"International Aid and Saggy Pants" -- by Stephanie Rhodes

I never thought I'd be one to praise a Bush administration tactic or to side with free market investment over government safety nets. It seems that Palestine may have brought me back to my Republican roots after all. That, or I harbor some secret desire for the entire place to implode. It's hard to know.

What I will say is this: the aid system here feels completely broken. And in many ways I hold it directly responsible for the development paradox in play on the ground here.

This place feels like all the worst criticisms of a welfare state: that the money goes to those who don't really need it, rather than those with a genuine desire to progress; that it is a system of handouts that perpetuate poverty rather than alleviating it; that taxpayers would be better off keeping their hard-earned cash and distributing it as they see fit.

If I weren't the card-carrying liberal that I am, the conversation would probably end there. Instead of living in the Middle East, I'd stay at home and tell myself that those who won't/can't help themselves are a lost cause.

The thing is, the Palestinian people are caught up in some strange Bermuda Triangle version of a welfare state. Israeli policies control the borders, the customs, the "security" and, most of all, the movement. Palestinian Authority systems seem to exert a redundant internal bureaucracy, one that allegedly enriches its key players but that produces few tangible results. Meanwhile the international community props up both of these systems politically and financially. It funds the weapons that make genuine efforts at conciliation less attractive, it supports political administrations that no longer serve at the people's will, and it generates the same aid projects that have failed in the past and that will continue to fail in the future. It is a welfare state that supports only itself. It is a cycle that serves not to address the root problems but to continuously reproduce a failing system.

It is a cycle that prefers a shadow state or a meaningless logframe to a dynamic idea. It is a cycle that hasn't a hope in hell of making a difference.

In many ways, it is a waste of time. It is almost certainly a waste of money.

The Bush administration's response to this conundrum has not meant a fundamental policy shift away from these systems. What it has meant is a parallel effort to put money into the Palestinian private sector. It is an effort to boost private industry without dismantling the welfare system.

Do I think the effort does enough? Probably not, but it's a decent start.

And now for the non sequitur.

I keep replaying Barack Obama's response to an MTV question in my head. It is admittedly tangential, but let's call it our moment of zen.



That welfare state? It's like saggy pants laws. Its funds address a surface sense of decency while ignoring the world's real problems. Yet many argue that dismantling it altogether would be worse than a waste of time -- it would be a complete humanitarian collapse.

And they're probably right. Problematic though the system is, it keeps Palestine in arguably better shape than many places in Africa. So maybe it's doing something right after all.

At the same time, all the international aid brothers out there need to pull up their pants and readjust their funding priorities.

Stephanie Rhodes divides her time between Alabama and Jerusalem, where she directs Palestinian aid projects.