February 11, 2013 | Quote
A Middle-Class Paradise in Palestine?
The Gulf kingdom of Qatar has done more than simply buy into the Rawabi paradigm: It's also funding two-thirds of the project, to the tune of over $600 million. This is enough money to single-handedly finance the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority — which is effectively broke, thanks to penalties imposed by the Israeli and U.S. governments after Mahmoud Abbas's successful push for a U.N. General Assembly vote on Palestinian U.N. membership, and a freeze in financial aid from Gulf State donors, most notably Saudi Arabia — for the better part of a year.
Instead, the Qataris have not only bypassed the PA, but channeled money into a project that seems to prove the PA's uselessness. “It's like an island inside the traditional infrastructure of the PA,” says Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and author of a book on Palestinian internal politics. “It shows everyone what you can do if you don't go through the PA. The PA receives $600 million a year [in foreign aid] and they have not done something like this.”
Masri says that the leadership of the PA has been fully supportive, but that Rawabi has been hurt by the Palestinian government's lack of capacity. “We should not be building public schools. We should not be building a waste water treatment plant or waste water networks or water reservoirs,” he told me. “Unfortunately we have to do that because the Palestinian Authority does not have the funding and the donors let [the PA] down.”