USAID and pacification industry in Palestine

Undoubtedly, the shutdown of the agency has affected Palestinians, especially those benefitting from its funding for education and healthcare institutions. Humanitarian provision was also affected, with the World Food Programme, one of the main humanitarian actors in the occupied Palestinian territories, facing major disruptions.

While the short-term negative impact is apparent, the utility of USAID and other US funding becomes questionable when put in the larger political context of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

As a researcher, I have been directly and indirectly involved in assessing USAID-funded programmes for years, and I have seen first-hand how they have contributed to maintaining Israeli occupation and colonisation. The US agency was far from “helping” Palestinians lead better lives, as it claimed.

A policy of pacification

USAID opened its West Bank and Gaza Strip office as part of the broader American effort to lead and shape the political settlement between Palestinians and Israelis initiated by the Oslo Accords of 1994.

The so-called “peace process” promised Palestinians an independent state on the lands occupied by Israel in 1967, with a final agreement supposed to be signed by 1999. Needless to say, such an agreement was never signed, as Israel never intended to conclude peace with the Palestinians and recognise their right to self-determination.

Instead, Oslo was used to cover up Israel’s relentless colonisation of the occupied Palestinian territories in the rhetoric of peace negotiations. The creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a local governing body tasked with managing civil affairs for Palestinians in designated areas was part of this strategy.

While the official Palestinian leadership envisioned the PA as a transitional polity that would administer daily life until an independent state was established, it was ultimately designed and closely overseen by the US to function as a client regime, managing and controlling the occupied population.

To that end, the PA was obliged to engage in close coordination with Israeli security forces to suppress any form of resistance in the territories it managed. Its two main security bodies – the Intelligence Service and the Preventive Security – were set up to fulfil this duty.

While US intelligence agencies were tasked with supporting and training the Palestinian security apparatus – funnelling millions of dollars to it every year – USAID was tasked with supporting the civilian functions of the PA.

Between 1994 and 2018, USAID provided more than $5.2bn in aid to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It funded infrastructure, health, and education initiatives, with the aim of winning public support for the peace negotiations.

A portion of its funding was funnelled through civil society organisations with two primary objectives: to depoliticise the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and to cultivate a network of civil society actors who would promote this agenda.

The depoliticisation framework treated the Palestinian issue as an economic and humanitarian matter. This approach addressed Palestinian economic and social problems in isolation — detached from their primary cause: Israeli occupation.

It also sought to delegitimise Palestinian resistance by portraying it as a source of instability and chaos rather than a political response to occupation.

To distribute its funding, USAID established a complex system of background checks, alongside an Orwellian set of conditions. The vetting extended beyond the individual to their extended family, the name of the place, and even the cultural context in which the funds would be used — none of which could be associated with resistance.

In this context, it is hardly surprising that USAID programmes often failed to improve the lives of ordinary Palestinians.