 

Alaa Tartir and Jeremy Wildeman assess the World Bank’s irrelevant and sometimes harmful policy recommendations and argue that until the Bank better understands the real conditions of Israeli occupation, it will continue to provide unrealistic recommendations that are based on a long-dead era of Oslo rapprochement. Read more…

Unmasking “Aid” After the Palestine Papers

By Samer Abdelnour

Samer Abdelnour examines the integral role played by the aid industry in ensuring the de-development of the Palestinian economy and argues that in the absence of accountability mechanisms the aid industry will continue to be complicit in the deliberate devastation of the people it claims to serve. Read more…

The Reinvention of Aid 

Can Oslo’s Failed Aid Model Be Laid to Rest?

By Jeremy Wildeman and Alaa Tartir 

Jeremy Wildeman and Alaa Tartir argue that donors are reinforcing failed past patterns associated with the so-called peace dividends model while making only cosmetic changes to their engagement. Read more…

Defeating Dependency, Creating a Resistance Economy

By Alaa Tartir, Sam Bahour, and Samer Abdelnour

Alaa Tartir, Sam Bahour, and Samer Abdelnour point to the need to consider how Palestinians can institutionalize and eventually create a bureaucracy around a democratic people-driven development agenda, and argue that any new Palestinian economic vision must embrace dignity in aid. Read more…

A New Model for Palestinian Development

By Samer Abdelnour

Samer Abdelnour analyzes Oslo-inspired pitfalls of Palestinian development and misguided donor attempts to promote private sector development, and argues that a Sustainable Local Enterprise Networks (SLENs) approach to development and reconstruction can work in the Palestinian context. Read more…

Sam Bahour resides in Al-Bireh/Ramallah, Palestine. He does business consulting as Applied Information Management (AIM), specializing in business development with a niche focus on the...
Samer Abdelnour is an academic and activist. He co-founded Al-Shabaka in 2009 and served as a founding board member until 2016.
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Nora Lester Murad is an adjunct associate professor at Fordham University. She is also the co-founder of Dalia Association, Palestine's first community foundation;...
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Jeremy Wildeman ​is a Research Associate at the University of Bath's "Department of Social and Policy Sciences" where he is carrying out...
Alaa Tartir is Al-Shabaka's program and policy advisor. He is a senior researcher and director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Stockholm International...
(2019, September 4)

Latest Analysis

 Politics
For two years, Israel has inflicted mass starvation, staggering death tolls, and relentless destruction on Gaza and its inhabitants. International efforts to recognize Israeli war crimes and halt the eradication of the Palestinian people continue to lag and fall short. On September 16, 2025, the UN Commission of Inquiry confirmed what Palestinians have identified since the outset: Israel is committing genocide. On September 29, US President Donald Trump unveiled a proposal that promises a ceasefire but subordinates Palestinians in Gaza to external governance, denies them self-determination, and entrenches Israeli control over the land. Framed as a peace initiative, the plan is in fact an attempt by the US to shield the Israeli regime from accountability, exemplifying Western complicity in the colonization of Palestine and the extermination of its people. In this context, Hamas’s agreement to release all Israeli captives signals its commitment to ending the ongoing violence, while simultaneously shifting the onus onto the Israeli regime and the Trump administration to clarify and operationalize their commitments to the ceasefire process. This Focus On gathers Al-Shabaka’s analyses from the past year, offering urgent context to understand the genocide and its regional impact. It traces the Israeli regime’s expansionist campaign across Gaza, the West Bank, and the wider region, exposing Western complicity not only in enabling its crimes but also in protecting it from justice. At the same time, it highlights initiatives that resist Israeli impunity while advancing accountability and genuine liberation.
 Politics
This policy memo shows how China’s “biased impartiality,” which privileges the Israeli regime, drives its strategic distancing from the genocide in Gaza. This position is not simply the result of US dominance over Israel-related affairs but a calculated decision to protect China’s long-term interests. By calling for Palestinian unity without exerting pressure on the Israeli government, Beijing shields its ties with the Zionist state under the guise of restraint. In addition, it deflects responsibility for stopping the genocide onto the UN Security Council, casting ceasefire, humanitarian access, and prisoner release as obligations for others in order to absolve itself of direct accountability.
Razan Shawamreh· Sep 16, 2025
 Politics
The erasure of Indigenous populations lies at the core of settler-colonial narratives. These narratives aim to deny existing geographies, communities, and histories to justify the displacement and replacement of one people by another. The Zionist project is no exception. Among Zionism’s founding myths is the claim that it “made the desert bloom” and that Tel Aviv, its crown jewel, arose from barren sand dunes—an uninhabitable void transformed by pioneering settlers. This framing obscures the fact that the colonial regime initially built Tel Aviv on the outskirts of Yaffa (Jaffa), a thriving Palestinian city with a rich cultural life and a booming orange trade. The “dunes” description projects emptiness and conceals the vibrant agricultural and social life that flourished in the area. By casting the land as uninhabitable until redeemed by settlers, this narrative helped justify dispossession and colonial expansion. This process intensified after 1948, when Tel Aviv absorbed the lands of ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages, including al-Sumayil, Salame, Shaykh Muwannis, and Abu Kabir, and ultimately extended into the city of Yaffa. This same settler-colonial discourse drives the ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, where destruction is reframed through the narrative of “uninhabitability.” Gaza is increasingly depicted as a lifeless ruin—a framing that is far from neutral. This commentary contends that “uninhabitable” is a politically charged term that masks culpability, reproduces colonial erasure, and shapes policy and public perception in ways that profoundly affect Palestinian lives and futures. It examines the origins, function, and implications of this discourse within the logic of settler colonialism, calling for a radical shift in language from narratives that obscure violence to those affirming Palestinian presence, history, and sovereignty.
Abdalrahman Kittana· Aug 27, 2025
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