The article above is from Bistandsaktuelt, March 11th 2010, and titled: “Norway gives 240 million to the Abbas government“. In it we learn that the government is doing exactly what the heading says, and that Kjersti Gravelsæter Berg, a researcher at the University of Bergen, states the following about Norwegian aid to Palestine:
- If the money benefits the Palestinian people, rather than just their leaders, it will be indirectly in the form of wages.
- Budgetary support is difficult to track, and the Palestinian leaderships have a long record of corruption.
- Norwegian budgetary support to Palestine has been extremely politicized since the beginning in 1994, and lets the Palestinian authorities survive even without support in the population.
- Norwegian development strategy versus Palestine has been ambitious and short-sighted and now that aid-dependent structures are in place, it has become difficult to alter it.
