In this way, the closure of USAID in Palestine could be seen as a step in a positive new direction towards peace-building based on human rights and international law, while finally leaving the long moribund Oslo model to rest. It also represented a key element in a securitised US aid strategy that evolved over 25 years largely to pacify and maintain control over the Palestinians, under occupation, under the pretext of peace-building.

The challenge is for Palestinians to seize this opportunity to rethink their approach to international aid and ensure that the US will not pick up its operations in the future freely, without being accountable to the Palestinian people, and without committing to Palestinian conditions on aid delivery.

Co-written with Jeremy Wildeman

Published at The Middle East Eye, 6 February 2019

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