In the wake of a recent 50-day war between Israel and Hamas, officials from across the globe gathered Oct. 12 in Cairo to attend an international donor conference for the reconstruction of Gaza.
Exceeding grim expectations of donor fatigue, global pledges to rebuild the war-ravaged enclave amounted to $5.4 billion. However, an acute sense of déjà vu lingers over the international community, which is slowly coming to the sobering realization that two decades of ever-increasing aid have outright failed to lift the fortunes of Palestinian populations.
The European Union has long been one of the largest and most reliable development aid donors to the Palestinian territories, handing out an annual average of 480 million euros ($606 million) since 2007. But amid the recent collapse of U.S.-mediated peace talks and accelerated Israeli settlement-building, the assumption that aid can help advance a two-state solution is being questioned as never before — prompting fundamental questions about whether EU financial assistance to Palestine is headed in the right direction.