The Baltimore Sun

Aid imbalance undermines push for Mideast peace

He welcomed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to the White House. He promised to give the PA some money. And he called on Israel to help in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by not expanding settlements in the West Bank, by halting construction of a "security fence" that jabs into Palestinian territory, by getting Israeli troops out of the West Bank and by diminishing the hardship inflicted on Palestinians by military road blocks and check points.

It took political courage for a U.S. president to do all that. Mr. Bush is unlikely to have acted this way before the election. But now that he has been re-elected, it's good to hear of him using the capital he said he earned in that re-election to act constructively in the Middle East's central conflict.

But he could do more.

Here's a suggestion: Start with the money.

The amount that Mr. Bush offered the Palestinian Authority was $50 million. By the time Congress finishes fiddling with it, the money will have so many strings attached that the Palestinians could choke on them.

But even if the money were to flow directly to the PA without any strings attached, it is a tiny amount compared with what Israel gets from the United States. It's probably a lot less than Israel will get from Washington just to help defray the costs of relocating Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip, even though those Israelis were encouraged by the Israeli government to settle in the Gaza Strip in defiance of U.S. policy at the time.

Israel gets about $3 billion a year in military and economic assistance from the United States, making that country of about 6.9 million (if you include the 1.3 million Arabs living in Israel) the largest single recipient of U.S. aid in the world. (That figure obviously does not include the billions being spent in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Among the non-oil-producing countries of the region, Israel has the strongest economy. It has the mightiest, best-equipped military, bar none, including the oil producers. It's gross domestic product per capita purchasing power is calculated at $20,800 a year.

Egypt, where the government is undemocratic - no matter how much it pretends to be otherwise - receives about $2 billion in U. S. economic and military assistance a year in return for signing the 1979 peace treaty with Israel in which Egypt reclaimed all the territory it lost to Israel in the 1967 war, except for the Gaza Strip, which the Egyptians did not want back. Why would they? The place is jammed with Palestinian refugees whose very condition was caused in part by Egypt's wars against Israel.

The Palestinian Authority gets $250 million, including the $50 million Mr. Bush promised last week.

The Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza is about 3.7 million. The GDP per capita purchasing power of that population is calculated at about $800 a year - about 4 percent of Israel's.

The proportion of the Israeli population living under the poverty line is about 18 percent. Israel's unemployment rate is about 10 percent. In the West Bank, almost 60 percent of the people are living beneath the poverty line; the unemployment rate is 27 percent. In Gaza, more than 80 percent are living beneath the poverty line; the unemployment rate is 50 percent.

If you base the allocations on need, there's an imbalance between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. If you base it on who deserves it more, there's certainly an imbalance between Egypt and the Palestinian Authority.

If Mr. Bush tried to take a lot away from Israel and Egypt to give to the Palestinians, he wouldn't just be a political lame duck, he'd be a political dead duck. But how about giving the Palestinians 10 percent of what Israel and Egypt get, with no more strings attached than there are to the annual money given to Israel?

Now that would be a bold stroke. It might even make a difference.

G. Jefferson Price III is a former foreign correspondent and editor of The Sun.

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