Foreign Aid
The West Bank and Gaza economies have become heavily reliant on foreign aid which stood at 1.8 billion in 2008. Approximately 30% of the GDP, or US$487 per Palestinian per year is aid. Foreign aid provides essential services for nearly half of the Palestinian people, and allows the Palestinian Authority to operate and pay its estimated 140,000 employees.
In 2010, Arab states cut financial aid to the Palestinian Authority. According to the Palestinian Finance Ministry, the PA received $583.5 million in budget support by August 2010, of which only 22 percent came from Arab states. The remainder was from international donors, including the European Union and the United States. Salah Rafat, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, urged the Arab countries to honor their financial pledges.
In April 2011, Salam Fayyad met with Western donors in Brussels and requested $5 billion in aid.
Read more about this topic: Economy Of The Palestinian Territories
Famous quotes containing the words foreign and/or aid:
“The force of a language does not consist of rejecting what is foreign but of swallowing it.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)