Has Europe betrayed the Palestinian people?

With the 1993 Oslo Accords, the European Union (EU) has been a significant aid provider to the Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, but it has strictly enforced ‘no contact’ with Hamas. In order to avoid the government, the EU has routed funding to Gaza through UN agencies and other groups it views as being outside of Hamas’ sphere of influence.

In a recent move, the EU increased its humanitarian help to the Palestinians to a total of €75 million. Additionally, it is examining about €396 million in unutilized development aid to make sure that no EU funds have unintentionally come into contact with Hamas.

The Washington Institute’s Dr. Matthew Levitt, head of the Reinhard programme on counterterrorism and intelligence, feels that the boycott of Hamas by the West was the only practical reaction to the organization’s election victory. Additionally, he feels that while “relieving” Israel of its obligations, EU assistance has maintained the Palestinian state of dependence. According to Dr. Tamet Qarmout, head of public administration at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and former UNDP employee in Gaza, EU assistance has also continued the Palestinian condition of dependence while “relieving” Israel of its obligations.

Concerned about the potential misappropriation of European funds by Hamas, European Parliament members have brought up evidence of Israel’s targeting of donor-funded projects in Palestinian territory. The EU has never looked into how Israel could have purposefully harmed the EU’s own economic projects in the region, while regularly denouncing Israeli settlers’ atrocities against Palestinians and their targeted shelling of vital Palestinian infrastructure.